Looking ahead at dissertation writing

It is week 5 of the second term of my grad program. Despite the fact that we have 7 weeks of class left before essays are the primary concern, my peers and I have to have a dissertation proposal in by 21 February. In order to do that, at least for my own organization, I need draw upon my first sets of essays (areas of interest, since I selected the questions!) and ultimately my spring essay questions.

I've decided on my spring questions for American Foreign Policy, Political Theory of Human Rights and Social and Political Movements. In respective order:

• ‘Why, with a record so active and glorious, is American foreign policy held in such low esteem?’ (Walter Mead, Special Providence, p.30).
  
• Can humanitarian intervention be justified by appeal to human rights?
  
• ‘Movements that privilege identity ignore opportunities’ (Tarrow 1998). Discuss with reference to one or two specific movements.

These, along with my first essay questions:

1. Too what extent is there a conflict between the cosmopolitan and communitarian conceptions of global duty?
2. How should the powers of the European Parliament be developed to deal with the EU’s perceived democratic deficit?

* * * *

3.“Intervention by force might be the only means of enforcing the global humanitarian norms that have evolved in the wake of the Holocaust, but this fundamentally challenges the established principles of non-intervention and non-use of force” (N.J. Wheeler, 2000:1). Discuss.
4. ‘The slow and limited development of CFSP demonstrates the validity of liberal intergovernmentalism.’ Do you agree?
5. Are Nations Constructed? A comparison ethnosymbolist and constructivist theories on the origins of nations.

So - with those 8 choices over the past 6 months, I will begin the process of pin-pointing a dissertation title and 1 page research description