MLSC 507. An Introduction to the Social Sciences and Social Systems.

Winter 2007

Written Assignment 6. Due March 2.

Introduction

Last week one of the readings was an article by Thomas Friedman. He proposed what he calls "the first law of petropolitics." Friedman's argument certainly sounds like it makes sense. But does it accurately describe what takes place in petrolist states?

To shed some light on this question, this assignment you are going to examine the relationship between the global price of oil and the level of democracy in a county. This spreadsheet contains all the data you will need to do the assignment.

What To Do

You should do 2 graphs. You will plot the democracy score of a country versus the global price of a barrel of oil. Unlike Friedman, you should plot the two variables against one another. The horizontal axis should be the price of oil, and the vertical axis should be the democracy score. So the axes of your graph should look like this: 
   +10|
D     |
e     |
m S   |
o c   |
c o   |
r r   |
a e   |
c     |
y     |
  -10 +------------------------------------------
      0   10   20   30   40   50   60  70  80  90
                     Oil Price

You have each been assigned one graph to do. The other graph you do should be for a different country. Note that there are countries in the spreadsheet that have not been assigned. For your second graph you may choose a country that has been assigned to someone else, or you may pick a country from the spreadsheet that has not been assigned to anyone. The table below gives your assigned graph.

Student Country
Andaverde, Velia Chad
Boyle, George Egypt
Cabello, Jesus David Equatorial Guinea
Cervantes, Lauren Iran
Corley, Kimberly Nigeria
Donaldson, Cynthia Russia
Fernandez, Carlos Saudi Arabia
Garcia, Suzanne Sudan
Jenkins, Russell Venezuela
Jones, Wanda L. Chad
Sattler, Emily Egypt
Shone, Lesley Equatorial Guinea
Sturgeon Cabello, Bertha Iran

You should turn in the two graphs. You should also clearly state whether each graph supports Friedman's argument or not.

If you have access to a piece of software that will plot the graphs for you, you are welcome to use it. But unless you have access to software that can do graphs (and already know how to use it) now is not the time to learn. You are free to use graph paper to do your plots by hand.

A few tips for producing a good graph:

Data Sources

The democracy scores are taken from the Polity4 dataset, downloaded from http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/polity/. The democracy score is created by subtracting the country's autocracy score (autoc) from its democracy score (democ). This score can range from -10 through 10.

The price of a barrel of oil is expressed in constant 2004 dollars. Data are taken from Oil: Crude oil prices 1861 - 2004. This is a spreadsheet that is part of BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2005 (statistitical_review_full_report_workbook_2005.xls). This was downloaded from www.bp.com.

Honor Code.

This assignment is pledged. You may not consult anyone else in the class. One exception: someone may help you with software to do the graphs. If you have any question about how the Honor Code applies to this assignment, please consult me.