Friday, May 14, 2010

I need help writing an essay responding to the following prompt: Explain your point of view in not less than 10 pages. Is politics a dirty game?...

The first thing you should do in responding to this prompt is to narrow your topic. There is no possible way to know if politics in every human culture over several thousand years was somehow a "dirty game", even assuming there is some clear definition of what is meant by that colloquial phrase. Instead, the first thing you should do is to narrow your topic to discuss politics in one specific country and region.


Next, you need to define your concept of "dirty game". One of the best starting points would be the work of Transparency International, an NGO that has pioneered the efforts to study, quantify, and reduce corruption across the globe. You might want to look at such issues as whether bribery is common in the nation about which you are writing, the degree to which laws and regulations are rigged to benefit the wealthy and powerful, and the degree to which holders of political office benefit from misuse of power. 


The main body of your essay should be a factually based analysis of the evidence for specific forms of corruption in the region you have selected. You should begin this section with general statistical evidence and then analyze specific examples, perhaps using materials in the Panama Papers for evidence if relevant.


You should conclude with a comparative analysis, looking at whether your selected nation or region is more or less corrupt than other regions at a similar stage of economic development. 

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