Paper I (Contemporary American Government in Action) 

 

Write an essay in which you report on the current activities of the GOVERNMENTS of the United States.

 

To write such an essay, you must, at a minimum, do the following:

 

(a)    Read the newspaper (of your choice) for the next 4 weeks.  At least 3 days per week, including Sunday, record all activities performed by the governments of the United States.  You will need to record and distinguish between actions of the national, state, and local (city/town/county) governments and the types of policy matters they take actions on. 

 

You may choose to read an “internet paper”.  (See the class “Resources” web page for Internet newspaper links).

 

You may not choose the Colorado Daily, USA Today or the Wall Street Journal.  There is no Sunday edition of these papers.

 

(b)   List the newspaper reports of the 4 weeks as either a typed bibliography or diary of references. This list should include the date of the story, the author and headline, the page on which it appeared, as well as information on the specific government (e.g., US, Colorado State, Boulder County, Longmont City), and the type of activity.  (One way to keep this list is as an EXCEL spreadsheet.  Click HERE for an example.)

 

(c)    Tabulate your counts of activities by each level of government with respect to each type of policy.  Repeat this tabulation for each branch of government.  What activities are common to the executive branch, which are legislative activities, what public policies are the courts involved in?

 

(d)   Summarize your findings. Identify similarities and differences in what the different levels of government do.  For example, consider the following questions:

 

What does the federal government do that the states do not?

What do state governments do that the federal government does not?

What do local government do?

What activities are the subjects of multiple levels of government?

What policies are executive, legislative and judicial?

 

(e)    Evaluate these empirical findings in light of your readings so far this semester.  What do these different activities tell you about the operation of the US Constitution in the modern times?  What do we learn about Federalism?  How important are Structural Factors in this distribution of government activities?  Do the Media tend to focus on one type of activity or level of government or is there any bias in their coverage?

 

 

Guidelines:

 

1. Your essay is due in lecture on October 14th.

 

2. Your essay should be 5-7 pages in length counting one or two pages of tables (but not counting the bibliography/diary/spreadsheet), using standard fonts and formats (1 inch margins, double-spaced, font size 11 or 12).

 

3. Your TA is available outside class to clarify issues and discuss the analysis and presentation of your results.  If you can’t meet with your TA during his or her normal office hours, please make an appointment to meet with them.

 

4. What your TA and I will be looking for:

 

  • the essay is coherently organized;
  • it examines the subject in appropriate depth;
  • it is well-written (it makes an argument that can be followed, grammar and spelling are acceptable; and it makes an occasional important/compelling/dazzling insight).

 

FAQs

 

A commonly asked question is “How many new stories do I need?”

 

There is no easy answer.  In the best of all possible worlds, you would record all stories that involve government activities. That’s probably unrealistic.  Some papers cover much more than others and thus simply the choice of paper would determine the number.  Think about recording 6-10 stories each of 3 days per week.  That’s 18-30 per week or 80-120 over the next 4 weeks.  But think of this range as a “minimum”. It is not a maximum or the number that will best help you understand what’s going on.

 

A second piece of advice.  In selecting stories, DO NOT take them all from the front page of the paper.   Different newspapers will emphasize different types of stories on their front pages.  Some newspapers put local news on their front page.  Others emphasize national news stories.  Try to draw stories at random (say one every 2 or 3 pages) from all of the news sections of your paper.  In many instances that will involve moving beyond the first section of the paper if the paper is divided into different parts.  The Denver Post, for example, has local and regional news as well as its editorials about the news in a separate section (“Denver and the West”) and you want to draw stories from there if you’re using the Post. The Boulder Daily Camera does the same in reverse.  That is, national and international news can often be found in the second section of the paper.  So read broadly.