The sun is going down upon the sacred cow

In the time-honoured spirit of grad students everywhere, I have an outline!

To be entirely accurate, I have two outlines. My essay is currently somewhere in a state of transition from the first to the second of the following.

1. 1. Describe the three strands - 1000 words
   2. Critique each strand in turn - 1000 words
   3. General criticisms - 1000 words


2. 1. Describe and critique each strand in turn - 2000 words
   2. General criticisms - 1000 words

I'm at 35% of my word count and around 15% of my argument. This isn't too much cause for concern - for one thing I've had lots of practice in the past at cutting out unnecessary words, and for another I don't have as much to say about strands 2 and 3 as I did about strand 1.

Some weeks ago I may have indicated that political process theory is fine and doesn't need any fixing, and therefore that critiquing it would be difficult. I now wish to rescind that statement. Political process theory is extremely limiting by virtue of being unnecessarily narrow in conception, and critiquing it isn't really difficult at all.