I created this paper assignment for my Government and Politics course, which provides a comparative examination of the political institutions and processes of a variety of political systems, with the United States as the primary case study. This is our introductory course within the major and also fulfills the social scientific analysis requirement of the core curriculum. Government and Politics is a Writing Intensive course in our university’s Writing Across the Curriculum program.

The purpose of this paper is to integrate course material within a focused exploration of strategies and recommendations from Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century, a report of the Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship published by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2020). This multi-step writing assignment provides students with the scaffolding to introduce a research writing process to undergradaute students.