Project Assignment

A. Individual Paper: Using a SWOT Analysis to evaluate your institutional feature.

A SWOT analysis is a tool that organizations use to plan and focus on key issues. In it you identify and evaluate strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to that organization or system. The term paper assignment asks you to consider your assigned feature of the U.S. political system and evaluate its status as a functioning democratic institution using the SWOT framework.

Strengths and weaknesses are factors internal to the institution or based upon the rights/roles provided to that institution by the Constitution or long-standing precedent. For example:

A strength of the Federal Court system could be:
• It has the long recognized power of judicial review

A weakness could be:

• It has no direct means of executing its policy decisions, as it must rely on other branches to enforce its decisions.

Opportunities and threats are external factors, caused by current circumstances related to the behavior of other political actors, the economy, or public pressure.

Opportunities for the Federal Court System could be:

• Public opinion is currently more positive toward the courts than toward any other political institution.
• The Supreme Court is now fully staffed after a year of having a vacant seat.

A threat could be:

• The President suggests that judges need to recuse themselves from certain cases based on their ethnicity.

In your paper, you are to evaluate your assigned feature using this SWOT framework.

1. Research and identify points that relate to each of these types of factors. You may interpret one thing as a weakness which another person could interpret as a strength, or vice versa. There is no one "right answer", but you must support your interpretation that the factor is a strength, weakness, opportunity, or threat using reputable sources.

Examples of Sources:

• Government sources. Examples: Congressional Research Service reports, Congressional Budget Office scores, presidential executive orders, acts of Congress, Supreme Court decisions, legislative representatives reports from their websites, government departments, state election commission reports or data.

• Reputable research centers/think tanks: Examples: Brookings Institution, Pew Center, Gallop polls, university research centers

• Party or Interest Group Sources: RNC, DNC, Green Party, candidate campaigns, ACLU, Cato Institute, Chamber of Commerce, labor unions, to name a few.... USE SPARINGLY.

• Scholarly journals or books (peer reviewed). Examples: American Journal of Political Science, Harvard Law Review. The Party Decides by Marty Cohen, et. al. YOU NEED AT LEAST TWO.

• Major reputable papers or news journals (examples: Washington Post, Wall St. Journal, Christian Science Monitor, NY Times). USE SPARINGLY.

You need at least 7 sources total.

2. After presenting your SWOT analysis, offer your position on the overall status of your assigned feature. Is it functioning in a democratically accountable manner? Is it in need of significant reform? Is its current state in line with the Constitution? Critically evaluate the health and democratic performance of the institutional feature. Support your position with research and data.

The paper must be 5-7 pages in length, 11 or 12 pt., Times New Roman or Calibri font. It needs an additional Works Cited page listing sources used. 7 sources minimum. Either MLA or APA format is fine. I've provided a citation guide at the end of this document that you can use to assist in proper citing. You must cite sources used or you are committing plagiarism. The paper is worth 20 pts.

Citation Guide

1. You must cite your sources within the text of the paper when you refer to information or data researched from these sources.

Here is an example of text from a paper, and how the in-text cites should be noted.:

A number of high-profile incentives packages provide provocative examples of states' fascination with corporate subsidizing, many of them offered to bring automotive facilities to the southeast United States. South Carolina gave Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (aka- BMW) $130 million in incentives to locate in Greenville in the early 1990's and agreed to lease land to the company for $1 a year (Brace 2002). Alabama lavished Mercedes Benz with an estimated $325 million, even though much of the subsidy provision was controversial and arguably unethical (Brace 2002, Donahue 1997). Volkswagen was lured to Chattanooga in 2008 by over $550 million in incentives from federal, state, and local sources combined, which equated to about $200,000 for each job created (Flessner 2014). South Carolina offered $900 million in incentives to Boeing in a failed attempt to entice the aircraft manufacturer to Charleston in 2003. While the recruitment effort was not successful, the state was prepared to shell out $1.25 in direct financing and future tax breaks for every $1 Boeing invested in the project (Stech and Slade 2010).

2. You also must provide full citations of the sources in a separate Works Cited page. All in-text cites must be accompanied by a full cite on the Works Cited page. See the examples below for how to cite different kinds of sources:

Works Cited

(Article from a Peer Reviewed Journal):

Brace, Paul. 2002. "Mapping Economic Development Policy Change in the American States." The Review of Policy Research. 19:3, 161-178.

(Book):

Donohue, John D. 1997. Disunited States. New York: Basic Books.

(On-line Newspaper Articles -Author listed):

Flessner, Dave. 2014. "State, local governments boost incentives to lure VW Chattanooga plant expansion." Chattanooga Times Free Press, July 15.

Stech, Katy and David Slade. 2010. "Boeing's Whopping Incentives." Post and Courier (Charleston, S.C.), Jan 17.

(On-line Source -No author listed. Use the title header on the page):

Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2010. "Economic News Release: Regional and State Unemployment, 2009 Annual Average Summary."