Summary of the Paper
The ‘Why Did the Democrats Lose the South? Bringing New Data to an Old Debate’ paper by Ilyana Kuziemko and Ebonya Washington provides an exploration of why there was a political shift by the Southerners from the Democratic Party. Further, the paper digs deeper to assess the extent of shift that was driven by the racially conservative whites’ reaction to the Democrats’ 1960s Civil Rights initiatives as opposed to other changes in the period. By a large extent, the researchers concluded that civil rights were an important cause of this shift especially after reliance on the qualitative sources.
Main Comments and Suggestions
The paper’s quality was beyond average, and the flow is irresistible. The discussion flows from a review of the debate between more qualitative ‘civil-rights-as-cause’ and more quantitative ‘other-trends-as-cause’ sides of the literature, through the introduction of the Gallup microdata and racial attitudes to the justification of the used of the Spring of 1963 as the critical moment that separates the ‘pre-' and ‘post-periods' (Kuziemko & Ebonya, 63). After this, the paper provides the results of the triple-differences analysis as well as the high-frequency analysis on Kennedy’s approval. Following this, a comprehensive discussion on other arguments for the political shift other than civil rights is provided followed by some concluding thoughts and remarks. The basis of the research paper forms around a very realistic argument; the lack of data on racial attitudes and political preferences spanning the 1960s Civil rights era (Kuziemko & Ebonya, 63). The paper uncovers and employs such data to make sensible conclusions towards answering the main research question. Even so, some loopholes still exist. The authors can use the comments and suggestions made in this reportcan be used by the authors for the betterment of their work.
Theory-based Review of Previous Works
A research paper of this kind should have a section providing the details of the works of other individuals that is closely related to that of the author. The researchers are expected to provide a comprehensive literature review of several earlier researchers whose work revolves around the same research question as that the other. Theories revolving around such work should as well be reviewed with clear details of the existing research gaps derived from the areas that such researchers failed to explore. The research gaps should be expressed in a statement that expounds on why the authors find their work different from those of other researchers and what motivated them to conduct such research despite the efforts made by others.
History of Democrats in the South
Having in mind that the topic of the paper is ‘Why Did the Democrats Lose the South? Bringing New Data to an Old Debate’, one would expect that a research paper would provide a detailed historical background detailing on the growth of the Democratic Party in the South. The researchers are expected to provide an overview of how the Southerners joined the Democratic Party, what motivated them to join and how well the party contributed to economic growth in the South. A clear picture of the relationship between the Southerners and the Democratic Party should be outlined. History should be used to create a picture in the reader’s mind on how the situation was before during and after the political shift from the party.
The paper omits most of the essential historical details relating to the political shift and provides such information from a shallow approach. The historical background provided is not sufficient enough to move the reader from the unknown to the known. To make the matters worse, the paper lacks both a sufficient historical background and literature review. As such, the reader is placed in a considerably poor position as far as understanding the details previous information relating to the same subject. Moreover, without a clear review of the past, the reader is in a considerably poor position to comprehensively understand the work of the researcher, the discoveries and their significance towards solving the various societal, political problem. By incorporating the recommendations of this comment into their work, the authors shall place the readers in a better position to easily comprehend the work and apply it in real life situations.
Theoretical Dominance over Presentation
Ideally, most research paper has more theoretical work than the presentation. Even so, the theory should not dominate presentations to an excessive extent. As much as the theoretical discussions are important in papers of this kind especially in the formation of their basis, presentations are as well important as they provide a superlative manner of data provision that is easily comprehendible by the reader within a short time. Presentations are essential as they summarize long theoretical descriptions into single, simple and easy to understand figures that are reader friendly. Among the main presentation tools utilized include tables, figures, charts and graphs where data is comprehensively summed up. It is well evident that readers experience an easier time in comprehending the author’s work when it is summarized using data presentation methods than when provided purely in theoretical form.
Over-detailed Conclusion
Typically, professional papers are expected to follow the tenets of professional writing. If the subtopic of a particular section is ‘conclusion’, the content of the section should only provide that which is limited to summarizing and wrapping up the whole paper. Any other provision that is beyond the professional provisions of such a section would only be identified as being beyond the scope of the expected content or over-detailing. In the conclusion of the paper, rather than wrap up things, the authors went to the extent of providing completely new information that had not been mentioned in the paper’s content. The conclusion has three paragraphs which make it considerably long considering that the paper is not too long to guarantee such a long conclusion. A conclusion should be, entirely, meant to summarize the author’s argument.
In the paper instead of introducing bits of new content, the authors should have reminded the reader of how effectively they have proven the thesis by summarizing the points made in the preceding body parts. Moreover, the authors made a professional mistake when they made an attempt to argue these points in the conclusion. There was no need to re-argue such points as a comprehensive argument had already been provided in the papers content. The re-argument unnecessarily increased the quantity rather than the quality of the paper. The authors should seek to review the content of the section identified as the ‘conclusion’ and seek to reiterate these points and demonstrate how they directly support or address the thesis. Moreover, the conclusion should as well provide the authors with an opportunity to reiterate the thesis.
Minor Comments and Suggestions
One of the most evident minor comment is the referencing format mix-up. The format used in developing the bibliography is unprofessional. The author’s names have been fully capitalized but the arrangement of the author’s name, the year, city and publisher is that of the APA format. This creates a quagmire as to whether the authors have used the APA or the Harvard style in completing their work. Reviewing this section would be of great importance.
The first sentence of the last paragraph on page three reads: ‘We complement this main result with a variety of additional evidence corroborating the central role of racial views in the decline of the white Southern Democrat' (Kuziemko & Ebonya, 3). This sentence has a grammatical error in that it repeats itself by using ‘this’ and ‘main result’ at the same time.
The paper’s abstract is yet to get to the standards of what would be regarded as a professionally acceptable abstract. The abstract fails to provide the reader with a reasonable overview of the paper’s content. A reasonable abstract is one that informs the reader, in brief, the research focus, the data sources, data reconstruction methods, results and findings as well as the key conclusions and recommendations of the paper.
On the third paragraph on page 33, a sentence reads, "Being against ensuring fair employment opportunities for Negroes predicts both intra-generational defection (Kuziemko & Ebonya, 63). The sentence is too wordy and contains grammatical errors. It is recommended that the authors should review this sentence.
Works Cited
Kuziemko, Ilyana, and Ebonya Washington. 'Why Did The Democrats Lose The South? Bringing New Data to an Old Debate'. 1st ed. 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge: NBER, 2015. Print.
