Reference List

Submission deadline: 1 pm, Monday 3rd Feb. 2014

You must submit ONE electronic copy through Moodle and ONE hardcopy to the submission box.

Introduction

The purpose of this assignment is to get you to think about an international security issue from two different perspectives. You will choose an issue from the subject of international security and a country from the list provided below, explain why it is important and construct an argumentative dialogue between two imaginary characters (of your own making). You have to think from each of the two characters’ point of view and defend his/her perspective. It is important that you constructively explore both arguments and express them objectively in the script. You are allowed to utilise the views of political thinkers or IR scholars in your debate script.

Try to be creative. Use a real case study on the topic you have chosen, if you wish. Remember that this is an academic assignment and therefore the arguments you present must be convincing and well written.

Structure

The IR-folio 2 should be structured in the following way:

Introduction

Debate script

Conclusion

Reference List

Introduction:

Your introduction should explain your topic, the question your debate is addressing, why you have chosen your question, why it is important to have a debate on it and outline the two arguments you are writing a script for. Introduce your imaginary debaters and the debate structure.

Debate script

Compose an imaginary debate on a real political issue between two opposing parties. Your two protagonists should be fictitious and hold opposing views on a topic listed below. Each side must present a convincing argument, as if s/he is makes a case to the members of the jury in a criminal justice court. Both perspectives must be given equal weight. In order to successfully carry out this assignment you will need to have a good understanding of the issue in question. Think carefully about arguments for and against the question you have chosen and systematically explore them in the debate script.

The following dialogue is an extract from an imaginary political debate on capital punishment.

Mr Smith: I think capital punishment is morally wrong because the primary purpose of a democratic state is to protect its citizens, not to harm them. Criminals are citizens too.

Ms Johnston: I think the issue of capital punishment is complicated. If a person has committed a crime, which is punishable by death under the penal law of the state, then the state has every right to impose its law. The letters of the criminal justice law exist not only to protect innocent people from harm, but also to uphold justice. In committing a horrific crime against a member or members of the society, one has given up one’s right to be protected by the state (Backhouse 2006: p.45). The obligation of the state is to protect the society from being harmed by this person again. More importantly, one has broken the trust between oneself and the society by denying the right to freedom and life to the people one harmed (Mason, 1997: p.77). Therefore the state, which is the representation of the society, has every right to impose an appropriate punishment on this person. If that is death by hanging or lethal injection, so be it.

Mr Smith: Ms Johnson is right in alluding to the notion that the idea of justice is at the heart of the issue of capital punishment. My question then is “what is justice”? It literally means making something right (Atkins, 2012: p.256). For the sake of this debate, let’s say a man has murdered the entire members of his family in a fit of anger. He is arrested, and the state imposed on him the penalty of death by lethal injection. Now, from one perspective, justice has been served. However, has imposing a death penalty really made anything right? Justice has not been served here, only death has been served. No one or nothing can make things right in this case. This person clearly should serve a long prison sentence for a citizen should be accountable for his action, but the right call of action is for the state to not only impose penalties, but also to provide him with an appropriate legal, medical and social support, so that he can be rehabilitated and be eventually allowed to reintegrate into the society (Human Rights International Report 234, 2013: p.10). This is a kind of action a democratic state should be demonstrating to its younger generations. The law allows capital punishment because some politicians of the past thought that it would deter people from committing horrific crimes. It has not worked. We should think again carefully how to create a condition of peace in our society without the use of capital punishment.

Ms Johnston: Rebuttal with statistical evidence showing the link between the low crime rate and capital punishment in Japan and Singapore

Mr Smith: Rebuttal with evidence that the low crime rate in those countries are not to do with the capital punishment but to do with the socio-political culture, high level of economic development and education. The case of the US is presented, where the existence of the capital punishment in several states has not contributed to the lowering the level of crime.

And so on.

The extract above presents the type of debate script we are looking for in this task. However, your topic must be on international security and your dialogue will be longer in length.

Conclusion:

The conclusion should include a concluding analysis of the debate, indicating which argument you are inclined to agree with and explaining why that is the case. If there are more than two perspectives on your issue, you may briefly explore those arguments in this section.

Approaches to IR-Folio 2

To successfully complete this assessment will require several key elements. First, to choose the right topic, you should do a significant amount of research. You will be unable to fully understand your topic unless you do a thorough research. You are encouraged to go beyond the literature covered in lectures and seminars. Second, once you have chosen a topic you will need to formulate a very specific debate question. Introduce this properly and clearly in your introduction. This debate question will be the focus of your debate script. For example, do not write that ‘this debate is about the importance of environmental security’. That is too general and you must be much more specific. While a list of general topics is provided from which to choose, you need to select an area within your chosen topic that is unique to your interests. Finally, after you have formulated a specific debate question you will need to do some more reading. Do not rely on general knowledge. This assessment will test your ability to look at ‘two sides’ of a topic and you will need to demonstrate a strong working knowledge of the subject.

Topics

You are to choose ONE contemporary topic from the subject of INTERNATIONAL SECURITY relating to ONE of the following countries:

Greece, Japan, European Union, Syria, China.

Your topic can cover two or more countries from this list, e.g. Greece and the EU, but the focus of your debate should be on one country. Your topic can also concern more than two actors, with one of them not from the list, e.g. Syria and the UN, but again, the focus should be on the country from the list. However, you are not permitted to choose Russia (or the Soviet Union) or a country from Central Asia.

Once you have chosen a country and a topic, you will need to do a significant amount of reading and develop a specific focus on a controversial issue. You are required to formulate a debate question, and clearly state it in your introduction. You will need to access and study material not covered in lectures and seminars in order to form a precise research question.

Reference List

You are assessed on referencing. You are encouraged to utilise the writings of other IR scholars in your research. Referencing is a requirement for this assessment.

Outlines

You are strongly encouraged to submit an outline. These detailed plans can be submitted electronically or in person. This is not a requirement, but our feedback may help you think more clearly about your topic. Outlines will be accepted between 22^nd and 24^th January only.

Presentation and Submission

The document will be 1,250 words in length (plus/minus 100 words). Submissions over or under this limit will be marked down. The format should include the use of 12 point font in either Times New Roman or Arial style with 1.5 spacing. The document should include a coversheet with your CANDIDATE NUMBER, the date, seminar group (e.g. A), and the name of the assessment. DO NOT include your name anywhere.

This assessment is due Monday, 3^rd February by 1 pm. The hardcopy version of the assessment is to be submitted in the drop-box located in front of the administrative office. DO NOT use plastic wallets when submitting the hardcopy. You are also required to submit an electronic version through Moodle. Without both the electronic and hardcopy versions of the document your assessment will not be graded.

**** Penalty for late submission: -5% for missing the 1 pm deadline on the day of submission; -10 % for each day late thereafter. Any assessment submitted more than five days late will be marked as a 0%. ****

Plagiarism

As noted in the Student Handbook, repeatedly covered in your ARM and EAP classes, plagiarism will not be tolerated. Not only will Turnitin be used to detect plagiarism, but the subject tutors will confer with each other on suspected cases. The maximum penalty for plagiarism will be the grade of zero.

Key Recommendations

You are assessed on the content and quality of the debate and analysis. The two perspectives must be well constructed and intelligible, i.e. if the marker cannot understand what is written in the essay, the marker cannot give a mark. This is why it is very important that you write several drafts of the assignment, proofread each draft and utilise the Writing Centre.

· Do literature research, i.e. look up on articles/books that are written on your topic of debate.

· Use the Writing Centre: to get a good mark, your script must be well written.

· Write several drafts: proofread your work several times until you are absolutely satisfied with it.

· Read the coursework marking schemes stated in the course syllabus.

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