Research Proposal:Are states behaving in a predictable, non arbitrary fashion when using Drones

Humanities

Assignment Instructions

This assignment requires you to write a proposal that states your research question and your research strategy for addressing it.

Topic: “The international rule of law when it comes to the use of Drones as a technological innovation that transforms war into individual targeted strikes and humane way of dispatching one’s enemy.

Research question will be: Are states behaving in a predictable, non arbitrary fashion when using Drones in a war on individual targeted strikes? Is there a legal use or a misuse of the international Law?

Research Proposal:

The research proposal must be between 8-10 pages in length not including title page or references.

Your title page should include the working title of your research project, your name, date, and course title.You should also have an abstract on your title page.

Your proposal should have the following sections:

Introduction: The introduction is where you identify your specific research question and where you set the general context for the study. In this section you need to include:

1-a statement of the problem or general research question and context leading to a clear statement of the specific research question;

2-background and contextual material justifying why this case or topic should be studied;

3-and a purpose statement.

Literature Review: This short preliminary literature review section reviews the literature important to your specific research question. The literature review focuses on discussing how other researchers have addressed the same or similar research questions. It introduces the study and places it in larger context that includes a discussion of why it is important to study this case. It provides the current state of accumulated knowledge as it relates to your specific research question. In this section you should:

Summarize the general state of the literature (cumulative knowledge base) on the specific research question. For example if you discuss other studies that have been conducted you would summarize the researcher’s findings, how those findings were obtained, and conduct an evaluation of biases in the findings.

This section should provide a broad overview of the primary arguments related to the topic and organizes the general views on the main aspects of the topic by theme, which could be the prevailing arguments or schools of thought, or commonly held beliefs that your particular topic may challenge.

Include a short conclusion and transition to the next section.

In your literature review you should also discuss the theoretical framework to be used in the study.

From here you would then include a transition into your methodology section.

Research Design and Methods: Describes how you will answer your research question or test the hypothesis. This section describes your overall research design and how you plan to collect, synthesize, and interpret your data. It should include:

**identification and operationalization (measurement) of variables;

**a sampling plan (i.e., study population and sampling procedures, if appropriate);

**justification of case studies used;

**data collection/sources (secondary literature, archives, interviews, surveys, etc.);

**a summary of analysis procedures (pattern-matching, etc.); and

**the limitations of study and bias discussion.

***Conclusion: Reemphasizes the importance of your study and ties the proposal together.

Reference List: As with all academic papers you need to references the works that you have cited (direct quotes or paraphrases) in the text of your document and incorporate a complete reference list or bibliography at the end. This list needs to be in the style used within your field. APA= Criminal Justice, Turabian for all others in this course.

Remember that the references you use demonstrate your knowledge of the topic area.This research proposal is meant to convince your professor that you not only have identified a worthy question in need of investigation, but that you are also capable of carrying out the research involved to successfully answer that question.At the very least you should have referenced 12-15 peer-reviewed sources in this proposal.

Format:

Standard academic format will suffice: 1-inch borders on all four sides, double spaced, with times new roman 12-point font.