Week 14 — Three Lenses on One Charter: A Made-Up Council and a Spiral at Sea — 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Traditional alternative (no AI), unpublished. In the course this is a separate assignment that ships unpublished beside the adaptive assignment: same objective, no AI.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 13 of the term — read the U.N. Charter's sovereign-equality article through three lenses on a made-up council, trace a security dilemma on a made-up lake, and explain to a roommate why a world with no government above the states is not a world of chaos.

This week you learned anarchy in the discipline's sense, the security dilemma, the three paradigms of realism, liberalism, and constructivism, collective security against an alliance, the United Nations in outline, and why states mostly comply with international law. Week 2 gave you external sovereignty, and Week 13 compared cases on a plan; this assignment puts the first to work on a founding text and the second on two made-up states. In this assignment you work two short count problems, interpret each one, and explain to someone who has never studied international relations why a world with no government above the states is not a world of chaos. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Political Analysis Workshop practice the same ideas from other angles.

The task

You will read one real text and two made-up cases. The U.N. Charter is real; the regional council, the two lake states, and every number attached to them are illustrative. No real person, current officeholder, current war, or current conflict belongs in your work.

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

A made-up regional council has 13 seats, and 4 of them are permanent seats whose holders each have a veto. How many seats are elected?
Two made-up neighboring states each start with 6 patrol boats on a shared lake, and each adds 3 boats in each of 2 rounds of answering the other. How many patrol boats are on the lake at the end?

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

Problem 1, the made-up council. Read the council's design on the design layer: who holds a permanent seat, who is elected, and what one permanent member's no vote does. Then read the U.N. Charter's Article 2(1), "The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.", through all three lenses, one sentence each: what a realist, a liberal, and a constructivist would each point to. Say how the made-up council's veto fits or strains sovereign equality. Suppose the council's charter commits every member to act against any state that attacks another, members included: say whether that makes it collective security or an alliance, and why. Label at least one of your premises empirical and one normative.
Problem 2, the spiral at sea. Name the pattern the two lake states fall into and explain why it is structural, not moral. Show that the ratio between the two fleets is the same at the start and at the end. Then suppose the two states later sign a treaty that caps their boats and both keep it for years: give one explanation per paradigm for why they keep it (reciprocity and reputation; institutions; internalized norms), and state the limit on enforcement against a powerful state.

Explain it to a non-expert

Your roommate glances at your notes and says, "International relations is anarchy, so the world must be total chaos." Write a 3–5 sentence message to your roommate that explains, in everyday words, what anarchy means in international relations, why most dealings between states are still peaceful, and names one limit of order without a world government. Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one good answer is possible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a volunteer explaining to a new member how a neighborhood's free little library works with no librarian. Model answer: "Nobody runs this book box, and nobody can make you return a book. Most people bring books back anyway, because they want the box to have something good next time and because their neighbors can see who takes what. The limit is that nothing stops one person from emptying it, so the box works only while most people keep the habit."

Use that pattern for your message to your roommate, 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 reading, classification, or explanation. Then add a short reflection (3–4 sentences) on one of two options of equal weight, your choice: (a) which reading, classification, or explanation you changed and why the new version is better; or (b) where you first ranked one paradigm as the winner or read anarchy as chaos, and how you caught it.

Deliverables

Submit a single analysis file containing:

the two counts, each with the values and the operation shown;
your council analysis (the design-layer read, Article 2(1) through all three lenses, the veto against sovereign equality, the pact classified with a reason, and premises labelled by kind);
your spiral and treaty analysis (the security dilemma named and explained as structural, the unchanged ratio, one compliance explanation per paradigm, and the enforcement limit);
your message to the roommate; and
your revision note with the reflection option you chose.

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 sketch of the two fleets round by round 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 readings, and the writing yourself, without any AI tool. Use only the numbers the assignment gives you, quote the Charter only in its pinned Article 2(1), bring in no real treaty or war, and keep every example free of living politicians and current officeholders. 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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