You are to prepare a country study of two states that you chose at the beginning of the term. These states must be from different categories (liberal democracies, post communist and communist states, new democracies, less developed states, Islamic states, or marginal states). For example, you may choose to research France (a liberal democracy) and Guinea-Bissau (a marginal state), but you should not choose two states from the same category. Your instructor may want to suggest countries that would make suitable pairings for the study. You will need to examine several factors, all of which can be found in the CIA World Factbook located at http://www.cia.gov. There are additional mega sites that offer information on individual states, such as the University of Texas Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC) at http://lanic.utexas.edu and Columbia University’s Comparative Studies Portal at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/lehman/guides/compol.html#Country.