Question=11. Is the UN Security Council of any relevance whatsoever to the cause of reducing global insecurity? Illustrate your answer using
specific examples
Essay Assignment Guidelines ― March 2015
1. Ensure you conduct sufficient background research in the library and additional resource points: the list reflects your breadth and depth of
reading and research capability. Remember, this is also about developing ‘skills’ – and a major skill is the demonstrable ability to identity,
collect, evaluate information and then use it appropriately in your essays/studies/reports etc.
2. Obviously a paper with limited citations is not going to do well because there is not a great deal of information available to build your study.
Also, the frequent use of one or two cited works rather than the breadth of cited works suggest an over-reliance on these and need for wider
corroboration.
3. A grasp of the key debates and issues must be demonstrated.
4. The critical element is that of theory and methodology. This is absolutely central to the success of your paper. Identify an appropriate
conceptual approach and then apply it through a methodological framework for analysis. The two elements are linked insofar as your theoretical
approach provides the key concepts or ideas that can be taken to ‘frame’ your study i.e. to provide the categories to organise the material you
collect and also to provide the evaluative benchmarks to evaluate the information, to test it and to turn it into evidence (all information is not
evidence).
5. There must be a clear and coherent structure to the paper. It must hang together and your conceptual and analytical approaches will help to do
this. Try and avoid your paper being fragmented, rather aim for a flow through the paper from your initial questions through analysis to conclusion.
6. You must avoid simple historical narratives – often essays are chronological – ‘this happened then this was followed by …’ – this might be useful
for you as you get to grips with what happened but NOT in your essay. This is because strong academic scholarship moves us away from description and
opinion to critical analysis and argument (i.e. points of explanation for a problem (the set question) supported by evidence (information assessed
and critically evaluated for capacity to support or refute a point of explanation).
7. A central line of argument is also a key element. You are putting forward a preliminary hypothesis, you can test this against the available
evidence and either disprove or prove all or part of the initial argument. From this it should be clear that I want you to try and argue a case and
try and persuade me of its validity; imagine yourself in a court of law advocating a case before a jury to be convinced of your argument; you need
to pick out the key points you think will convince them and show them the evidence to support each of the points you make. Cumulatively these then
build up to a conclusion that makes your argument irrefutable.
8. Referencing: make sure that where you refer to information; authors, statistics, reports, etc. that you make sure these are referenced with
either a footnote or and endnote – if not then they stand merely as assertions/opinions rather than substantiated points of argument.
9. Presentation and style – essays must be typewritten; double-spaced; have margins running down both sides of text; the bibliography can begin on a
separate page following the end of the essay and endnotes. Obviously, the Use of English must be to the requisite high standard expected at MA level
in order to avoid the loss of presentational marks.
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