So, I'm currently enrolled for POS 492 -- Honors Directed Study, which I get 3 hours of upper-division honors credit for.  Coincidentally, the 492 class is designed to be followed by 493 -- Honors Thesis, which I need to write in order to graduate with honors.

So, I've been having a bit of an extended brain fart since the semester got back in; I haven't been able to focus onto an idea that I could do for political science.  Although it would have been cool to do an interdisciplinary thesis (something in psychology as well), I don't have enough background in psych yet (or so I feel).  So I need to focus on poli sci.

I've had a few thoughts.  The first was this question --

What factors are common among children who grow up and become terrorists?  Is there a way we can predict whether or not a child will become a terrorist?  If so, what can we do to change those factors enough to prevent it?

While I thought that was a cool topic, and also fairly original (an article database search yielded only 19 results, of which perhaps 2 were relevant), it really lies in applied child psychology, which is not something I have research background in.

My latest, though, I think I'm going to run with.  It seeks to answer this question --

Much of the US policy regarding Iraq stems from the notion that a free Iraq will stabilize the Middle East.  What empirical evidence suggests that a regime change stabilizes a region?  Is it possible to use this empirical evidence to predict what will happen in Iraq?

I was thinking I could evaluate such factors about the pre-changed regime as annual economic growth, the type of regime (dictatorship, democracy, communist, etc.), and the type of change (external, internal peaceful transition, or internal coup); and the results in the new regime, such as annual economic growth over ten or fifteen years, number of internal and external military conflicts, and inter-state relations.

What do you all think?

I'd say it's an excellent idea. It's definitely a subject which should be relatively simple to research because of it's immediacy, and the impact of said research should also be good because of that same immediacy. I'd go for it, at least on an interim basis.

Update:

My director thinks that the thesis is too broad for an undergraduate, and I don't want to bitch with him over it as he may be a reader or a committee member for my Master's thesis in a year and a half or so.  So I'm going to focus on the changes in Taiwan and the ROK for now, primarily defending my measures and the statistical methods I choose to use.  :)

Thanks for the support Zak!  You're like a nut cup!

Er.....  thanks!