如何準備北美大學的政治學博士資格考試？

請各位在北美大學裡攻讀political science PhD 的前輩分享一下你們備考comprehensive exam或qualifying exam的經驗，尤其是關於如何在短時間內消化大量文獻，以及如何進行批判性寫作的經驗。萬分感謝！

貼一個我們系老師寫的備考指南

A
Short Guide to Answering Prelims Questions

Andrew
Roberts

In my short experience reading answers to
prelims, I』ve noticed that students don』t seem to know what kind of answers
they should give to the prelims questions. The thoughts below are intended to
give you an idea of what the readers (and creators) of the exam are looking for.
I』m hoping that if you know what we are looking for, it will be easier for you
to write the kinds of answers that will get you good marks.

1. What Is the Question Asking For: Every
question on the prelim is intended to reference a major body of knowledge. It
is essential that you determine which body of knowledge the question is
referring to. In some cases, the question tells you exactly what literature it
wants you to discuss (e.g., Discuss the new institutionalist literature). In
other cases, the question will pose a concrete problem (e.g., What』s wrong with
African states?). In these latter cases, it is important that you determine the
relevant body of literature.

In comparative politics, there are a
limited number of main bodies of literature. You can probably list off most of
them without thinking: i.e., state formation, democratization, economic reform,
institutions, revolutions, classes, development, etc. Your first task is to figure
out which one is being invoked in the question. Once you』ve done this, a good
next step in preparing the answer is to make a list of the major thinkers or
theoretical schools dealing with this literature. If I saw a question dealing
with the state and development, for example, I might jot down a quick list of
Gerschenkron, Polanyi, modernization theory, dependency, rent-seeking,
neo-liberalism, Peter Evans, etc.

It is essential that you correctly identify
the body of knowledge. If you unsure
what the correct literature is, you should try a different question. The
worst possible outcome is that you write about a literature not relevant to the
question. The reader of your answer will give you no credit for your effort. It
will appear that you don』t know the intended literature at all and are trying
to pull a fast one on us by reproducing a canned answer rather than answering
the question that we (in our infinite wisdom) have decided is good for you. It
is also impossible to grade an essay that is responding to a different and
unknown question.

2. Demonstrate Your Knowledge. The purpose
of the prelim is for you to prove that you have spent the last two years
reading intensively. You need to show us that you have done and understood this
reading. This does not mean that you should drop names helter-skelter. You
should only cite literature relevant to the question at hand. (You get zero
points for citing irrelevant literature and you will have wasted part of your
valuable time.)

It also does not mean that saying something
like 「Tilly and state formation」 is enough. Whenever you mention an author, you
need to provide a quick summary of his or her ideas. We want to see that you
understand a work, not just that you can correctly place it. This always means
discussing the author』s dependent variable and the independent variables that
explain it. It usually also means talking about his methods and evidence and
just as importantly the weaknesses (and strengths) of the argument. In many
cases, this will require you to define your terms. Don』t assume that a term
like 『institution』 or 『democracy』 can be included without a definition (or
several definitions). If you do not do these things, then it is not clear to
the reader that you have actually read and processed the work.

The nice thing about this part of the exam
is that you can prepare most of it in advance. In your head, you can prepare a
little Charles Tilly box where you put his theories and criticisms of them. If
Tilly is a relevant part of the question you have chosen, then simply transfer
this little box to the paper. Of course this is not all you are doing (you are
also making a coherent argument: see below), but it is a major portion of it. And
it should be a relatively simple and painless part of it. Indeed, most of your
studying will be preparing cheat sheets summarizing the main bodies of
literature. Get together with other graduate students and prepare these
together.

One other caveat. The knowledge you
demonstrate is not detailed empirical knowledge of certain countries. The main
empirical knowledge you need is fairly broad brush. Proper names and dates are
rarely very useful. The thing we are looking for is that you are adept at
dealing with arguments, not that you know a lot of facts. (Personal confession:
I don』t know a lot of facts.) Virtually all of the important facts you need are
included in the political science literature you have read.

3. Make an Argument. Of course, you cannot
simply write three literature reviews. You must also answer the questions that
are posed. While some questions do ask for glorified literature reviews (they
may ask you to evaluate the successes and failures of a given literature),
others require something more. Typically, the questions will ask you to apply a
given literature to a specific political phenomenon. You might be asked whether
the state formation literature can explain the development of the EU or whether
the early democratization literature can explain later democratization.

The key thing to remember here is that your
essay must make an argument. In the first paragraph, you must state your brief
answer to the question as posed. This is your thesis statement. A potential
thesis statement might sound like this: 「In most respects the transitions in
Eastern Europe confirm the theories generated from transitions in Latin
America.」 If your answer does not have a thesis statement, then you will
automatically lose points. Do not begin
writing until you have a thesis statement. It will not simply emerge as you
write. At the end of your essay, you must again summarize or recapitulate this
argument. A map of the essay is not the equivalent of a thesis.

Remember that your argument is not going to
be a new and original idea. It is impossible for you to come up with a new and
original idea in the seven hours allotted to you. Even if you did, this is not
the place for it. What you will do is show that you have understood and
synthesized the given literature. Your thesis will probably be something as
mundane as 「Interest group theories are superior to institutional ones in
explaining economic reform.」 It may not even be 100% correct. A prelim is not
the place for splitting hairs. (You can do that for the rest of your
professional life after the prelims.) A prelim is the place for taking large
chunks of literature and making large claims about them. Naturally you can and
should make the relevant qualifications. Don』t go overboard with
generalizations. But don』t let this obscure your big point. Your argument will
show that you have not just read the relevant literature, but have made sense
of it.

4. Practice. Before you take the prelim,
you should practice doing these three steps on all of the prelim questions over
the last five years. This is not hard. Look at the question and ask yourself:
(1) What is the literature being referenced here? (2) What are the important
thinkers and schools of thought within this literature? What are their
strengths and weaknesses? How would I classify them? (3) What is my one
sentence answer to the question? That is, what would my thesis statement be? How
would I organize the essay around the major thinkers and schools that I have
identified?

You should quickly become adept at doing
this. If it is difficult, you may not have read enough literature. If you feel
you have read enough, but still can』t get a handle on all the diverse ideas,
you might want to look through review articles in journals like World Politics, Comparative Politics, and The
Annual Review of Political Science. You might also ask older graduate
students for copies of their answers to previous years』 questions.