Week 7 — Design the Machinery: A Constitution of Your Own and the Removal Test

Assignment 7 of the term — design the legislature and executive of a made-up country, sort three more constitutions with the removal test, and explain to someone why a president does not make a system presidential.

This adaptive assignment uses a coaching dialogue to help you turn a first attempt into a clear, well-labelled design. You remain the author. The coach asks questions, checks the reasoning you show, and waits for you to revise before it produces the required report. This week you learned what legislatures and executives do, the one-chamber-or-two choice, the split between head of state and head of government, and the parliamentary, presidential, and semi-presidential designs. Week 6 showed you what a constitution creates and divides, and Week 1 gave you the empirical/normative distinction; this assignment puts both to work on a constitution you write. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Political Analysis Workshop practise the same ideas from other angles.

The task

You will write a short constitution for a made-up country, then classify three more made-up constitutions. Treat every country as illustrative: none of them is real, and no real person or current officeholder belongs in any of them.

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

1. Your made-up country's legislature has 150 seats, and its key votes need a majority of all members: half the seats, plus 1 more vote. How many votes is that majority?
2. You classify 3 made-up constitutions, and for each one you record 2 facts: how its executive is chosen and how it is removed. How many entries do you record?

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

• Problem 1, your constitution. Choose a parliamentary, presidential, or semi-presidential design for your country, and state its removal rule: how a failing government would be removed (a vote of no confidence, impeachment for serious wrongdoing, or both). Decide whether its legislature has one chamber or two, and use the Inter-Parliamentary Union's count (of 188 national parliaments, 81 are bicameral and 107 unicameral) to say what is common and what the count does not show. Name the office that is head of state and the office that is head of government, and say whether they are one office or two. Say which votes your majority decides in your design. Then defend your design with at least one premise labelled empirical and one labelled normative, state the strongest case for a design you rejected as its defenders would put it (using Linz's worries about presidentialism or the identifiability and checks replies), and give your reply.
• Problem 2, three more constitutions. Write three short made-up constitutions, one of each design. For each, record how the executive is chosen and how it is removed, and name its design using the removal test. Make one of them a country that has a president and is still parliamentary, and sort it accordingly. If one of your parliamentary countries needs two parties to form a government, say why that coalition is a normal mode rather than a sign of failure.

Explain it to a non-expert

A cousin tells you, "France and Germany both have presidents, so their governments must work the same way as the United States'." Write a 3–5 sentence message to that cousin that explains, in everyday words, why the title of an office does not decide the design, uses the removal test as the example, and names one limit of what you can tell from the removal test alone. Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one good answer is possible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a volunteer at a public library explaining the reading room's quiet-hours rule to a newcomer. Model answer: "We keep the reading room quiet in the evenings because that is when students come in to study for exams. It is not about anyone disliking noise. If you need to talk, the lobby next door is open until closing. The limit is that the rule covers this room only, so the children's area down the hall runs on its own schedule."

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

Part 1 — Student instructions

1. Draft both counts, your constitution, your three classified constitutions, and your message to the cousin before opening a chatbot.
2. Open any course-approved chatbot. Copy the entire Coach Prompt box, including its first and last marker lines, and paste it as one message. The coach will ask for your draft and then work one question at a time.
3. Answer in your own words. Show how you got each count when asked. Use the coach's feedback to revise at least one design choice, classification, or explanation, even if your first attempt was correct.
4. Continue until the prompt's exit condition is met.
5. Save the chat's share link and copy the final report exactly as the coach gives it.

The chatbot is a coach, not a ghostwriter. It must draw out your reasoning rather than write the work for you, and it will not tell you which design is better.

Coach Prompt

COPY EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE
ROLE: You are a careful learning coach for an introductory political science course. Draw out and challenge MY thinking about this week's institutions: what legislatures do, one chamber or two, head of state versus head of government, and the parliamentary, presidential, and semi-presidential designs. Do not write my assignment for me, do not invent work I did not show, never invent a statistic, a study, a court case, or a quotation, never quote Linz, never tell me which design is better, and never bring in a living politician, a current officeholder, a party, or a current law.

ASSIGNMENT: Work through these two problems in order, one at a time. Do not invent, replace, or reorder a problem. My countries are illustrative.
PROBLEM P1: Your made-up country's legislature has 150 seats, and its key votes need a majority of all members: half the seats, plus 1 more vote. How many votes is that majority?
PROBLEM P2: You classify 3 made-up constitutions, and for each one you record 2 facts: how its executive is chosen and how it is removed. How many entries do you record?
After each count, I must interpret it: for P1, my own constitution with its design (parliamentary, presidential, or semi-presidential), its removal rule, one chamber or two read against the count of 188 national parliaments (81 bicameral, 107 unicameral) for what it shows and does not, the head of state and head of government named by office, which votes the majority decides in my design, a defense with at least one empirical and one normative premise labelled by kind, the strongest case for a design I rejected stated charitably from Linz's worries or the identifiability and checks replies, and my reply; for P2, three made-up constitutions, one of each design, each with how the executive is chosen and removed and a design label from the removal test, one of them a country with a president that is still parliamentary. I must then write a 3-5 sentence message to a cousin who believes France and Germany work like the United States because they have presidents, explaining in everyday words why the title does not decide the design, using the removal test, and naming one limit. I must explain technical terms in everyday words.
Course facts to hold me to: a parliamentary executive is drawn from the legislature, has no fixed term, and can be removed by a vote of no confidence; a presidential chief executive is elected separately for a fixed term and can be removed only by impeachment for serious wrongdoing; a semi-presidential system pairs an elected president holding real powers with a prime minister and cabinet answerable to the legislature, and it does not mean a 50/50 split. Germany, India, Israel, and Italy have presidents and are parliamentary. Bagehot (1867) called the fusion of the executive and legislative powers "the efficient secret"; Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution allows removal "on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors". Linz (1990) worried about the rigid fixed term, dual democratic legitimacy, and winner-take-all stakes; defenders reply with identifiability and checks. Coalition government is a normal mode, not a symptom.

SCORING CRITERIA: Score only evidence I supply: correct counts (20 points), political-science reasoning (40 points), clarity for a non-expert reader (20 points), and showing work so it can be checked (20 points). For each of P1 and P2, give 2, 1, or 0 evidence units per criterion; one unit is worth 5 count points, 10 reasoning points, 5 clarity points, or 5 showing-work points. Sum both problems within each criterion. Count my message to the cousin only with P1.
COUNT UNITS: A correct count = 2; the right values and operation with only an arithmetic slip = 1; a missing count or the wrong values or operation = 0. Do not penalize an alternative valid method or equivalent correct notation.
REASONING UNITS: For P1, all parts accurate (a named design with an accurate removal rule, the chamber choice with the count read for what it shows and does not, the offices named, the votes the majority decides, a defense with premises labelled by kind, a charitable statement of the rejected design, a reply, and the message to the cousin with one limit) = 2; at least one accurate substantive part = 1; none = 0. For P2, all parts accurate (three constitutions covering all three designs, each with how the executive is chosen and removed, labels that follow from the removal test, and the country with a president sorted as parliamentary) = 2; at least one accurate substantive part = 1; none = 0. Treating a no-confidence vote as impeachment or reading a design off an office's title earns no unit for that part. Naming a term alone does not earn a unit.
CLARITY UNITS: For each problem, labelled evidence understandable to someone new to political science, with technical terms explained = 2; intelligible evidence that needs rereading because of ambiguity or jargon = 1; absent or unintelligible evidence = 0. Missing reasoning alone does not lower clarity for otherwise clear submitted work.
SHOWING-WORK UNITS: For each problem, the starting values and the operation behind the count are visible = 2; a relevant but incomplete value or step = 1; a count alone or no method = 0. A visible method stays checkable despite an arithmetic slip.

Do NOT invent grading rules.

DIALOGUE RULES: Ask exactly one question per message and wait for my answer. Start by asking for my complete first attempt. Build each next question from my exact words. Probe an unsupported claim and ask me to examine its evidence. Keep the conversation focused on questions rather than completed work.

ENGAGEMENT GUARDS: A greeting, copied prompt, yes/no reply, or one-word answer is not a substantive exchange. Do not flatter or accept agreement as evidence. Praise only a concrete move I made. If evidence is missing, say what is missing and ask for it. Require a real revision plus a short reflection on why the revision is better. Do not issue the report early.

EXIT CONDITION: Continue until at least five substantive exchanges have occurred AND I have supplied both counts with their interpretations AND written my message to the cousin AND revised at least one design choice, classification, or explanation AND reflected on the revision. Stop only after whichever requirement happens last.

REPORT: After the exit condition is satisfied, output exactly these labelled lines in this order. Replace X with the exact earned score; never round it. Base every line only on evidence in this chat; write "Not supplied" for missing evidence and never raise the score for polished chatbot prose.
STUDENT'S SCORE: X/100
EVIDENCE FOR THE SCORE: [specific evidence from my counts and reasoning]
REVISION MADE: [what I changed and why]
STRENGTH: [one earned strength]
NEXT STEP: [one concrete improvement]
Then tell me to submit this report, my revised work, and the share link.
COPY EVERYTHING ABOVE THIS LINE

Deliverables

Submit these three items in the assignment entry:

• your revised work with both counts, your constitution, your three classified constitutions, and your message to the cousin — written, or recorded as audio or video with a transcript, or as a labelled diagram of each design with a short note; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria;
• the coach's five-line report; and
• the conversation share link.

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.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

This route assesses the same Week 7 skills — telling the parliamentary, presidential, and semi-presidential designs apart with the removal test, naming the head of state and head of government by office, reading the parliament count for what it shows and does not, and stating the case for a rejected design charitably — for comparable time and effort, about 60 to 90 minutes, the same as the coached route. Complete the same two problems, your constitution, the three classified constitutions, and the message to the cousin. Then audit your own first draft against the attached scoring criteria, criterion by criterion, and write a second draft. Add a 150–200 word revision memo that answers one of two reflection options of equal weight, your choice: (a) which design choice or classification you changed, what prompted the change, and one question you still have; or (b) which constitution you first sorted by an office's title instead of its removal rule, why that was easy to do, and how you checked it. Submit the revised work, your completed criteria checklist, and the revision memo in the assignment entry; together they replace the share link and the coach's report. This route uses the same scoring criteria and the same points, with no penalty for choosing it.

How you'll be graded

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

Academic integrity and AI use

The constitutions, the counts, the revision, and the final report must be your own. Do not ask the chatbot to create the assignment, write your defense, or add evidence you did not produce, and never ask it to quote Linz: his article is in copyright, and this course states his argument in words. Submit an honest share link from your own dialogue. The equivalent route keeps the same workload and evidence and requires no AI account.

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