210042 PS BAK6: Political institutions and courts (2025S)

- 15% In-class participation : interactions in class in the form of meaningful questions and comments, in all its phases (readings discussion, case-study presentations and discussion).
- 20% Submission of comments/questions on the assigned literature (10 readings): comments/questions on the reading have to be submitted via Moodle before each class.
- 20% Case-study report and short presentation: 500 words written report on the features of the institutions covered in class for a country of student’s own choice. Each student will be assigned to a group to write one report during the course of the semester and prepare a short presentation (10 minutes max.) of it to launch class discussion. Students should upload their case-study report on Moodle by Tuesday 20h00 of the week to which they are assigned to submit. Further guidelines will be provided in class and on Moodle.
- 10% Research question and motivation (500 words): students will have to elaborate a research question inspired by the readings and classes on a topic of their choice. The research question has to be operationalizable (i.e., it should be possible to answer it after choosing an appropriate method to investigate it).
- 5% Peer-review of the research question (200 words): students will be randomly assigned another students’ research question and will have to provide peer-review feedback to their colleague (instructor in copy).
- 30% Short empirical research paper (2500 words): students will then have to develop a short literature review on the topic of their research question and develop the starting blocks of their research paper (RQ, hypotheses, methods, operationalization), without producing, analyzing and discussing their results. The literature should include at least 20 scientific journal articles, chapters or books and strictly follow the APSA reference style (use of bibliographic management software like Zotero is allowed). Guidelines on the task will be provided on Moodle and in class.

The use of AI and Plagiarism

Reading and writing academic texts (in English) and understanding empirical data are skills you should learn in this class. You can enhance academic skills mainly through practice: Make sure you develop your writing and analytic skills before relying on text-generative AI. In this class, the following rules apply:
• You can use AI to brainstorm ideas, but try to practice your own analytic skills and always question the suggestions.
• You have to search for relevant literature yourself. You have to read all literature you use and cite yourself. Use the academic abstract written by authors as a summary. You can translate the texts you need to read with tools if necessary, so that you can understand it better. Try to practice your English reading skills as much as possible.
• You have to draft all text you write yourself in English. You can use AI to enhance your writing (e.g. Grammarly) after drafting the text. You can use tools for translating certain words or expressions, but not full paragraphs.
• You have to document all steps when you use AI or other tools to help you.
• Plagiarism and ghostwriting are strictly forbidden. If doubts of improper use of AI or plagiarism arise, students could be asked to provide an oral discussion of their written work

All course materials can be found on Moodle. The syllabus contains mandatory readings and additional readings that students can read if they want to explore further the empirical literature on the topic.