7.5 The Main Part: Suitable Method
The Method of Your Analysis Has to Be Suitable
In the Main Part, you need to do the following:
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Select and Explain your Method
Depending on the type of topic and the approach taken, you may need to begin the Main Part by explaining how your research was conducted and how it is presented in the present paper. In this section, you may also need to justify certain limitations of your paper, for example why one research method was chosen and not another, why the analysis focuses on a certain time frame and does not include times before or after, and/or why certain related questions are not covered in your thesis. Ideally, the explanations should be scientific, i.e. persuasive, and not along the lines of "... for lack of time" or "since I did not have access..." etc.
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Elaborate on the Hypothesis
In the Introduction, you only briefly outlined the historic and factual context of your research. This will now have to be elaborated by providing more information, in particular
- how the problem evolved in the first place and what has already been done to address it and why that did not work = Review of previous actual attempts at solving the problem and how and why they failed to produce any results or at least comprehensive and satisfactory results;
- what other researchers have suggested how to address the problem, even if their suggestions have not yet been implemented, and why they would not (fully or adequately) resolve the problem and, therefore, don't actually deserve trying = Critical analysis of pre-existing art. In law this includes all kinds of pre-existing sources, such as legislative materials, case-law, soft law like green papers or guidelines, conventions and treaties, private contracts or agreements, as well as all kinds of secondary sources, in particular academic writing.
- which innovative proposals you are making and why they should be better at resolving the problem = Development of new and original proposals for the resolution of the problem and explanation how and why they would seem to be more promising at providing a comprehensive and satisfactory resolution.
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Switch from Descriptive Style to Analytical Style
In the Introduction, you gave a brief look ahead to the Main Part of your paper. Now you have to do the actual analysis. The three elements above can often be the three main chapters in the Main Part of your thesis but your style now has to be critical and analytical. We will discuss this below when we talk about how and where to set the priorities (Four Levels of Analysis), the Construction and Deconstruction of Arguments, and different approaches to Textual Interpretation of primary sources.