APPLY INDIVIDUAL LEVEL APPROACHES – TWO PAGES
In class and in the text we have looked at how the characteristics of specific leaders and individual psychology may result in war erupting. Look at two explanations which may be related to the conflict you are examining, and state why or why not these approaches are useful for understanding why your war occurred.
Possible explanations:
• Rational choice
• Psychological: Misperception, threat perception, prospect theory, beliefs and images
• Polyheuristic
• Crisis decision making
*Papers should be double-spaced, use standard margins (no less than one inch), and use a standard font (i.e. Times New Roman).
* You must attach a bibliography that includes anything you cite (and only what you cite) at the end of the paper, again in Chicago Manual Style; it does not count toward your page limit. (You do not need to include Internet sources in your bibliography, but you must include full information about your Internet sources in endnotes, including page titles, authors if applicable, URL, and date accessed. Wikipedia, blogs, or other non-professional sources are not acceptable.)
* Respected media sources such as The Economist, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail or The Financial Times are acceptable for information on new or very recent developments, but you should reference other sources for more historical depth. Wikipedia is not an acceptable source. Credible and established online resources associated with mainstream think tanks, such as the Council on Foreign Relations or the Belfer Center web sites, may also be referenced but you must use standard citation style. When in doubt, ask either myself or your TA. Use multiple sources.
* Plagiarism is a serious academic offence and will not be tolerated. See the syllabus under Academic Honesty and the appendix to the syllabus on plagiarism. In general, words or ideas not your own must be cited, unless they are general knowledge. Reproductions of exact language must be in quotation marks AND cited. If you are at all unsure whether citation is required, please consult your TA or the professor. DO NOT SHARE IDEAS OR COLLABORATE WITH OTHER STUDENTS. This should be your work alone.
* You may contact the TAs or the professor to discuss your paper. The TAs will arrange office hours by appointment. We will not tell you what your argument should be, write your paper for you, guarantee you a grade, or give you a preliminary grade. The email response time policy remains in effect, so do not expect immediate replies to last minute emails.
* Proofread your paper carefully for spelling, typographical, grammatical, or syntactical errors. These will be penalized. If English is not your first language, and if you consider yourself less than perfectly fluent in English, please see the writing center and attach a note to this effect to the cover page of your essay.
