I’m writing for an advanced course
Great! You’re already a political science veteran, but now you may be asked to do some new and different kinds of writing .
Gov 10, 20, 30, and 40, alongside the “New to Writing in Government” curriculum on this site, have familiarized you with the building blocks of writing argument-driven papers in political science. However, as you spend more time in the discipline, you will have to adapt these building blocks to different formats, purposes, and audiences. Literature and book reviews ask you to build and argument not from empirical observation, but from existing research. Research proposals require that you speculate on the ideal and most practical ways to test hypotheses and develop an argument. Grant applications require some of both, often in a very small space. Understanding how to adapt to these different “genres” of writing is important for growing as a successful political scientist..