What is the critique of economism and why does it matter?

Academic Writing in Political Economy

A Basic Survival Guide for Students

CONTENTS PAGE NUMBER HOW TO ORGANIZE AN ESSAY 3 DEVELOPING GOOD RESEARCH SKILLS 5 PARAPHRASING AND DIRECT QUOTES 7 ESSAY WRITING SHORTCUTS 8

ACTIVE READING 10

CLARITY IN ACADEMIC WRITING 11

CONCLUSION 11

FURTHER ADVICE ON ACADEMIC WRITING 12

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on’t panic. This is the golden rule of good academic writing for students whether you are a final-year undergraduate or postgraduate student writing your dissertation, a first- year student with your essay deadline looming, or preparing for end-of-year exams.

Achieving a good standard of academic writing is often hard work, but with proper planning for assignments, active attention to developing your writing skills, and – most important – practice you will gradually improve your capacity to write high-quality essays and other assignments, until it is difficult to recall the challenge of writing your first academic essay. Developing your academic writing skills does not (usually) occur naturally, and involves sustained individual effort and persistence. It is common for university students to progress through their undergraduate degree – or even graduate study – lacking a clear grasp of what is expected in academic writing, and how their own writing skills might be improved. One reason for this is that students often receive what seem to be opaque comments on their assessed work from university lecturers. This may include appropriate feedback exhorting a student to improve their analytical skills, the clarity of their writing, the structure of their essays, or to more critically reflect on the sources they use, but which is often not accompanied by advice on how these areas identified for improvement can be acted upon in practice. This short introduction to academic writing aims to assist you in bridging the gap between areas identified for improvement with respect to your written work, and the techniques you can use to realize this improvement. In short, it aims to give you a brief overview of the essential ‘tools of the trade’ in academic writing, by providing a basic survival guide for students taking political science courses at all levels of undergraduate and graduate study. In particular, it is intended to be useful for International Political Economy (IPE) students, who confront a particular set of challenges in – and common misconceptions about – writing essays on political economy topics.

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HOW TO ORGANIZE AN ESSAY • An essay structure should include an introduction, a main body, and a conclusion • The body of your essay should follow a clear and compelling logic

orrect structuring of the different sections of an essay is essential for achieving a logical analysis and for organizing a comprehensive discussion of complex phenomena, as well as for the clear and persuasive communication of your own ideas and arguments. For

many students encountering academic writing for the first time, however, this slippery notion of ‘structure’ – and how to go about correctly structuring a written assignment such as an essay, an exam essay, or a shorter written assignment such as a briefing paper – is shrouded in mystery. Understanding how to organize a piece of academic writing well is not a closely-guarded secret – quite the opposite in fact, there are numerous sources of university support and countless textbook guides on academic writing that provide detailed explanations of how to structure your written work to achieve maximum impact and quality. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that the organization and design of written university assignments, like most components of academic writing, refers to a more sophisticated and time-intensive process of organizing ideas and information compared with what you may be familiar with from your previous education (including A levels). A written piece of academic work such as an essay assignment can be thought of as similar to a decent three-course meal at your favourite restaurant: it will have an appetizer (your introduction); a main course (the body of your essay); and a dessert which rounds out your meal (your conclusion). The first stage in this process – the ‘appetizer’ – is your introduction. This should introduce the reader to the central focus of your essay topic, including relating this to wider debates in the relevant subject based on the existing scholarly literature. It will aim to whet the reader’s appetite by outlining the central argument you will mount in your essay, while also explaining how you will construct and pursue this line of argument through a careful analysis of the topic and the use of evidence to back up your claims. In addition, your introduction should explicitly set out the structure of your essay. This may be as straightforward as a short paragraph at the end of your introduction like: ‘This essay will proceed as follows. The first section will... This is important because it shows... The second section will... , which helps to illustrate the importance of... The third section closely examines the process of... and ties together the earlier discussion of... in section one and ... in section two by... Finally, the conclusion will summarize the key argument and findings of the essay, and will discuss how the central argument – that... – is important for broader debates in International Political Economy because...’ – and so on. This should provide signposts to your reader of where you are going – what you are going to do in the essay – and why. Academic writing assignments involve making important choices about what you will choose to concentrate on – and what you will leave aside – and these choices should be clearly and logically justified to the reader. The main body of your essay – the reader’s ‘main meal’ in the three-course dinner metaphor – should contain the substantive content of your research, analysis, and argument. You should aim to implicitly address the following general questions:

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• What are the big debates (e.g., in IPE) that relate to this topic? • What are the more specific debates in the existing scholarly literature on this particular

topic? • How does your essay address/fit into these larger debates? • What is your central argument, and how is this constructed? • What does your essay add up to? What are your key findings? • So what? Why does this matter?

It is usually considered best practice to organize a sizable university essay through the use of appropriate sub-headings to organize your text (some lecturers prefer that sub-headings are not used, however, so it is always important to check this if you are unsure). These different sections should proceed logically (it should be obvious to the reader why you order the different sections in a particular way), and must be carefully connected through appropriate transitions and making explicit connections between different points. If you are using sub-headings, these should usually contain several paragraphs (i.e., one sub-heading for each paragraph is not appropriate), while paragraphs should usually contain between a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 6-8 sentences. Some of the most common errors in students’ academic writing include overly-short paragraphs (of 1-2 sentences), or overly-long paragraphs that stretch on for more than a page – sometimes multiple pages – without a break. Correct paragraphing is vital for ensuring that your written work achieves your intended aims in terms of clarity and maintaining a logical structure. Many of your paragraphs may follow a structure similar to the following: the first sentence will make the key statement of the paragraph, which tells the reader what is the main topic/issue that will be discussed in this paragraph; this may be followed by an example of the point that has been made in the statement, to illustrate how this broad point works in practice; finally, your paragraph may include a closing sentence or several sentences that more thoroughly explain the key point and the relevance/implications of the example that is used, while also ideally providing a logical transition to the following paragraph. The final section of your essay – the ‘dessert’ – is the conclusion, which should round off the entire piece of work in a coherent and, ideally, an interesting way. This should summarize the key findings and your central argument – reminding the reader of what you have concentrated on in the essay and what you have found out – without simply repeating word-for-word what you have said previously in either the main body or the introduction. Usually new information will not be introduced in the conclusion unless this is strictly relevant to how you are completing your assignment, but you may wish to note areas for further research that are suggested by your analysis and argument. It is often highly useful for students to examine academic articles relating to their respective topic/subject to see how other authors organize their own introductions, the body of their papers, and how they frame their conclusions to round their articles off in a coherent fashion. In this sense, you are reading academic literature not only for content, but also for understanding the structure and the process of academic writing.

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DEVELOPING GOOD RESEARCH SKILLS • Read widely from a range of sources and perspectives • Use data and evidence with care

t is usual for a number of students to look blank whenever the topic of ‘research skills’ is raised. The concepts and practices associated with high quality research in university study often remain obscure for many students, and especially for those at the start of their degree

program. Yet developing good research skills is an essential component of good academic writing. This will involve developing your ability to use numerous sources of information. The starting place for students’ research is usually the existing scholarly literature on a particular topic from within their own subject, such as International Political Economy. Beyond this, a range of other sources may be relevant depending on the nature of the assignment and the topic being addressed, which could include media sources, publicly-available speeches, documents, reports, working papers, conference papers, and so on. Finding the right balance here can often be tricky. In a large essay assignment, for example, this may involve a selection of the existing academic literature combined with additional sources of primary and secondary information or data. Within International Political Economy, an essay on the challenges and opportunities for reform of an international institution such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) would ideally begin with the existing debates in the academic literature on IMF reform. Yet it would also be important to carefully examine relevant documents the IMF has produced, many of which are publicly available on the organization’s own website or in the university library. The intellectual value of these sources – and how they can be used – will vary depending on the authors. For example, Working Papers on IMF reform written by staff members tell a different part of the story – from a different perspective – than formal policy papers/reports by staff, which would in turn tell a different story in contrast with formal speeches given by the head of the organization, the IMF Managing Director, or IMF Press Releases that represent the organization’s official view on an issue. Documents, speeches, and position papers may also be available from national institutions or agencies within states, such as the Bank of England, the UK and US Treasuries, the Federal Reserve, the US Congress, and so on with respect to an essay on the topic of IMF reform. Likewise, informal multilateral forums such as the Group of Twenty have statements and communiqués relating to reform of the IMF that are available to download from the web. Not all of these sources need to be incorporated within an undergraduate essay – especially if this is a relatively short assignment of 2,000 words – but you will not be able to judge what is and what is not relevant or important to include if you do not first look at these different sources of information in your attempts to piece the story together. International Political Economy students also tend to believe (often incorrectly) that they must include hard data/economic statistics in their written work to gain a good grade. This is partly true, and the careful use of economic statistics and other sources of data can potentially help to strengthen the empirical foundations of an essay. If, for example, you are addressing an essay question on the impact of the 2007 US subprime crisis on mortgage defaults, you will be

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expected to provide some data to illustrate this relationship (which is often much easier to communicate via a simple graph rather than attempting to incorporate a long series of figures in the main body of your essay). Likewise, if you are studying the aggressive use of monetary policy in different countries to combat the effects of the 2008-09 global financial crisis, you will probably find it easier – and it will be more useful for the reader – if you provide a snapshot that can illustrate this, such as a graph comparing interest rate changes among the economies you are investigating. It is often the case, however, that poor use of statistics – or, in the worst cases, simply slotting in some numbers because you believe this is important for its own sake – weakens the quality of an essay rather than strengthening it. A general rule of thumb here is that hard data/economic indicators/statistics must be used carefully and clearly, they should fit the topic at hand, and any graphs should be clearly explained in the text. Another option – which is seldom used by undergraduates but can prove more useful than loading your essay with statistics – is to create your own illustrative diagram(s) to trace the chain of causation with respect to a particular issue, or to show how influence is exercised in a particular sphere of International Political Economy. There are a wide range of sources of information available for you to use in your written assignments at university, which are too numerous to provide an exhaustive list here. At a minimum you should aim to develop proficiency with using the following sources: the library database (and especially the e-library) to search for relevant books, edited volumes, and journal articles from the scholarly literature; and web-based sources, including both local, national, regional, and international institutions where this is appropriate, as well as the websites of non- governmental organizations, companies, research institutes and thinktanks, and so on. Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.co.uk) is an exceptionally useful site that can help you identify relevant books/articles on a particular topic, although it does not include all the publications that may be useful to you (some of which may not be available through the library). A note of caution is important here: do not expect to be able to type your essay question into Google and instantly find an article or book that directly addresses this. Some students struggle to grasp that research does not usually involve simply finding out what someone else has written that directly addresses your particular topic or question and then finding a way to reproduce this through paraphrasing and direct quotes. Rather, to answer essay questions you will often need to first disaggregate the question and to search for relevant sources of information on the distinct component parts of the question. The trick then becomes how carefully and creatively you can weave these (sometimes quite different) literatures together to coherently address the question you have selected. It is always important to read as widely and thoroughly as possible around a topic for any written assignment at university. By undertaking comprehensive active reading you will also be building your research and critical thinking skills – thereby killing multiple birds with one stone.

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PARAPHRASING AND DIRECT QUOTES • Use direct quotes sparingly • Paraphrase to demonstrate that you understand an author’s ideas

nce again, a common misconception among students is the belief that the use of extensive direct quotes in an essay is indicative of good research and writing skills, or even substitutes for an argument and provides self-evident support for your case. This

view is categorically incorrect. Direct quotes should be used sparingly and to achieve a clear purpose. There is one over-riding reason for paraphrasing (putting another author’s ideas in your own words), rather than simply slotting in a direct quote from the books and journal articles you have read for your essay research: correct and careful paraphrasing indicates to the reader that you clearly comprehend the subject you are talking about and the points another author makes (or doesn’t make, as the case may be). Conversely, overuse of direct quotes as space-fillers or substitutes for your own ideas and analysis suggests that you do not have a clear grasp of other authors’ arguments, or even of the topic on which you are writing. Direct quotes are most likely to be useful: (1) for particularly good pieces of prose (some sentences, like the famous lines from FDR’s Infamy Speech or terms such as George W. Bush’s reference to an ‘Axis of Evil’ are better used as direct quotes rather than paraphrased for this reason); and (2) if quotes can provide one of your sources of evidence. If, for example, you are writing an assignment on the impact of a particular World Bank President on the World Bank’s development policies and practices, then direct quotes from speeches delivered by the World Bank President might provide a key source of your evidence that an individual actor holds certain views and has pursued a particular agenda with respect to development policy. Even when deployed as sources of evidence, however, it is usually wise to use direct quotes sparingly and only to achieve a clear purpose.

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ESSAY WRITING SHORTCUTS • Shortcut #1: Remain consistently engaged throughout the course • Shortcut #2: Avoid false shortcuts

tudents occasionally report the incorrect but fervently-held belief that following a list of essay writing shortcuts is the best route to a high mark in their university studies – or, more commonly, that shortcuts provide the best route to a ‘respectable’ grade, without requiring

you to put in the hard yards in terms of research, planning and organization, and writing, editing, and proof-reading. This is almost always wrong. In every case, you will achieve more in terms of learning outcomes relating to academic writing skills through remaining consistently engaged throughout a course. Of particular importance is APAC: • Attendance at all Lectures and Seminars • Participation in Seminars • Active Reading • Clarity in Writing Style To say that attendance at all lectures and seminars is a shortcut for essay writing should be stating the obvious, but it is often surprising that a minority of students – especially in large undergraduate courses – fail to regularly attend their scheduled classes, especially close to essay submission time. This is a grave mistake. Through attending all lectures and seminars students are likely to receive extra hints and tips on completing course assignments in general, and in particular you will have further opportunities to gain answers to your questions on how to complete assignments and how you might improve the quality of you work. More broadly, attendance at lectures – even when the subject doesn’t directly relate to the essay topic you are planning to address – helps to provide greater context that will help you develop a more comprehensive understanding of the course content. This is a major benefit when it comes to completing written assignments. Like regular attendance, participation in seminars is a must for students seeking to enhance their academic writing skills. Not only will you get more out of the course in general, but active participation in class debates, discussions, and question and answer sessions will help to round out your understanding of the key concepts and issues a course focuses on, thereby enabling you to develop a wider and deeper repertoire of skills that can be drawn upon for academic writing assignments. In particular, active participation in seminars will help you to develop your critical thinking skills – the same skills that are essential to good academic research and writing. It is a truism to state that students who do not regularly attend lectures and seminars, or fail to actively participate in classes, have to work harder to achieve the same grades as those who do. University students always face significant pressures on their time. It is important to try to strike a balance between your personal life and your university studies, although most students find that the demands of university study will often dominate their schedule. As a result, it can be

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tempting to skimp on completing the regular recommended/required readings for a particular course, or to skip them entirely for those topics that are not directly related to the essay question you are likely to select. Again, this is a mistake. Regular completion of required course readings helps to broaden your understanding of the key concepts, issues, and debates in a particular subject, all of which is essential for good academic writing even when the essay question you choose to address is more narrow and specific. Students who do not complete the regular readings also have to work harder to achieve the same quality in their assignments as those who do. It is important not to simply skim readings or to read passively, active reading is essential (see below for further advice on how to read actively). Regular active reading for a course therefore represents an essay writing shortcut precisely because it will give you a broader and deeper holistic understanding of a subject, while spreading the workload more gradually and evenly across the term rather than trying to cram this into a few days when an assignment is nearly due. In addition, active reading helps students develop their academic writing skills through increasing familiarity with academic writing norms, including language styles, techniques of structuring a discussion, ways of mounting an argument, the appropriate use of supporting evidence, and so on. When you come to the process of actually sitting down and writing an essay or other assignment – having completed your research and collated your notes – one final important ‘shortcut’ is the need to be clear in your writing to help you communicate your ideas as persuasively and logically as possible. Clarity in writing style becomes a shortcut in its own right once you recognize the virtues of writing plainly and avoiding, on the one hand, everyday colloquial language that may not be suitable for formal academic writing, and, on the other hand, adopting flowery and complicated prose (see the extract below from Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style on the virtues of clarity in writing). Beware of false shortcuts. Many potential ‘shortcuts’ should be avoided at all costs. Examples of these include using data/figures/graphs for their own sake in the hope of receiving a better grade simply because you have ‘hard data’, using flowery language and complex terms for their own sake in the hope of appearing to be more clever than you are, or extensively citing a lecturer’s own publications in the hope of achieving grade inflation via flattery. Other popular false shortcuts that reappear each year include the following: reliance on easy access sources (such as introductory textbooks, course lectures/seminars, web pages, and especially sourcing information from Wikipedia, which is always obvious to the trained eye) at the expense of more relevant and detailed scholarly texts; cobbling together information for your essays from course lectures without conducting wider research, which represents intellectual laziness; and over- reliance on direct quotes without sufficient explanation of your own, or without translating other authors’ ideas into your own words to demonstrate that you have fully understood them.

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ACTIVE READING

t is important to read actively in order to take in and process complex information, to familiarize yourself with unknown terms (which you will subsequently need to understand for essays/class discussion), and to organize your notes in order to avoid having to re-read

texts later on. Some basic steps that will help you to read actively are as follows:

• Check the reading list and ensure that you know before you begin why you are reading a particular text.

• List all unfamiliar words or terms, then look up and write down the definitions.

• Write down your version of the author’s key argument (and be sure to organize your

notes to save time searching for material later on). This helps to emphasize key points in your mind, and will make it easier to recall later.

• Identify the subtopics or themes in the article or book, and design a question that you

would ask for each (be sure to write such questions down), this will help to keep your mind focused on the material.

• Indicate what other ideas the reading substantiates, contradicts, or amplifies. Think

how the reading fits in with material covered earlier in the course – what are the key points on which authors agree or disagree? Do you find one author’s explanation more compelling than another’s, and, if so, why?

• Summarise your reactions and overall evaluation of the text.

In particular, write down any questions that you might have, based on the readings, which you can raise in subsequent class discussions. No matter how straightforward your questions might seem to be, you can be sure that they are likely to have occurred to other students as well.

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CLARITY IN ACADEMIC WRITING

tudents often fail to appreciate the importance of achieving clarity in academic writing. The following extract from William Strunk and E.B. White’s excellent short guide on writing style and grammar The Elements of Style neatly illustrates the significance of this: Clarity is not the prize in writing, nor is it always the principal mark of a good style. There are occasions when obscurity serves a literary yearning, if not a literary purpose, and there are writers whose mien is more overcast than clear. But since writing is communication, clarity can only be a virtue. And although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one. Even to a writer who is being intentionally obscure or wild of tongue we can say, “Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand!” Even to writers of market letters, telling us (but not telling us) which securities are promising, we can say, “Be cagey plainly! Be elliptical in a straightforward fashion!” Clarity, clarity, clarity. When you become hopelessly mired in a sentence, it is best to start fresh; do not try to fight your way through against the terrible odds of syntax. Usually what is wrong is that the construction has become too involved at some point; the sentence needs to be broken apart and replaced by two or more shorter sentences. Muddiness is not merely a disturber of prose, it is also a destroyer of life, of hope: death on the highway caused by a badly worded road sign, heartbreak among lovers caused by a misplaced phrase in a well-intentioned letter, anguish of a traveller expecting to be met at a railroad station and not being met because of a slipshod telegram. Think of the tragedies that are rooted in ambiguity, and be clear! When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.

CONCLUSION

hese tips and hints for achieving good academic writing provide only the basic building blocks that can help you develop your writing skills while studying at university – much more is needed in terms of essay writing practice, reviewing and

learning from your feedback on essays, and perhaps reading more substantive published texts on how to write academic essays. If you focus on honing your skills with these basic ‘tricks of the trade’, however, you will almost certainly find your ability to master the art of academic writing has improved, which will provide you with vital tools for surviving your university studies – and performing well – and will prove useful to your future careers in whatever path you choose to pursue.

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FURTHER ADVICE ON ACADEMIC WRITING William Strunk and E.B. White (1999) The Elements of Style (Longman)

§ www.stat.ufl.edu/~presnell/Various/Strunk-and-White/etes_htm.htm § www.strunkandwhite.com

Palgrave Study Skills § www.palgrave.com/skills4study/index.asp

Julie Copus (2009) Brilliant Writing Tips for Students (Palgrave Macmillan) § www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID=311844

Janet Goodwin (2009) Planning Your Essay (Palgrave Macmillan) § www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID=315264

Bryan Greetham (2009) How to Write Your Undergraduate Dissertation (Palgrave Macmillan)

§ www.bryangreetham.org.uk

Kate Williams and Jude Carroll (2009) Referencing and Understanding Plagiarism (Palgrave Macmillan) § www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID=327629