Week 5 Political Analysis Workshop: Two Defenses on the Record and Eight Regimes on Paper

Introduction to Political Science Free sample edition

Part 1 — The Big Picture

This week you sorted the forms government takes: electoral and liberal democracy, the hybrid regime, authoritarian and totalitarian rule, and the republic. You also met two famous defenses of democracy, a proud one from Pericles as Thucydides renders him and a reluctant one from Winston Churchill in the House of Commons. In this workshop you read those two texts the way a political scientist reads any primary source: who said it, to whom, when, why, and exactly what the words say. Then you put the week's distinctions to work on a case file of eight invented regimes, tally the results in a spreadsheet, map an op-ed argument with every premise labelled by kind, and check a chatbot's version of the same work for invented quotations, invented sources, misattributions, and value judgments passed off as facts.

Time budget: Plan for about 90 minutes.

Part 2 — The Task

Guiding question: What exactly do Pericles and Churchill say in defense of democracy, and how do this week's distinctions sort eight invented regimes once you look past their elections and their names?

Workshop data: two pinned defenses of democracy and a case file of eight invented regimes (illustrative)

Source: Two short fragments are printed exactly as this course pins them: Pericles' funeral oration in the Crawley translation (1874) of Thucydides, Book II, and Winston Churchill's sentence in the Hansard record of the House of Commons, November 1947, column 207. The case file of eight regimes and the op-ed argument are illustrative material constructed for this workshop; no real country, person, or government is described.

Rows: 8 rows of data, one per invented regime (Table 2 in Part 4 lists all 8 plus a tally row, with blank columns for your results; Table 1, the sourcing table, has 9 rows)
Columns: regime number; regime; what the case file says; election floor met (yes or no); liberal marks met (0 to 3); regime type
Argument premises: 4 premises in the op-ed argument (Table 3)
Pinned fragments: 3 fragments: two from Pericles and one from Churchill (Table 1)

Part 3 — Materials & Procedure

Tools and materials

Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches
A document or notebook for your written answers

Ways of working

primary-text-analysis
read-the-data
argument-map-and-steel-man

Procedure

Open the Internet Classics Archive's page for Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book II (Crawley translation), and use your browser's find command to search for the words favours the many. Copy the sentence that contains them, and the phrase about the citizen who takes no part in public duties, into Table 1 beside the printed versions and compare them letter for letter. Tool: Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches. Check: Your copied words match Table 1 exactly, including the British spelling favours.
Open the Historic Hansard record of the House of Commons debate on the Parliament Bill in November 1947 and use your browser's find command to search for the words it has been said. Note the column number printed near the sentence, then copy the sentence into Table 1 and compare it letter for letter. Tool: Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches. Check: The sentence matches Table 1 exactly, and the column marker printed beside it is 207.
Complete the sourcing rows of Table 1: who spoke, where each text is printed, the year, the audience and purpose, what kind of claim each fragment makes (empirical-leaning or normative), what the words it has been said show, and who was left out of the many in Athens. Tool: Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches. Check: Table 1 has every blank filled, with one fragment labelled empirical-leaning and two labelled normative.
Read each regime in Table 2 and fill its three blank columns: whether it meets the election floor (yes or no), how many of the three liberal marks it meets (protected rights, a free press, an independent judiciary), and its regime type. Tool: Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches. Check: Every one of the 8 rows has a yes or no, a number from 0 to 3, and one of the five regime types.
Open a blank spreadsheet. In row 1 type the headers Regime, Floor met, Liberal marks, and Type in columns A to D. In rows 2 to 9 copy each regime's name and your three entries from Table 2. In F2 to F6 type the five types: liberal democracy, electoral democracy, hybrid regime, authoritarian, totalitarian. In G2 type =COUNTIF($D$2:$D$9,F2) and copy it down to G6, then in G7 type =SUM(G2:G6). In G8 type =COUNTIF($B$2:$B$9,"yes"). Tool: Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches. Check: The five type counts add to 8 in G7, and G8 shows how many regimes meet the election floor. Copy the counts into Table 2's tally row.
Read the op-ed argument in Table 3. Label each of the four premises empirical or normative. In J2 type the number of empirical premises and in J3 the number of normative premises, then in J4 type =J2+J3. Name one assumption the argument needs, state the strongest objection as its own defenders would put it, and write a two-sentence reply. Tool: Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches. Check: J4 shows 4, one for each premise, and Table 3 has no blank cells.
Paste your completed tables into one approved chatbot, then paste the prompt from Part 6 below them. Record each of its answers in Table 4 and check every one against the pinned texts, your tables, and this week's definitions. Tool: Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches. Check: Table 4 has one row for each of the chatbot's answers, with each marked as checked against a source.

Fallback route

When to use it: Use this route if no spreadsheet is available or either web page cannot be reached.

Work the same steps by hand. Table 1 already prints all three fragments exactly as the course pins them, so complete the sourcing rows from them. Tally the regime types by making a mark beside each type for each of the eight regimes, count the yes entries for the election floor, count the empirical and normative labels in Table 3 by hand, and write each count so it can be checked. Complete every table, answer every analysis question, do the critique step, and submit the same items for equal credit.

This route earns the same credit as the primary route.

Part 4 — The Scaffold

Table 1 holds the two primary texts you are analyzing; source them and read them closely before you use either as evidence.

Student scaffold table 1
Item	What the source shows	Your entry
Fragment 1, Pericles, as printed in this workshop	Its administration favours the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy.
Fragment 2, Pericles, as printed in this workshop	not as unambitious but as useless
Fragment 3, Churchill, as printed in this workshop	it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time
Who spoke each text, and where it is printed
Year of the Crawley translation and year of Churchill's speech
Audience and purpose of each speech
Kind of claim each fragment makes (empirical-leaning or normative)
What the words it has been said show
Who was left out of the many in Athens

Table 2 is the case file of eight invented regimes; check each against the election floor and the liberal marks before you name its type.

Student scaffold table 2
Regime	Name (illustrative)	What the case file says
1	Pellmore	Voters choose the parliament in free, fair, competitive elections, and the governing party lost the last one and handed over power. Courts strike down laws, newspapers criticize ministers freely, and minority rights are protected. A hereditary king is head of state.
2	Ostavia	Elections are free, fair, and competitive, and incumbents have lost them. Judges serve fixed terms and protest rights are protected, but a press law lets ministers close any newspaper that 'spreads disorder'. An elected president is head of state.
3	Rendal	Elections are free, fair, and competitive, and the opposition won the presidency once. But the president can dismiss judges at will, journalists are prosecuted for 'insulting the state', and public meetings need police approval. An elected president is head of state.
4	Cassor	Elections are held on schedule and three parties appear on the ballot, but every national channel is run by the ruling party's allies and leading opposition candidates are struck off the ballot over paperwork. The opposition has never won national power. An elected president is head of state.
5	Veyle	Elections are held, but the election commission is staffed by the ruling party's former officials and opposition rallies rarely receive permits. The opposition wins a few city councils and never the national government. A president chosen by parliament is head of state.
6	Durnholt	A council of generals rules, with no national elections, banned parties, and critics in prison. People choose their jobs, worship as they like, run businesses, and join sports clubs; the council asks only that they stay out of politics. The council's chair is head of state.
7	Maret	A royal family holds all political power, with no elected parliament and no legal opposition. Churches, markets, and village associations run their own affairs, and the palace leaves them alone as long as no one challenges the throne. A hereditary queen is head of state.
8	Zorvan	One party rules under an official ideology. It runs the schools, unions, youth groups, and newspapers, requires every adult to attend weekly rallies, and has rewritten family law and working life around the ideology. It calls itself a republic, and the party chair is head of state.
Tally	Count of each regime type from your spreadsheet

Table 3 maps an invented op-ed argument for democracy so you can label every premise by its kind and test it fairly.

Student scaffold table 3
Part of the argument	What the op-ed says (illustrative)	Kind (empirical or normative)
Thesis	Democracy is the best form of government we have.	Normative
Premise 1	Pericles, as Thucydides renders him, said that Athens' administration favours the many instead of the few.
Premise 2	In Pellmore, voters removed a governing party at the last election without any violence.
Premise 3	Rule should rest on the consent of the people who are ruled.
Premise 4	A government that can be removed peacefully is worth slower decisions.
One assumption the argument needs
Strongest objection, stated as its defenders would
Your reply

Table 4 is your critique log; it records what the chatbot said and what the source shows instead.

Student scaffold table 4
Chatbot answer	What it said	What the source or your tables show	Correction
1
2
3
4
5
6

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

Report how many of the eight regimes fall under each of the five types and how many meet the election floor, and show the spreadsheet formula or hand count you used. Then report how many premises in Table 3 are empirical and how many are normative.
Compare Durnholt and Zorvan. Which details in the case file decide each one's type, and why does the fact that both punish opponents not decide it?
Pellmore has a hereditary king and Zorvan calls itself a republic. Explain why the republic question and the democracy question come apart in these two regimes, using this week's definition of a republic.
Using Table 1 and Table 3, explain what kind of evidence each pinned fragment can and cannot supply for the op-ed's thesis. Name the premise that carries the argument's value judgment, name one assumption, and state the strongest objection to the thesis as its own defenders would put it before you reply.
Name two limits of this analysis, such as that the case file is illustrative, that the regime types are classroom models real countries do not fit perfectly, or that a reconstructed speech is weak evidence about how a government worked, and say how each limit affects what you can conclude.
Choose one and answer it in 3–4 sentences: (a) Which of the two defenses, Pericles' proud one or Churchill's reluctant one, do you find more persuasive, and by what measure? (b) Which regime in the case file was hardest to sort, and what further evidence would settle it?

Part 6 — AI-Critique Moment

Choose one equal-credit critique route. Route A: ask an approved AI tool to critique your completed work, then check its response against your own evidence. Route B is the no-AI equivalent printed below.

Approved tools: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, Microsoft Copilot.

Prompt to paste:

I've pasted my completed workshop tables above. They cover two famous lines about democracy and a case file of eight invented regimes (an illustrative case file, not real countries). Please do six things. First, quote Pericles' line about Athens and the many from Thucydides, and quote Winston Churchill's famous line about democracy being the worst form of government, exactly as each was recorded, and say who first coined the Churchill line. Second, sort each of the eight invented regimes as a liberal democracy, an electoral democracy, a hybrid regime, an authoritarian regime, or a totalitarian regime, and say why. Third, name a court case that defined what a hybrid regime is. Fourth, tell me what share of the world's countries are democracies today, with a number. Fifth, tell me whether Durnholt or Zorvan is the worse government, and whether democracy is always the best form of government. Sixth, label each of the four premises in the op-ed argument as empirical or normative.

Test the response for these likely failures:

Chatbots often 'quote' Churchill in a smoothed form such as 'democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others', or quote Pericles in a modern translation with words this course's edition does not print.
Chatbots often name a court case, with a confident citation, said to have defined a hybrid regime or ruled on what counts as a democracy.
Chatbots often supply a share of the world's countries that are democracies, with no edition, year, or source, or with a figure taken from an outdated report.
Chatbots often say Churchill coined the line about democracy being the worst form of government, or present Pericles' words as Thucydides' own neutral description of Athens.
Chatbots often declare that democracy is always the best form of government, or that one invented regime is plainly the worse place to live, as if the analysis proved it.
Chatbots often sort Durnholt as totalitarian because it imprisons critics, collapsing authoritarian and totalitarian rule into one idea of a harsh dictatorship.
Chatbots often label the premise that rule should rest on the consent of the governed as an empirical fact, or call Pericles' line purely normative.

In 3–5 sentences, say what the chatbot got right, quote at least two sentences it got wrong, and correct each one with evidence from the pinned texts, your tables, or this week's definitions.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

No AI account is required for this workshop. This route assesses the same objectives, Objective 4 (compare regime types and constitutional structures — direct and representative, electoral and liberal democracy; authoritarian and totalitarian rule; democratization and backsliding; what constitutions do; the rule of law, separation of powers, and checks and balances) and Objective 3 (compare the major political ideologies and normative theories evenhandedly — liberalism, conservatism, socialism and its family, and the smaller families; justice, liberty, equality, and rights; the harm principle; Rawls and Nozick — stating each position in its strongest form and distinguishing empirical from normative claims), takes comparable effort of about the same 90 minutes, uses the same rubric, and earns the same credit. Instead of the chatbot, critique this flawed analysis, printed here in full: "Churchill coined the famous line that 'democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others', and Pericles told the Athenians that every person living in the city shared in ruling it, which proves Athens was a democracy like ours. A well-known supreme court case defined a hybrid regime as any country whose elections are less than perfect, so Cassor and Veyle are hybrid regimes by law. Studies show that exactly 60 percent of the world's countries are democracies today. Durnholt is totalitarian, because it imprisons its critics and is the harshest regime in the file. Zorvan cannot be totalitarian, because it calls itself a republic. Premise 3, that rule should rest on the consent of the governed, is a fact anyone can check. Every sensible reader already agrees that democracy is always the best form of government." Mark every error you can find, quote at least two, and correct each one in 3–5 sentences with evidence from the pinned texts, your tables, or this week's definitions. Submit the marked-up analysis and your correction in place of the chatbot report and share link.

Part 7 — What to Submit

All four completed scaffold tables
Written answers to all six analysis questions
The chatbot critique report with its share link, or the equivalent route's marked-up flawed analysis

Deliverable:

A short Political Analysis Workshop report on two pinned defenses of democracy and a case file of eight invented regimes: four completed tables (the three fragments sourced and close-read, the eight regimes sorted with their tally, the op-ed argument mapped with every premise labelled, and a critique log), written answers to six analysis questions, and a critique of a chatbot's version of the same analysis, or, on the equivalent route, a marked-up correction of the printed flawed analysis. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text. Choose how you show it: written answers, a recorded explanation with a transcript, or a labelled sorting chart with short notes; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria.

Rubric

The rubric below shows how each submitted part is evaluated; bands are full, partial, or none.

Workshop evaluation criteria
Criterion	Full	Partial	None
Sourcing and close reading of the three fragments	All three fragments are copied letter for letter, the speaker, record, year, audience, and purpose are recorded, each fragment is labelled by kind, the words it has been said are explained, and the limit on who counted as the many is named.	The fragments are copied with a small slip, or the sourcing rows are incomplete, or the kind labels are given without the authorship or citizenship point.	The fragments are missing, paraphrased as if quoted, or Churchill is credited with coining his sentence.
Sorting the eight regimes	All eight regimes have a floor entry, a liberal-mark count, and a type that fits the case file, the authoritarian and totalitarian regimes are separated by scope, and the tally is computed from the case file with the method shown.	Most regimes are sorted well, but one or two types do not fit the case file, the scope reasoning is missing, or the tally is given without a method.	No types are recorded, or regimes are sorted by harshness or by their names throughout.
The republic question and the argument map	The republic question is kept separate from the democracy question with Pellmore and Zorvan as evidence; every premise in Table 3 is labelled correctly; an assumption is named without being treated as a flaw; and the strongest objection is stated fairly before a reply.	The republic question is blurred with democracy, or one premise is mislabelled, or the objection is weakened before it is answered.	The republic question is missing, the premises are unlabelled, or no objection is stated.
Critique and correction	The chatbot critique report or the marked-up flawed analysis quotes at least two errors and corrects each with evidence from the pinned texts, the tables, or this week's definitions; both routes earn this band equally.	The chatbot critique report or the marked-up flawed analysis names an error but corrects it without evidence, or corrects only one; both routes earn this band equally.	No chatbot critique report or marked-up flawed analysis is submitted, or the output is pasted without any check; both routes are scored the same way.
Limits and reflection	Two real limits are named with their effect on the conclusion, and the chosen reflection option is answered with a reason.	One limit is named, or the reflection gives no reason.	No limit or reflection is given.

Quality Gate

The three fragments are copied letter for letter from the pinned editions, with the spelling favours, and no other words are put in Pericles' or Churchill's mouth.
Churchill is never credited with coining his sentence, and Pericles' line is treated as persuasion from a citizen body that excluded women, enslaved people, and resident foreigners.
Every count in your tables comes from your own formula or hand count of the case file, never from memory or a chatbot.
Every regime type is tied to the election floor, the liberal marks, or the scope of state control, and authoritarian and totalitarian rule are never sorted by harshness alone.
Every premise in Table 3 is labelled empirical or normative, and the objection is stated as its own defenders would put it.
No court case, statistic, study, or source is invented anywhere in the submission, and no real country, living politician, or current government is used as an example.
No form of government is declared best as if the analysis settled it; the verdict is handed back to the reader.
The critique quotes the chatbot or the flawed analysis and corrects at least two errors with evidence.

Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com