Assignment:
The paper must be 5 to 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.
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.