Week 6 — Paper or Practice? Audit Two Rulebooks and Design an Amendment Rule — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Introduction to Political Science Free sample edition

Traditional alternative (no AI), unpublished. In the course this is a separate assignment that ships unpublished beside the adaptive assignment: same objective, no AI. An instructor who prefers it publishes it and unpublishes or deletes the adaptive one, as the note at its top says.

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Assignment 6 of the term — audit two rulebooks against the rule of law, design an amendment rule for a new federation, and explain the difference between a constitution and constitutionalism to someone who has it backward.

This week you learned what a constitution does, how written and unwritten constitutions differ, what entrenchment is, how the rule of law differs from rule by law, how separation of powers differs from federalism, and how Federalist No. 51 sets ambition against ambition. Week 2 gave you legal-rational authority, which rests on rules and the office, and Week 5 sorted the forms government takes; this assignment asks whether written rules actually bind the people who hold power. In this assignment you work two short counting problems, interpret each one, and explain this week's central distinction to someone who has never studied political science. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Political Analysis Workshop practice the same ideas from other angles.

The task

You will choose one setting you know (a club, a workplace, an apartment building, a campus group, or a made-up country) and pick two written rulebooks that could govern it, such as a club's bylaws and its spending policy, or a made-up country's charter and its election rules. Treat every rulebook as illustrative: it does not have to exist, and no real person, current government, or current law belongs in it.

Work these two problems, showing how you got each count:

You audit 2 rulebooks against the rule of law's 5 elements, checking each rulebook against each element. How many rulebook-element checks do you record?
A made-up federation of 40 provinces requires three fourths of its provinces to ratify an amendment. How many provinces must ratify?

Beside each count, add the interpretation that makes it political science:

Problem 1, the audit. For each of your two rulebooks, check all five elements of the rule of law (generality, publicity, stability, equal application, and independent enforcement) and record met, failed, or no evidence, with one reason from your setting for each. Then decide whether each rulebook leaves the setting closer to the rule of law or to rule by law. For one rulebook, say whether the setting has a constitution only or also practices constitutionalism, and separate what the text says from what actually happens.
Problem 2, the amendment rule. Write a one-sentence thesis on whether the made-up federation should keep its three-fourths ratification rule or change it. Support the thesis with four claims, two empirical (each one something a person could check) and two normative (each one argued from values), and label every claim by kind. Quote the sentence from Federalist No. 51 (1788) that this course pins, exactly as it reads, "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.", credit it to Madison, and say how it bears on your thesis. Then state the strongest counterargument charitably, as its defenders would put it, drawing on either the coordination case or the parchment-barrier critique. Finish with your reply.

Explain it to a non-expert

A cousin tells you, "Our country has a constitution, so our government can't abuse its power." Write a 3–5 sentence message to that cousin that explains, in everyday words, the difference between having a constitution and having constitutionalism, uses one of your two rulebooks as the example, and names one limit of what a written text can do by itself. Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one good answer is possible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a community-garden volunteer explaining the watering schedule to a new member. Model answer: "We water the shared beds in the early morning because water poured at midday mostly evaporates before the roots get it. That is the reason for the schedule, not anyone's personal habit. If you cannot make your morning slot, swap with someone on the group sign-up sheet. The limit is that a heat wave can change what the plants need, so the schedule is a starting point, not a promise."

Use that pattern for your message to the cousin, with your own wording and evidence.

Show how you got each count. A reader should be able to reproduce both counts from the values above without guessing which values or steps you used.

After you finish, reread your work and revise at least one audit entry, claim, or explanation. Then add a short reflection (3–4 sentences) on one of two options of equal weight, your choice: (a) which audit entry or claim you changed and why the new version is better; or (b) which claim you first labelled with the wrong kind, and how you caught it.

Deliverables

Submit a single analysis file containing:

the two counts, each with the values and the operation shown;
your two-rulebook audit (each element marked met, failed, or no evidence with a reason, each rulebook judged closer to the rule of law or to rule by law, and the constitution-or-constitutionalism judgment for one rulebook);
your argument (a thesis, four claims labelled by kind, the Federalist No. 51 sentence quoted exactly and credited to Madison, a charitable counterargument, and your reply);
your message to the cousin; and
your revision note with the reflection option you chose.

Keep it to roughly two pages. Clear and accurate beats long.

Choose how you show it. Present your work as written text, or as a recorded audio or video explanation of about four minutes with a transcript, or as a labelled audit chart with a short note. Every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. 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.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

This version is designed to be completed without AI: do the counts, the audit, the argument, and the writing yourself, without any AI tool. Quote only the one pinned sentence from The Federalist No. 51, exactly, and check it against the Avalon Project page. Submitting AI-generated work as your own, or copying another student's analysis, is an integrity violation under the course policy.

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