Author: David
I'm David, a sophomore in American University's School of International Service and the AU Honors Program double majoring in International Studies and Economics. My research interests include strategic economics in foreign policy and the political economy of climate change. I hope to build on my research and political experience before working in government. View all posts by David
David, it has been very interesting to watch your project develop over this semester and see where you have got to in your presentation. Overall, this is an incredibly thorough presentation that has good citations and justifies many positions off of the course readings. I think an interesting to look at would be in your case studies is sanctions between smaller countries. With using a smaller country that handing out sanctions it would be interesting to see the effectiveness of their policies when they do not have as much economic influence. For your variable operationalization, I also suggest you view http://fundforpeace.org/fsi/ as it is a really good indicator for multiple things when it comes to looking at states that you are using in your operationalization.
David, you’ve done an excellent job at mapping out this topic. I think that choosing a small-n approach is wise since it seems that the tangle of variables and hypotheses would be hard to elucidate in a large-n approach. With small-n you also have the opportunity to examine the factors that prevent the success of sanctions. It seems that you are headed in the right track and I look forward to seeing how your research develops.
Hi David,
You seem to have a good basis for your research moving into the future. You did a good job explaining both your puzzle and lit review concisely and clearly. 4 cases studies seems like a good number for a small-n case study. However, I am curious about your reasons for selecting them and why that resulted in the US and China being the common factor between them. You also have clear independent variables and operationalization. However, I would be curious about what control variables you used and what was your reasoning for limitations in the scope of your research beyond having to do with typology. I also found your particular explanation of the benefits and tradeoffs beneficial because it clearly explained why you have chosen this methodology. Finally, this is just a comment on general presentation, I found that your slides had a lot of text which made them overwhelming to look at, and having to offer that your audience can pause the video to read over it is a good indicator of that. I would recommend either breaking it up into more slides, or decreasing the amount of information that you put on the slides. It was beneficial information, but I felt like I missed things because there was so much information, and it was harder to listen to what you were saying because I was trying to also read what was on the page. However, all of that information will be very beneficial both for your essay and future research. I look forward to seeing what you discover and how things progress as you continue with your research.