I need an explanation for this Political Science question to help me study.

You are required to complete a full research design for this class. You will think of an original research question and propose hypotheses, ending with a plan for how you would carry out this research. The research design will take form over three separate submissions (research question and literature review, theory and hypotheses, research design)

Paper #1: Research Question + Literature Review

In this paper, you will propose an original research question based in state politics and examine the existing literature on this topic. You are not yet discussing your theory or proposing hypotheses. Instead, you will justify your research question and synthesize the literature it in a comprehensible manner. A good literature review clarifies where the knowledge on some topic needs to be filled out.