Introduction: Writing IR Research Papers at FSU
My upper-division International Relations at Florida State University generally require at least one advanced research paper. For my "International Conflict" course (INR 4083), this paper requirement involves in-depth research on a particular international crisis or war; for my "Geography, History, and International Relations" course (INR 3004), the paper requirement involves in-depth research on a particular territorial claim. The full details of each assignment can be found in the syllabus for the course in question, but this web page is meant to provide additional assistance for students trying to research their topics. Most of the resources discussed on this page will be relevant for either paper topic; many wars have been related to territorial claims, many territorial claims have been related to wars, and many history resources cover both topics equally well.
Number of Sources
It can be dangerous to list a specific number of sources that are expected for an advanced college research paper, as there is so much variation across topics and across sources. A good rule of thumb, though, is that I expect you to use at least five serious scholarly sources (particularly books but also including academic journal articles) as long as this many sources are available in the library. For cases that are more obscure or cases that are too recent to have generated many books/articles, obviously, I can't expect you to use sources that don't exist. If you don't plan on using at least five sources, though, I highly recommend talking to me about your topic; I can often point you in the direction of additional sources that you hadn't thought of.
Also note that this rule of thumb refers to using five different serious scholarly sources. This does not mean listing five sources in your bibliography, but only using one or two in the writeup of your paper. I expect to see evidence that you have used all five sources in researching this paper, including appropriate citations wherever each one was used.
Acceptable Sources
This web page lists a variety of sources that are acceptable for use in advanced college research papers such as those required in my courses. In particular, I strongly encourage the use of academic books and journal articles, as well as the use of new sources such as newspapers or news wires.
Please be aware that most Internet sources, CD-ROMs, and encyclopedias are not appropriate for an upper-division college research paper such as this one, and as such may not be used without my explicit permission. If you plan to use electronic sources, you must read and follow the guidelines presented at http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~phensel/internet.html; note in particular that you must fill out a one-page request (and receive my written permission) before the source can be used, and that even then you must add a paragraph in the bibliography evaluating each electronic source used in your paper.
This requirement does not apply to online versions of traditional library sources such as journal articles (obtainable through JSTOR or similar online databases) or newspapers (obtainable through Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe, the Historical New York Times Online, the newspapers' own web sites, or similar sources). Because these are the same stories that you would otherwise get by xeroxing from the printed journal or by printing from the newspaper's microfilm archive, these sources are fine and do not require either my permission or a paragraph justifying and evaluating the source. The use of other electronic sources without following this procedure, though, will be penalized by a deduction of up to five letter grades, depending on the severity of the problem (with a higher penalty generally being assessed when more unapproved sources are used, when the unapproved sources constitute the majority of the student's research, and so on).
Citations and Plagiarism
Furthermore, you must properly footnote and cite all sources that you use. Guidelines are available at http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~phensel/citation.html. Failure to follow these guidelines on citing one's sources properly will be penalized by a deduction of up to five letter grades.
Writing Help
Many students make the same writing mistakes over and over again, either because they do not know that they are making a mistake or because they do not know how to fix it. With these students in mind, I have created several web pages listing common mistakes and describing how to fix the problems. If you have any doubt, please check out these web pages! Even if an instructor does not explicitly grade papers based on spelling, style, grammar, and so on, it is quite common for a poorly written and poorly organized paper to be less successful simply because it could not make its point effectively and because all of the mistakes in the paper distract the reader.
Please note that while I generally do not directly penalize students for spelling or grammatical errors, I will indicate many such mistakes with a red pen when grading. For example, one semester I had a student who went to all the trouble to get his paper specially bound at Kinko's, yet I counted (and circled in red ink) more than ten spelling or grammatical errors on each of the first three pages of the paper. Furthermore, sloppy writing often indicates sloppy research, and I will not spend extra time trying to figure out what the student's point is if it's not clear; I see no reason to spend additional time and effort grading a paper when the paper's author did not put much time or effort into writing it in the first place.
Books and Journal Articles
The most useful reference source for papers such as these is FSU's Strozier Library, which includes a wide variety of books with information on crises, wars, and territorial claims. This section of the web page discusses some of the most useful search strategies for information in Strozier.
Territorial Claims
For a great place to start, the Strozier library includes a number of sources that cover territorial claims around the world, at least several of which will cover most of your topics. The following sources are especially useful for topics that have been active in the later twentieth century (and for selected earlier topics), and most of these are useful for both territorial claims and crises/wars (even if they focus only on one or the other):
- Anderson, Global Geopolitical Flashpoints: An Atlas of Conflict: Strozier Reference JC 319 .A52 2000 (a great book covering dozens of claims, with updated information as of 2000)
- Anderson, An Atlas of World Political Flashpoints: Strozier Reference G 1046 .F1 A5 1993 (an earlier edition of the 2000 book listed above -- still useful, although it is obviously missing some of the more recent events. Note that this edition includes about a dozen cases that are left out of the 2000 edition listed above, mostly because they have ended or are no longer seen [by the author] as interesting. Also, the maps in this 1993 edition are generally better and more useful than the maps in the 2000 edition, which are all computer-generated -- which looks fancy, but at the cost of readability.)
- Day, Border and Territorial Disputes: Strozier Reference D 843 .R624 1982 (at one time the most useful reference book, although FSU's library never bothered to purchase the 1987 or 1992 editions, and even those are now more than a decade behind the most recent events -- but still very useful for many claims that were ongoing as of 1982)
- Downing, An Atlas of Territorial and Border Disputes: Strozier Documents JC 323 .D68 (generally less useful for most cases, since few cases get more than a full paragraph of coverage, but nonetheless a decent starting point)
- Munro and Day, A World Record of Major Conflict Areas: Strozier Reference D 431 .M88 1990 (less focus on territorial claims specifically, but still useful for those cases that it covers)
Gazetteers
Gazetteers can be another useful source for most topics in these courses. Essentially geographic dictionaries, good gazetteers include hundreds of thousands of entries, describing the history and geography of different geographic features, territories, countries, cities, and so on. These sources generally are not good enough to be the main source for a paper of this type, but they can be quite useful as a starting point (often listing several sentences up to several paragraphs on the history of a disputed territory, giving alternative names or spellings of names for the territory, and so on). They can also be very useful when trying to identify the details of a claimed territory, such as its area, population, and any valuable resources or other benefits present in the territory.
- The all-time best gazetteer is the three-volume Columbia Gazetteer of the World, located at G 103.5 .C65 1998 in Strozier's Reference section, Strozier's Maps collection, the Dirac Science Library, and the Goldstein Library.
- An earlier version of this is the Columbia-Lippincott Gazetteer of the World, located at G 103 .L7 1952 in Strozier, Strozier's Reference section, and Strozier's Maps collection.
- One other good (single-volume) gazetteer is Merriam-Webster's Geographic Dictionary, a 1997 gazetteer with some 48,000 entries; shockingly, the only copy of this at FSU is at the Goldstein Library (at G 103.5 .W42 1997). Nonetheless, this book can be found in most good bookstores for $30 or so, or ordered through many online bookstores for a similar price; I have copies of this both at home and in my office, and highly recommend it for any good reference library.
- While these are the most useful, you are also encouraged to look around the same section of the library's shelves (around G 103 in Strozier's Reference section). Plenty of other gazetteers have been published, which -- while not as useful overall as the ones I have listed above -- may still have very useful information on any individual topic.
Crises and Wars
The following sources offer at least a paragraph or two on most wars in the topic list (Kohn) and on most crises or wars since World War II (Bercovitch and Ciment). As with the general territorial claims sources described above, these are likely to be of use for researching both crises/wars (for INR 4083) and territorial claims (for INR 3004), since so many territorial claims have produced at least one militarized dispute, crisis, or war:
- Kohn, Dictionary of Wars: Strozier Reference D 25 .A2 K63 1999
- Bercovitch, International Conflict: A Chronological Encyclopedia of Conflicts and Their Management, 1945-1995: Strozier Reference D 842 .B46 1997
- Ciment, Encyclopedia of Conflicts since World War II: Strozier Reference D 843 .E46 1999 (four volumes)
War Fatalities Data
Information on the specific dates, participants, and fatalities for each war is also available online from the Correlates of War project, the leading data collection project for the study of world politics. Unfortunately, this information is only available (in a more or less easy-to-use format) for full-scale wars, and is not available for any of the sub-war crises in the topic list.
- Totals for each war
- Totals for each war participant
- You may also need to consult the COW project's official list of state names and abbreviations) and the war data codebook for further explanation of what is included.
Strozier's Book Collection
Beyond the general sources listed above, which include information on a number of territorial claims from around the world, you also need to look up books and articles that deal with your claim specifically (or at least with the countries involved in your claim).
One of the first things you should do is use WebLUIS to search FSU's online card catalog, which can be reached by choosing the "FSU" option in the first line of the menu ("SUS Library Catalogs") of the WebLUIS index.
- You should try searching for some keywords associated with your topic (such as the name of the territory -- remembering that the same territory may be called different things by different countries, as with the Kuril Islands claim between Russia and Japan, which is occasionally spelled "Kurile" instead of "Kuril" and is sometimes called the "Northern Territories"). The same is true for wars; thus the Arab-Israeli war of 1973 is variously known as the October War, Yom Kippur War, and less flattering names (much like the U.S. Civil War is sometimes called the War of Northern Aggression, War of States' Rights, War of the Southern Secession, and many other things).
It is essential to search for histories of each involved country as well, though; many of the topics covered in these classes may have generated few or no entire books in our library. Some important headings to search (using the fictitious example of a claim between Bolivia and Botswana) include:
- Bolivia--Boundaries (and Bolivia--Boundaries--Botswana)
- Bolivia--Foreign Relations (and Bolivia--Foreign Relations--Botswana)
- Bolivia--History (as well as the separate entries for each historical era during which the claim was active)
- And the same topics for the other side (Botswana--Boundaries, Botswana--Boundaries--Bolivia, Botswana--History, etc.)
Academic Journal Articles
Some territorial claims, crises, and wars will be covered better by journals than by books, so you should also be sure to check for articles about your claim that our library might have.
- The best source for journal articles is JSTOR, which contains the full text of numerous political science, history, and geography journals (among many other disciplines that are unlikely to be of much use for these courses). It is usually best to search all three of these groups of journals (poli sci, geography, and history), as each of these groups often includes relevant articles. As with the other sources listed on this page, it's usually best to search both under the various names of the territory/crisis/war and under joint searches for each country's name. Please note that this source is licensed by FSU for use by its faculty, staff, and students, and that access is blocked for all other users. If you do not use an FSU modem/DSL connection at home, you will probably need to access this source from the library or from an FSU computing center.
- FSU's database locator includes links to additional library databases, some of which include journal searches, although few of them offer access to the full text of the articles, include as many useful journals as JSTOR, or cover as long a time frame as JSTOR.
News Sources
You should also expect to find a great deal of information in newspapers or other printed news sources, even for claims that haven't generated any/many books. Some of the sources that I have found most useful for studying territorial claims include:
Printed News Sources
- Facts on File: Strozier Reference D 410 .F3 (1941-present. This is a very useful news source that features regular updates every few weeks, which are then collected and indexed in annual volumes. It can be very helpful to look through the annual indexes for stories related to your topic, whether for the few years when you know the topic was most active or for the entire 6-decade period covered by Facts on File. There is an online version of this resource, but it is expensive, and FSU's library claims that it doesn't have the funds to subscribe.)
- Keesing's Record of World Events / Keesing's Contemporary Archives: Strozier Reference D 410 .K4 (1931-present. This is another source that works like Facts on File, as described above. It goes back another decade, though, and in many cases its coverage of important events is even better than Facts on File's. Also, like FOF, there is an expensive online version of the resource -- although when I checked last it only covered 1960-present -- but FSU's library claims that it doesn't have the funds to subscribe.)
- New York Times: Strozier Documents Reference (Non-Circulating), AI21 .N44 (you should look up your topic and the involved countries in the index for each year that the topic was active; you can then go to the Strozier Documents Micromaterials area to find the actual stories on microfilm. Note that it's generally much easier to go to the Historical New York Times Online database that FSU subscribes to for us, which is described below.)
- The Times (London): Strozier Documents Reference (Non-Circulating), 070.5 T583 (same as the NYT -- you need to look up stories in the annual indexes, and then access the actual stories themselves on microfilm. FSU recently subscribed to an online index to the Times that covers all of their news stories from 1906-1980, but after finding the relevant stories you still need to go to the microfilm room and look them up by hand.)
- Middle East Journal: Strozier Periodicals 320.5 .M627
- Middle East Record: Strozier DS63 .M58
- Africa Contemporary Record: Strozier/Strozier Reference DT1 .A32
- And other local- or regional-focus papers or journals that cover the area that includes your claim; these are just a few of the better known examples.
Online News Archives - Historical
- Historical New York Times Online (free electronic access to the full text of every New York Times story since 1851, with a convenient searchable index and the ability to print the articles from your own computer; this is much more convenient than going to the microfilm room. Please note that this source is licensed by FSU for use by its faculty, staff, and students, and that access is blocked for all other users. If you do not use an FSU modem/DSL connection at home, you will probably need to access this source from the library or from an FSU computing center.
- Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe (for best results, I usually choose to do a "Guided Search" using "World News" and selecting newspapers from the region in which the territorial claim or crisis/war occurred. It's generally best to search for "All Available Dates" to get the full text of most news stories in major papers since the late 1970s, although you may need to narrow it down to a search by each individual year if there are lots of news events. You should search for keywords related to your topic, such as the name of the territory or the war -- remembering to try alternative spellings or names, as I noted above -- as well as for stories including each of the involved countries, such as a search for stories including both Bolivia and Botswana in the full text) Please note that this source is licensed by FSU for use by its faculty, staff, and students, and that access is blocked for all other users. If you do not use an FSU modem/DSL connection at home, you will probably need to access this source from the library or from an FSU computing center.
Online News Sources - Current
- ABC World News
- BBC World News
- CNN World News
- MSNBC International News
- New York Times World News (Note that you will only be able to find very recent news here for free. For older news, you are better off using the Historical New York Times Online database through FSU's library, as described above.)
- Time Daily
- USA Today World News
- Washington Post International Section
Web Sources
I am aware that with today's technology -- Ethernet connections in every dorm room, inexpensive computers that are more powerful than top-of-the-line commercial computers from a few years ago, etc. -- there is a temptation to research papers entirely from one's bedroom without setting foot in the library. Unfortunately, though, this is a very dangerous research strategy that almost always produces poor results (and that is guaranteed to do so in my courses). For example, I have had several past students write horrible papers based exclusively on Internet sources. One of them wrote an entire upper-division college paper on the Cuban Missile Crisis based on a single web page (from the U.S. government, no less!), and another wrote an entire paper on one of the Arab-Israeli wars using only two web pages (one from the Israeli government and one from the Israeli military). I would hope that I do not need to explain the ridiculous nature of these papers -- whether this means the number of sources used, the one-sided and official nature of these sources, or the utter laziness that led the students in question to skip the dozens of books in our library that would be relevant for either of these topics.
You shouldn't even bother wasting your time with Internet resources until after you have finished taking advantage of the books, journals, and newspapers available in our library. You are very unlikely to be able to find the amount of detail that you need for a paper like this on the Web (and much of the detail that you are likely to find may be of questionable validity, owing to the non-refereed nature of Internet publication). As a result, a paper that relies on Internet sources rather than appropriate printed materials such as books and journals will not receive a very good grade. (and if you plan to submit such a paper, be aware that I will most certainly look through LUIS and other resources to verify your complaint that "there is nothing on this claim in the FSU library"; if I can find useful resources using WebLUIS and the other resources listed on this page, then I will not be likely to reward your sloppy and halfhearted research effort with a good grade on the paper) Bearing this in mind, the following on-line resources can be useful for limited purposes, even if not for the bulk of one's research. Remember, though, that on-line sources (as well as CD-ROM encyclopedias and similar electronic resources) can only be used as a supplement to more conventional library resources, and only if specifically approved by me in writing after you make a written request. Reliance on Internet sources where appropriate library sources exist, overreliance on Internet sources in any situation, or use of Internet sources without my approval will be penalized by up to five letter grades.
There are very few situations for which I will approve the use of Internet sources. One is the use of a government's official web site to identify that government's official position on an ongoing (or recent) territorial claim -- although in this case you must be very careful to point out the likely one-sided nature of the source. Another is the use of reports from international organizations or institutions such as the United Nations or the World Court. A third is the use of general reference sources to produce maps of the involved countries and the claimed territory; a variety of historical maps may be found online. Outside of these three situations, though, it will probably be quite difficult to convince me to approve an Internet source for your paper. Also note that before approving any requested Internet sources, I will ask you which legitimate library sources you have consulted, and which specific information you found on the Internet that you could not find in any more legitimate source; I will probably attempt to verify these claims before deciding whether or not to approve your request, so don't even try to request Web sources before you've tried serious scholarly research.
Pages on My Web Site
- Maps and Interactive Geography Tools (useful for maps, including both blank maps that you can draw on, and historical maps showing the world very differently than today's current atlases)
- On-Line News Sources (useful for finding coverage of recent news, particularly from non-American perspectives; most online newspapers have search engines that allow you to search their news archives, although these archives generally only go back a few years, and there is often a fee)
- Foreign Governments and Politics (useful for finding access to other governments' official web sites and other international sources of policy positions for ongoing or recent cases)
Other Web Sites
- CIA World Factbook (useful for general background information on countries' area, population, and economies, although not recommended for historical background)
- U.S. Army Country Studies / Area Handbooks (useful for general background on countries' histories, which might help you figure out references in other sources to individual leaders or to important historical events, but not detailed enough to serve as a main sources for these papers)
- U.S. State Department Country Background Notes (also useful for general background, but again, not detailed enough to serve as your main sources for these papers)
- Embassy World (offering links to many countries' embassies, some of which offer reports or fact sheets on ongoing or recent topics)
- The International Court of Justice (ICJ, or "World Court") has been involved in a number of territorial claims, including many that are being covered in student research papers for this class. The ICJ offers pages listing all ICJ cases and decisions and the ICJ's current docket, which you may find very helpful if your claim has been submitted to the Court. You may also find my International Law page to be useful.)
http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~phensel/Teaching/inrpaper.html
Last updated: 30 November 2005
This site © copyright 1996-present,
Paul R. Hensel. All rights reserved.