Penn Professors on Writing in Political Science

Dr. Marc Meredith

About the Professor

Dr. Marc Meredith is an Assistant Professor in Penn’s Political Science Department. His research focuses mainly on American elections and voter behavior with a specific emphasis on establishing causality in real-world situations. Professor Meredith received his BA in Economics and Mathematical Methods in the Social Science from Northwestern University. He obtained his MA in Economics from Northwestern University, his MA in Political Science from Stanford University, and his Ph. D. in Political Economics from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. At Penn, he teaches Intro to American Politics; State and Local Politics; and Statistical Methods in Political Science.

Personal Writing Process

Dr. Meredith both begins and ends his process by writing an abstract and introduction. He believes these are the two most important elements of his writing process because "someone can read these and immediately know what is going to happen in the paper." Given the importance of these two sections, Dr. Meredith continuously reviews and revises these sections throughout his writing process.

Dr. Meredith explains, "From a writing perspective, I spend the most time by far writing the abstract and writing the introduction. I probably write them a hundred times. My experience from my own scientific reading is that I seldom read the whole paper. I focus on the first couple of pages. They let me know what is going to happen in the rest of the work."

Writing Tips

Common Errors

Dr. Meredith sees three common errors in student papers. One is organization. He explains, "You get the sense that a lot of students write the first paragraph and think, 'Okay what's the second paragraph going to be about.'" The second common error is that students do not begin with a strong proposition, and thus fail to make their argument clear. Another common error is to neglect to connect reasons and evidence to their proposition or theory. Meredith notes a problem with logical coherence: "[Students] might say, 'I think we should redistrict in this way and the sky is blue.' But it's not clear how the sky being blue relates to why we should redistrict."

Writing Assignments and Expectations

What Dr. Meredith looks for in student writing depends on the class. For his introductory level classes, he typically assigns shorter papers. He explains, “I really want to see whether students can come up with a hypothesis.” In his upper-level courses, Dr. Meredith assigns a research paper that incorporates statistics. Though he teaches a wide range of class levels, he feels “the ability to make concise arguments is something that is important” for anyone in Political Science.

Links

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Other professors in political science: Dr. Nancy Hirschmann, Dr. Anne Norton, Dr. John DiIulio