Modern Latin America

Disclaimer

The following was written by Paul Roe (IRES Department) and members of the Center for Academic Writing for informational purposes only. The views expressed may not be those of your professors. You should always ask them about their expectations regarding position papers.

What is a position paper? A position paper is a critical examination of texts by one or more authors.

What is the purpose of a position paper? To introduce, analyse and reflect on important issues, problems and debates in your discipline. In other words, to examine and respond to the positions authors take.

Is it like a critique? In some ways, yes; in others, no. Both genres are based on your critical reading process. Like a critique, a position paper is a reaction in writing to something you have read. Unlike a critique, position papers are not written in isolation. Most focus on more than one essay, research article, or book chapter. These texts may be by the same author, but more often will be written by different ones. In addition, you will frequently be expected to discuss the texts in the context of a course; that is, to relate them to the other texts you have been reading.

What features should I include in a position paper? You should consider including summary, contextualisation, analysis/evaluation and reflection. You may also want to include a few questions for further discussion.

How much summary should I include? A brief summary is all that is necessary. You do not need to spend a lot of space re-articulating the major issues. Remember that the primary audience – your professor – knows the texts; she certainly wants to see that you understood the main points, but is more likely to be concerned with how you analyse the texts, as well as relate them to each other and to the larger issues in your field.

Should I include my own opinion? Certainly. When you analyse, evaluate and reflect on the texts you will be giving your opinion. But do not confuse a position paper with an argumentative essay. Your purpose here is to analyse the positions of others, not to persuade an audience that your position is correct.

How many quotations can I include? We recommend you summarise and paraphrase as much as possible, and use quotations sparingly. For example, if you are going to evaluate an author’s language (his style, perhaps, or use of jargon) then it is crucial you include a quotation as an example. When you are analysing concepts or evidence, however, use your own words. If you do include quotations, we believe you should also keep them short. In our experience, the long, block quotations you find in research papers are not appropriate here.

How should it be structured? There is no secret formula or recipe for writing a position paper. However, many writers first introduce the topic and summarise the major points in the debate before going on to contextualise, analyse/evaluate, and reflect on them. If you are going to include questions, these are usually located at the end.

Can I write about one author/text first, and then the other? As we believe the purpose of the paper is to focus on the issues, problems, and debates in your discipline, we recommend you organize the paper thematically rather than by author. However, you will find examples where each author is examined in turn.

I have two very long texts to examine, but my word limit is short. What should I do? First, ask yourself why you are reading these particular texts, and why are doing it at this time in your course. They probably were not chosen randomly, nor placed out of sequence. Think of your task as discovering the relevance of the texts, in addition to understanding them. Your insights here may even provide a framework around which you can write your paper. In addition, try to always stay focused on the larger issues, and avoid getting bogged down in details. Finally, you will save words by organising the paper thematically; we often see a lot of repetition in papers which look at the authors separately.

Do I need to include references? Yes. We think the best place to do this is at the top of page one, below your title and before your first paragraph. Put a full reference to the texts (first name, last name, title, journal, publication information, and page numbers). If you quote an author in the body, you should put the page number in parentheses. However, you probably do not need to include page numbers every time you paraphrase or summarise something from the texts. Ask your professor for clarification. See the examples for more. [Example 1] [Example 2]

Can I mention other writers/theorists in my position paper? Where relevant, certainly, but keep in mind the primary purpose of the position paper is to focus on the texts which have been assigned. Do not spend more time on a third author than the two you should be discussing. And if you do bring in other writers, be sure to include a full reference to the source (either in a footnote or end note).

Does anyone else write position papers besides CEU students? Yes, but they may not be called position papers. In journals, review articles do more than simply review books; they are longer essays which relate the texts under review to wider issues. Many times a journal will include an essay reacting to a piece from a previous issue; this too is a kind of position paper, and is often followed by a response from the author of the original article. It is not uncommon for a debate to carry on for many issues. Finally, the letters section of journals often include longer responses to previous articles. Look through the key journals in your field for these and other examples of “real” position papers.

Can I see a model of the perfect position paper? It is simply impossible to hold up one text as a model. We believe you should look at a range of position papers, and then make your own decisions about how best to write them. With this in mind, follow the link below to some position papers recently written by IRES students, and examine them in light of the what you have read here. [Example 1] [Example 2]

I have to give a presentation on my position paper. What should I include? This will depend on your critical reading of the text, your audience, where you are in the course and the amount of time you have. A brief introduction to the issue/debate is crucial in any presentation. After this, it is hard to give concrete advice. Early on in a course, you may want to spend more time on articulating the debate itself, and asking general questions for discussion. The more experience your audience has, however, the less time you should spend on the texts and the more you should tie them into what has gone on before in the course. For more general advice on giving presentations see the Presentations section on our Self Access Page

Where can I get more advice on position papers? See your professors and departmental writing instructors. You can also sign up for a consultation at any time with an writing instructor.

Sample Position Paper #1

In this position paper, the writer is examining a series of articles by two writers in a key journal. Notice how the student summarises and comments on the debate. In addition, take a look at the use of quotations; many more than we recommend have been included, but the student has chosen to place them in the notes. Do you agree with this choice?

Loose Federation in a Dysfunctional State:

Disintegration or Functionality of The Russian Federation?

Herd, Graeme P. “Russia: Systemic Transformation or Federal Collapse?” Journal of Peace Research, vol. 36, no.3, 1999, pp.259-269

Alexseev, Mikhail A. “Decentralization Versus State Collapse: Explaining Russia’s Endurance” Journal of Peace Research, vol.38, no.1, 2001, pp.101-106

Herd, Graeme P. “Russia And The Politics of ‘Putinism’” Journal of Peace Research, vol.38, no.1, 2001, pp.109-112

The Russian Federation featured high on Western policy-makers’ agenda, as turbulent financial and economic events followed the demise of Communism. With the recent financial ‘meltdown’ of 1998 overcome, should one expect the Federation’s imminent collapse, or indulge in optimism at its survival to this date? There appears to be reason for both.

Writing in 1999, Graeme P. Herd predicts imminent disintegration of the Russian Federation. Russia’s economy and politics were badly shaken by the financial and monetary ‘meltdown’ in August of the previous year. Budgetary federalism collapsed, Yeltsin’s charismatic figure was gone, his patronage networks undermined. The Duma left to rule had little political authority. In the midst of a political vacuum and an economic crisis, “no new mechanisms [were] being developed to maintain the balance of power within the federation” (Herd, 1999, p260). The August crisis had acted as a catalyst to decentralization – an informal process begun in the years before 1998. He traces the loose nature of the center-periphery relationship in federal Russia to the collapse of Communism: economic turmoil followed, threatening regions’ economic survival. Self-reliance was urged onto those previously subject to centralized planning. They began to be run by local elites and interest groups. Russia’s regions increasingly asserted political, administrative and economic independence during the 1990s [1]. When the central government proved helpless against the ‘meltdown’ in 1998, crisis management fell once again to regional governors, further strengthening the shift to decentralization. The integrity of the Federation was thereby weakened, to a point in the near future when the Federation would de facto disintegrate into a confederation.[2]

Herd’s prediction of federal disintegration draws on the shattering effects of the 1998 Meltdown on the center’s ability to govern the whole effectively. If, however, the focus is shifted away from the (now overcome) ‘meltdown’ in 1998, some find little reason to worry despite the recent turmoil. Mikhail Alexeev interprets Herd’s proofs of federal disintegration as proofs of State endurance. Writing three years after the August ‘meltdown’, Alexeev has seen the 1998 crisis come and go, another instance of the difficult metamorphosis into a post-Soviet order. While the event scarred Russia, it left unshaken the country’s administrative modus operandi, in place since the early 1990s. The post-Soviet democratic constitution of December 1993 endowed the federal system with the administrative flexibility necessary to preserve the Federation, i.e. to keep the center and the periphery together. To those regions threatening separation, Yeltsin granted privileges.[3] To all, he offered enough independent political and economic decision-making to ‘buy’ their loyalty. His occasional resort to violence [4] did not change the fact that regions had strong incentive not to seriously undermine the state and its federal structure. This technique of “strategic bargaining” granted flexibility to center-periphery relations otherwise based on such regulations [5] as assured Moscow administrative and political leverage over the periphery. Ethnic heterogeneity within and among regions is another argument of endurance: clashing interests among the different ethnicities disabled them from unifying behind a strong anti-Russian (i.e. anti-centrist) pro-independence movement [6]. Alexeev thus tries to demonstrate that – in the early 1990s – political circumstances and Russia’s administrative setup had insured the State against separatism and the regions’ unified opposition to the center. The federal modus operandi (Herd calls it “constructive ambiguity”) strikes Alexeev as a viable system.

‘Regionalization’ as a stable and functional modus operandi does not significantly challenge Herd’s predicament of federal disintegration. By arguing the appropriateness of decentralization in a country like Russia, Alexeev rather upholds Herd’s claim that federal disintegration (i.e. disintegration of a system where regional independence is limited) is irreversible. Terminology differs because Alexeev mistakes Herd’s idea for state disintegration, never considering federal disintegration per se. Nevertheless, Alexeev’s decentralization and Herd’s ‘federal disintegration’ are one and the same if one realizes that decentralization causes federal disintegration.[7]

While direct opposition between the two is missing, the juxtaposition of points of view enlightens the reader on the complexity of the Russian Federation. Alexeev’s analysis of divergent interests and of the center as the focus of regional lobbying counterbalances Herd’s idea of center’s “splendid isolation” vis-à-vis a homogenous ‘periphery’. Ethnically heterogeneous and unequal in terms of natural resources, regions’ incentives and demands are different. Ethnic regions lobby against the interests of the non-ethnic ones, while conflicting interests exist within individual regions as well, and probably within the ‘center’ too.

In 2001, Herd brings up another issue: is the modus operandi evoked by Alexeev functional? Herd disputes its being a ‘modus’ in the fist place. Yeltsin’s checks and balances from the early 1990s are a tool rather than a system, he claims. They are unreliable because used arbitrarily by presidential figures for personal political gain rather than Russia’s economic efficiency. Secondly, the challenge of this system’s functionality draws on the criminal factor. Corruption and crime which after 1998 were a form of crisis management, have since turned into a raison d’être of much of the regional elites.[8] Alexeev confidently calls for greater cooperation [9] of the center with “formal and informal regional institutions”, disregarding the fact that the latter may be rotten basis for future development. If “criminal activities distort the transition to market economy and the international standing of a state”[10], can regional decentralization be the answer to Russia’s troubles? He also fails to give evidence of enforcement of measures making up the center’s presumed leverage.

Dialogue remains imperfect because arguments unveil crucial weaknesses. Alexeev abounds in examples from the early 1990s – an exceptional time of political change and much defined by the circumstances. Are the same workings in effect now that leaders have changed, the disillusionment is rising, and the West more weary? Moreover, it is arguable to what degree Western support dissuades regional separatism, for two reasons: firstly, the West may react differently in case of another Chechnya, and secondly, separatist movements may be upheld by other, non-European countries. On the whole, Alexeev offers little evidence of the system working after 1998, focusing his analysis on the immediate post-Soviet scenario.

Herd’s persuasiveness is similarly undermined by lack of detail. He hopes to answer “when a federation become a confederation” without mentioning the administrative center-periphery power split-up. Herd speaks of the will of elites to preserve the status quo, yet offers neither examples nor reasons for their motivations. In the same paper, he refers to both, “a controlled”, and a “largely uncontrolled disintegration” without strong evidence for either. His concluding preoccupation with security issues undermines the importance of the main theme of the text: emanating from a crisis-ridden Russia, soft security threats to the West are an inevitability which undermines the importance of whether the Federation transforms or collapses.

Let us, in fact, question the importance of claims made. Alexeev’s argument, however faulty at times, is of use to Western policy-makers as it examines causes and perspectives of Russia’s endurance. He attacks the crucial issue of State collapse even at the risk of inadequately responding to Herd’s argument in 1999. Herd, on the contrary, focuses on systemic transformation [11] – a matter of more interest to a jurist. So what if federal integrity is undermined? In what ways is preservation of federal integrity related to preservation of Russia as a state? Which system is more economically beneficial to the whole? Even as Herd focuses on security – crucial to decision-makers – he fails to analyze the impact of systemic transformation (federation vs. confederation) on the nature of soft security threats to the West.

The underlying question in the debate on the endurance of the Russian State is that of Russia’s economic endurance. Russia’s critical post-1998 economic situation ought to be the principal, if underlying, interest of all debates. Those focusing primarily on the system may in fact be worrying about form instead of content. In as far as neither author firmly ties his analysis of systemic transformation to examination of Russia’s economic performance, both Herd and Alexeev can be said to have missed the point in engaging in dialogue over the years.

Endnotes

1) Decentralizing traits noticed by Herd are the following: unconstitutional local constitutions, regional loyalty of military structures, diminished state economic regional presence, flourishing regional information and communication networks, and regions’ independent foreign policy-making.

2) As an alternative to the confederation scenario, Herd also mentions the possibility of regions regrouping into larger regional blocks (1999).

3) “Yeltsin tolerated declarations of sovereignty by Russian autonomous republics and regions, introduced gubernatorial elections in 1996, and issued disproportionately large subsidies, tax breaks, and soft credits to federation units that declared sovereignty and had more days lost to protests and strikes”, (Alexeev, 2001).

4) “Yeltsin threatened Tatarstan with military intervention in 1993, and used excessive military force in 1994-96 in Chechnya”, (Alexeev, 2001).

5) “Moscow acquired the power to switch fiscal transfer policies; exploit disputes over resource allocations among budget donor and recipient regions and within regions; appoint the chiefs of police, the procurator’s office, and the Federal Security Service; challenge or ignore regional laws that technically contradict the Russian Constitution; grant or withhold export-import and tax privileges; set the costs of energy supplies and transportation through state-controlled ‘natural monopolies’ [...]; influence the courts (thus posing an impeachment threat to governors); and generate legislative initiatives setting the limits on the governors’ terms in office”, Alexeev 2001.

6) Alexeev evokes two other political circumstances which insured the Federation against collapse: firstly, the West supported Yeltsin’s post-Communist Russia as a whole, and secondly, secessionist political leadership which had emerged in the center had discredited regional anti-Russian separatists movements.

7) Consider the following thought by Herd: “[...] by incorporating such diversity and embracing constructive ambiguity, confederalizing tendencies are unleashed upon the framework of federal governance”, 2001.

“According to Russian Interior Ministry reports, organized criminal groups control about 50% of Russian private enterprises in addition to about 60% of state enterprises”, Herd 2001.

9) “The resilience of the Russian Federation depends [...] on the ability of the center to live with regional diversity and to nurture a necessarily slow ground-up evolution of formal and informal institutions that mediate center-periphery grievances and disputes”, (Alexeev, 2001).

10) Herd, 2001.

11) “Whilst the Russian state might be sustained by such power relations, the federal system of governance is undermined [...] by ad hoc and de facto arrangement that constituted pax Yeltsinica”, Herd 2001.

Sample position paper #2

In the first example, there was a clear connection among the three texts. To someone reading Benjamin Barber and Stephen Kobrin for the first time, however, the link(s) may not be as apparent. While you have not read the original texts, how do you think this student did in relating the two author’s positions to the larger issue?

Globalization: A Transition to What?

Barber, Benjamin R. Introduction to Jihad vs. McWorld (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996)

Kobrin, Stephen J. “Back to the Future: Neomedievalism and the Postmodern Digital World Economy,” Globalization and Governance (London: Routledge, 1999.

After the bloody clashes between anti-globalization protesters and the police in Genoa, globalization is once again on the world’s agenda and it is here to stay. A dream to some and a nightmare to others, globalization is a widely debated issue among journalists and scholars, among intellectuals of all profiles, business people and decision-makers alike. Benjamin R. Barber, Walt Whitman professor of political science, and Stephen J. Kobrin, professor of multinational management, both join the discussion, each giving his own vision of what the post-modern future of this globalized world might look like.

In “Jihad vs. McWorld” Barber’s fragmented and at the same time integrated world is “terminally post-democratic” (20). It is pulled apart by two opposing forces: disintegrating ethnic hatreds and unifying mechanisms of global economy, none of which cares much for civic society and civil liberties. In Barber’s terminology Jihad stands for the blind parochialism of any kind, but primarily for tribal instincts that tear countries apart and cause bloody wars. McWorld epitomizes the world of consumerist capitalism unified by commerce, entertainment and consumerism that knows no borders. Although Jihad seems like a more obvious threat to democracy, McWorld is no less dangerous because both are enemies of the sovereign nation states and of democracy. Barber warns that democracy might be collateral damage from the confrontation between globalization and parochial fragmentation.

While Barber is primarily interested in the fate of democracy, Kobrin gives a great deal of attention to the problem of state sovereignty in the increasingly integrated world. In “Back to the Future: Neomedievalism and the Postmodern Digital World Economy” the key issue is the anticipated transformation of state sovereignty into new forms of political loyalty. Kobrin argues that sovereign state as we know it-firmly defined within certain territorial borders-is about to change profoundly, if not to wither away. National markets are too small to be self-sustainable which challenges the meaning of territorial boundaries between states.

Both authors acknowledge that sovereignty, defined as unambiguous authority, is threatened. Whereas Barber finds that alarming, Kobrin takes this as a historical inevitability; modern state system, based on mutually exclusive jurisdiction, may be an anomaly rather than a historically privileged form of political organizations. Kobrin argues that we should look at the medieval world for the answers to how the future might look like. Medieval analogy offers a world of overlapping multiple authorities and absence of fixed boundaries. It is a world of multiple political loyalties-to emperors, to the pope, to feudal lords-which are complex rather than linear. Kobrin’s modern analogy is European Union, with its overlap of national, regional and supra-national authorities.

The medieval metaphor seems attractive, but Kobrin forgets that the world of the Middle Ages was highly decentralized rather than unified, and in that sense radically different from our own. Medieval feuds, as economic units, were self-sufficient and isolated-everything that modern markets are not. Kobrin himself argues that the integrated economy requires a strong central authority, perhaps not yet in the form of world government but certainly through stronger international organizations such as WTO. Clearly, this is a different kind of authority than a pope or an emperor might have had in medieval world. Is medieval analogy applicable at all? If we follow Kobrin’s reasoning, it appears that the new world will require more rather than less authority. Nation-state’s sovereignty may be eroding, but, as a result, we have an increasing supra-national authority instead of a loose authority of the medieval type.

Barber, on the other hand, may be launching an artificial dichotomy. While McWorld sounds like an apt metaphor for globalization, Jihad seems to be a superficial, emotionally charged term with multiple meanings. Barber draws on Yeats and Mary Shelly to define this “heritage of race,” the force of tribal instincts, ancient hatreds, and fundamentalism. Although doubtless poetic, the concept of Jihad, as described by Barber, is confusing. He takes a few examples of ethnic conflict, such as Bosnia or Rwanda, and declares they are but a manifestation of the tribalisation phenomenon, but he does little to support his thesis. Did Bosnia really fall apart because of ancient, tribal hatreds? Barber overlooks the fact that peoples of Bosnia have been living peacefully with one another much longer than they have waged wars. Reducing complex conflicts to an oversimplified, poorly defined phenomenon such as Jihad helps Barber support his shaky Jihad-McWorld dichotomy but does little to persuade the reader that Jihad exists as such.

Barber’s and Kobrin’s views seem diametrically opposite whereas it may simply be that they are considering different issues. There is little common ground between them in terms of problems they are interested in. They both take McWorld for granted, though. Neither challenges globalization nor tries to imagine the world as something other than globalized, digital, and integrated. Even Barber who laments over the destructiveness of Jihad admits that McWorld is the winner in the long run. Although they have different agendas, they are telling essentially one and the same thing-the future belongs to McWorld. What with democracy, Barber asks? Everyone will be a consumer, but what will happen to citizens? For Kobrin, however, the problem does not exist; just as we have civil societies within states today, in the future they will be replaced by global civil society with its mixture of state and non-state actors, NGOs, transnational movements.

Are Barber and Kobrin debating at all? Their visions of the world in the future are not mutually exclusive. Barber comes up with a bold notion that not even nations constitute main players today, but tribes. His description of balkanization, tribalization and awakening of atavistic forces among peoples evokes images of dark Middle Ages. Barber warns that our civilization is beginning to resemble medieval past in which the world consisted of warring fiefdoms unified by Christianity; in our world, Bosnian Serbs and alike wage their ethnic conflicts while both the aggressors and the victims eat the same BigMacs, wear jeans and watch MTV. It seems that he is also looking at the world through medieval prism, albeit from its dark side. It is precisely the dark side that Kobrin avoids confronting. He is intentionally focused on the practicalities of managing the world in the future so he lefts out of the picture the unpleasant details. Fragmentation is one of the issues that he chooses not to consider although he acknowledges that some authors, such as Kaplan offer a less optimistic vision of the world torn by refugee migration, private armies, collapse of nation state and civil order with it. Kobrin’s only response to this grim prophecy is little more than hope: “One hopes that such an age is not part of the neomedieval metaphor, that a new and more terrifying barbarian is not on the horizon” (183). Walled communities and private security forces that he admits appear increasingly today could be, Kobrin still hopes, only “ephemeral products of a world in transition and not a permanent characteristic of the postmodern era” (183).

Last revised: 8 November, 2004

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