Austria and the Global South: Political Science

– The purpose of this review essay is to present the main arguments of the texts in a coherent manner and analyze them critically – your opinion counts!

The  readings  form  the  raw  material  on  which  you  are  to  make  a  coherent  and  critical argument. The challenge is to find and make connections between the texts, to make the readings speak to each other by reorganizing them and selectively focussing on certain aspects of them. Ask yourself: What would author S say to the arguments of Author T? Review essays present an argument based on the readings so that they are in constant and full dialogue with one another. This requires imposing your own intellectual framework on the readings. Do not just say “Article A focusses on X, but Article B  focuses  on  Y”.  The  aim  is  to  get  a  theme  that  runs  through  the  entire  essay  so  that  in “reviewing” the readings you are really interpreting them. This is an interpretive, exegetical exercise. You might want to briefly introduce what the authors talk about in general, but very quickly you need to impose some intellectual order on all the information. The reader needs to know at every page where you are going and how it all fits together. A good rule of thumb to follow is to pose a question at the outset of the paper that you intend to answer. This gives the paper a coherence and allows you to keep a focus on your question and its answer, using the readings critically for this purpose.