Literature Review

A literature review is an argument about the literature. It justifies your question and your basic approach to answering it (McMenamin 2006, 133). A list of summaries does not do this. Start with your puzzle and research question, since they tell you what to read and what to leave out.

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What a Review Does

Keep two versions of the review apart (McCauley and Ruggeri 2020, 28; McMenamin 2006, 133).

• Your working review is for you. It records everything you read, along with inconsistencies and your own ideas. It can be long and messy.
• The written review is for your reader. It includes only what the argument needs, so much of your working review will not appear in it.

In the written review, your task is to show that your question has more than one plausible answer, and that each answer comes from the literature. It also identifies the strengths and weaknesses of those answers (van der Maat 2026).

Do not let this stage take over the project. Students often spend too long writing about the literature and too little time on their own research (McMenamin 2006, 133).

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Finding Sources

1. Begin with existing overviews. Handbooks and review essays show how scholars divide the field (Knopf 2006, 129). Then read the most important sources yourself, because a summary cannot replace your own reading.
2. Search widely. Use Google Scholar, JSTOR, Web of Science, and the specialist databases for your field. The University Library can help you search.
3. Follow the citations. Check the bibliographies of the best studies, then see who has cited them since.
4. Then read beyond your topic. Theories and studies from other fields or cases can supply answers that the literature on your case does not (McMenamin 2006, 133–134). Students of the Indonesian military might read principal-agent theory, for example.

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Skimming and Reading

You cannot read everything closely, so decide what to read before you read it. Van der Maat (2026) suggests these steps.

1. Get the structure. Look at the abstract, section headers, tables, and figures.
2. Stop and ask. What do you now know, and what do you still need to know?
3. Find what you need. Look in the introduction and conclusion, then skim other sections.
4. Write it down. Summarize the argument and note where it fits in your project.

Read with your project in mind, since different things you find belong in different parts of the thesis (McMenamin 2006, 134).

What you look for	Where it goes
Questions and possible answers	Literature review
Useful methods	Methodology section
Relevant data	Your analysis

You should be able to state each source’s main claim in a sentence or two (Knopf 2006, 129). Record this in a Literature Review Matrix, including which answer the source supports.

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Group by Answer

Do not review one scholar after another. Group sources by the answer they support, in “schools of thought” that you create yourself (van der Maat 2026; Knopf 2006, 129). Scholars in a group need not share a label, and you supply the name.

The second version is shorter, and the topic sentence is yours. The sources support your claim, so the reader follows an argument.

When another structure fits better. Grouping by answer suits most why and how questions. Some projects need a different structure, but the review still has to make an argument.

Structure	When it fits
Theoretical	Your thesis compares how theories explain a phenomenon
Historical	How a debate or concept developed over time matters to your argument
Methodological	Your contribution depends on how earlier studies collected or analyzed evidence
Systematic	You need an exhaustive search with stated criteria (rare at thesis level)

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Weigh Each Answer

For each answer, say how it works and what supports it. Then look at where it is weak. Knopf (2006, 129–130) suggests sorting what you read by where scholars agree and where they disagree, noting any gaps. Then ask the same questions of each study.

• Assumptions. Are they plausible? Do different assumptions explain why authors disagree?
• Logic. Is the reasoning stated and persuasive, or is it asserted?
• Evidence. Is it accurate and on point? What has been left out?
• Methods. Do they suit the question, and were they applied correctly?

This is also where your contribution takes shape. You might show which answer holds under which conditions, or find evidence that could separate them.

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Writing the Review

These points follow van der Maat (2026) and apply to any part of a thesis.

• Name your answers, then explain them in that order. Use parallel phrasing, so that “Scholars offer three answers: social control, skills and productivity, and nation building” sets up three clear sections.
• One idea per paragraph. Open with a topic sentence that states the main idea, then support it. End with a sentence that links to the next point.
• Focus on the work, not the scholar. Write “Compulsory schools can, in principle, reach every North Korean (Lee 2024, 232)” and not “Myunghee Lee showed in her article on North Korean education that…”
• Cut comments about your own writing. Delete sentences such as “Having discussed social control, I now turn to skills.” The next topic sentence does this work.
• Keep background short. Give only the concepts and context the reader needs to follow the puzzle. If your opening already did this, add nothing.
• Be specific and direct. Use the active voice and keep one term for one thing. Replace vague links such as “relates to” with the actual relationship.

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Cite Precisely

Give page numbers for your claims, and check that each cited page says what you claim. Some courses will not mark a citation without a page number, and a cited page that does not support the claim can be treated as suspected fraud. Even where this is not a rule, the habit makes you check your sources. Working with AI explains how I check references and page citations.

You do not need prior agreement to brainstorm with AI, but the text and claims must be yours. Do not paste copyrighted sources into AI tools, as the Faculty guidelines prohibit this.

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Practice

The format follows an in-class assignment by van der Maat (2026), with new statements. They draw mainly on one review article to keep the exercise short. In your own review, read the original studies (Knopf 2006, 129).

1. Scholars long assumed that autocrats would avoid mass primary schooling because an educated public seemed dangerous to elites (Paglayan 2026, 536).
2. In data on 109 countries from 1820 to 2010, states began regulating primary education about six decades before democratization, and 70 percent of children gained access to primary schooling under autocracy (Paglayan 2021, cited in Paglayan 2026, 536).
3. Autocrats expanded schooling as a tool of indoctrination. Schools were meant to turn children into obedient subjects and so secure social and political control (Paglayan 2022a, 2024, cited in Paglayan 2026, 536).
4. Mass violence against the state can convince rulers that repression and redistribution will not keep order, which leads them to invest in schooling that instills loyalty (Paglayan 2022a, cited in Paglayan 2026, 534).
5. In principle, North Korea’s compulsory schools can reach every citizen with regime messages, and its textbooks teach the leader cult, socialism, nationalism, and collectivism (Lee 2024, 231–232).
6. Stalin’s Soviet Union and 1950s China expanded primary schooling in part to raise labor productivity for state-led industrialization (Paglayan 2021, cited in Paglayan 2026, 537).
7. Autocrats are more likely to invest in human capital when they are exposed to global economic competition or lack natural resources (Ansell 2010; Hong 2018, cited in Paglayan 2026, 537).
8. The architects of early state primary schooling in Europe and Latin America rarely gave human capital as a goal (Paglayan 2024, cited in Paglayan 2026, 533).
9. States facing a threat of territorial conquest, even weak states, tend to invest in a common language and patriotic education (Darden and Mylonas 2016, cited in Paglayan 2026, 535).
10. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century states used schools to build a shared national identity across populations with different languages and cultures (Darden and Grzymala-Busse 2006; Gellner 1983; Weber 1976, cited in Paglayan 2026, 535).
11. Early mass schooling often aimed at loyalty to the state and did not promote nationalism. Nation-building goals became more common later (vom Hau 2009; Paglayan 2024, cited in Paglayan 2026, 535).
12. Nation building through schools shapes identity most durably when it begins with the first spread of mass schooling (Darden and Grzymala-Busse 2006, cited in Paglayan 2026, 536).
13. People socialized under exclusionary autocracies support democracy more than people socialized under more inclusionary regimes (Neundorf et al. 2020, 1892).

Show one possible sorting

Answer	Statements	Counts against it
Social control	3, 4, 5	6
Skills and productivity	6, 7	8
Nation building	9, 10	11

Statements 1 and 2 set up the puzzle, so they belong in your opening. Statements 12 and 13 are about the effects of schooling or autocracy, not about why autocrats expand schooling, so set them aside. Other groupings can also work if each answer is a real rival.

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Sources

This page adapts for general use the approach Eelco van der Maat teaches in the MAIR program. The wording, statements, and examples are mine. My BAKS thesis seminar has a lecture on literature review types.

• Knopf, J. W. (2006). Doing a literature review. PS: Political Science & Politics, 39(1), 127–132. DOI: 10.1017/S1049096506060264. Start here.
• Lee, M. (2024). Authoritarianism at school: Indoctrination education, political socialisation, and citizenship in North Korea. Asian Studies Review, 48(2), 231–249. DOI: 10.1080/10357823.2023.2300631.
• McCauley, A., & Ruggeri, A. (2020). From questions and puzzles to research project. In L. Curini & R. Franzese (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Research Methods in Political Science and International Relations (pp. 26–43). Sage. DOI: 10.4135/9781526486387.n5.
• McMenamin, I. (2006). Process and text: Teaching students to review the literature. PS: Political Science & Politics, 39(1), 133–135. DOI: 10.1017/S1049096506060306.
• Neundorf, A., Gerschewski, J., & Olar, R.-G. (2020). How do inclusionary and exclusionary autocracies affect ordinary people? Comparative Political Studies, 53(12), 1890–1925. DOI: 10.1177/0010414019858958.
• Paglayan, A. S. (2026). Education as a political institution. Annual Review of Political Science, 29, 525–546. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-polisci-042623-034027. Open access.
• van der Maat, E. (2026). Literature review materials for Humanities-Based International Relations: seminar slides, explanation video, and submission form. MA International Relations, Leiden University. Unpublished course materials.

The studies named in the serial review example, and those marked “cited in Paglayan 2026,” are listed in that article’s bibliography.