1 hour writing, 4 hours reading/ruminating, 1 hour administrivia.

More catching up today. I finished going through old dissertations to get ideas on structure. The one from yesterday continues to be the best one, but it's interesting how many different ways there are to skin this particular cat. It really depends on the nature of your topic, and what elements you need to explain first. Since I'm exploring a relatively little-understood topic - the role of police systems in shaping the types of armed challenges regimes are likely to face - I'll need to spend a good amount of time upfront defining "police systems" and talking about what they look like comparatively, before focusing in on the Colombia case. My type of topic calls for a structure where you do a lot of explaining and providing of background upfront, before getting into the analysis. With other topics that are more squarely in an existing stream of analysis, you can briefly recap and dive right in; I need to give my readers more background.

I got a great set of comments on my outline from DK (thanks!), and have begun incorporating them. She also suggested that I may want to go to the American Political Science Association conference in Chicago to meet with people working in areas that interest me. I'm already going to the Latin American Studies Association conference the following week, but the suggestion motivated me to take a look at the APSA program, and there are indeed a number of people who'll be there that it would be good to meet and talk with. I think I may do it - especially if Cathy can come with, as it's over Labor Day weekend.

That's all for today! Tomorrow I'll be finishing up a new draft of my outline to send to my advisors. Wish me luck!