Peer Review Instructions

Provide comments on your assigned paper. When providing feedback on colleagues’ work, I like the RAP model here. Most importantly, in this model, “focus time and effort on the highest points of leverage for improving the document.”

The goal is to make suggestions that improve the final product at the end of the semester.

In addition to other comments, please make sure to provide feedback on these three items:

1. Does the paper make a clear descriptive claim? It might be helpful to review the key readings on descriptive research here, such as Gerring (2012), Holmes et al. (2024), and de Kadt and Grzymala-Busse (2025).
2. Does the paper make a compelling empirical argument for that descriptive claim?
3. Does the paper clearly explain the substantive/theoretical/normative importance of that descriptive claim? It’s important that the defense not rely on any assumed/implied causal relationship among the variables.