The subject of political science confronts current problems of the modern world – wars, hunger, globalization, inequality, poverty and environmental issues. The aim of this course is to estimate the situations, policies and projects that were created to solve them. Your political science essay covers the same tasks and pursues the same goals.

5 features of an effective political science essay:

• Logical structure
• Valid and convincing evidence
• Precision
• A new view on the problem
• Appropriate style

Preparing for your political science essay make use of a great number of sources to ensure the objective and comprehensive consideration of the issue.

The reader must get interested in your essay from the very title of your work. You should make it clear for the reader how this topic relates or influences him/ her in everyday life.

To sustain the reader’s interest throughout the essay, you should present original and reasonable ideas, supported with solid examples.

A powerful support for your opinion is a strong quotation. But in no case turn your essay into a list of cited opinions, it is your essay, don’t forget! A quotation must be correctly cited. An extremely long quotation does not mean a good quotation. If you use short quotes, place them in the body of the text. Longer quatations (more than three lines) should be indented, single spaced and used with no quotation marks.

Be honest in presenting others’ ideas. If you fail to cite the source of information, your professor may interpret it as plagiarism.

You can choose one of the two existing citation styles in your essay. “Humanities” citation style uses footnotes for every quote. If you choose more modern “author date“ style you have to include information about the author, page number, title of the source in brackets in the text of your essay.

Your political science essay will be very rich in a variety of political terms. You should be aware of different connotations political words have and use them accordingly. Avoid using words with negative denotation. Choose the words that express your meaning most precisely. Leave out colloquial and popular phrases and use more appropriate words.