Mia Burgener Academic Skills Midterm

Midterm: A Systematic Literature Search for My Literature Search

for My CWH Research Question.

Date: 30 September 2023

Name: Mia Burgener

ID: i6356893

Title: A systematic literature search for my CWH research Question

Tutor: Olaoluwa Duro-Bello

Course Coordinators: Angus Foster and Julia van Zijl

Course: SKI1008 Introduction to Academic Skills I

Faculty: University College Maastricht

Word Count: 2309 words

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Mia Burgener Academic Skills Midterm

Search Strategy Overview:

My research question for Contemporary World History is: ‘’To what extent did the influences of Cold
War politics and American foreign policy result in the state collapse of the Democratic Republic of
Congo under the presidency of Mobutu Sese Seko?’’. My research question is looking at the role of
the Cold War and America’s Foreign Policy during this period had on the country of the Democratic
Republic of Congo, specifically the relationship between the US and Mobutu Sese Seko, and how this
may have caused the state collapse of the country. Before choosing suitable databases for my topic, I
came up with relevant terms for my key concepts.

Key Cold War American Democratic Mobutu Sese Seko

foreign Republic of Congo
Concepts
policy

Relevant Terms Geopolitical US foreign DRC Mobutu

Standoff policy

East-West American Congo President Mobutu

conflict diplomacy

Soviet- Washingtons Zaire Joseph-Desire Mobutu

American foreign
conflict policy

Post-World US global DR Congo Dictator Mobutu

War II Rivalry strategy

For the Literature Search, I used 2 databases, EBSCO – a large database which includes the relevant
database to my topic SocINDEX, as this sub database contains more sociologically based journal
articles, and Jstore – an interdisciplinary, but humanities-focused database. These two databases
provided me with useful articles that had sufficient resources for a historical based research
question.

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Mia Burgener Academic Skills Midterm

Jstore:
First, I searched for each component individually and looked at the results of the key terms and the
relevant terms. After doing these key terms search, it showed me that the key concepts for my
research question were easily found in this database and there was a large number of results for the
topics related to my research question. I then searched for each concept and relevant terms using
the Boolean operator ‘’OR’’ and found that for some, using this tool produced less results than
wanted, but for others was effective in reducing the results such that they were more concise. I was
unable to enlist the tool of truncations and wildcards as my terms were not broad enough to do so. I
then used the tool of selecting which terms I could enlist the tool of selecting wanting it in the item
title. This helped narrow my search down to get relevant articles for the most important key terms in
my search. Eventually I found that by narrowing my search down even further, less relevant articles
were produced and thus concluded that I had exhausted this database. I found a substantial number
of relevant articles by enlisting the tools in this database, which I have included in my references list.
Below is the documentation of my literature search.

Research Question: To what extent did the influence of Cold War politics and American Foreign
Policy result in the state collapse of the Democratic Republic of Congo under the Presidency of
Date Database Search Terms Notes/ Comments

30/09/2023 Jstore Cold War 501.909 results. Therefore, this key term is very
extensively covered by journal articles in this
database

30/09/2023 Jstore Geopolitical 1.540 results. This relevant term does not produce as
Standoff many articles as the key term ‘Cold War’.

30/09/2023 Jstore East-West 333.596 results. This relevant term produces a lot of
conflict articles on this database.

30/09/2023 Jstore Soviet- 41.937 results. This relevant term produces moderate
American results in this database.
conflict

30/09/2023 Jstore Post- World 38.426 results. Again, this relevant term produces
War II Rivalry moderate results in this database

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Mia Burgener Academic Skills Midterm

30/09/2023 Jstore American 731.891 results. This key term produces extensive
foreign policy results in this database.

30/09/2023 Jstore US foreign 801.485 results. Again, this relevant term produces
policy extensive results in this database, even more than
the key term of ‘American foreign policy’.
30/09/2023 Jstore American 150.296 results. This relevant term once again
diplomacy produces a significant number of articles in this
database.

30/09/2023 Jstore Washingtons 37.891 results. This relevant term produces smaller
foreign policy results in this database
30/09/2023 Jstore US global 386.294 results. This relevant term produces a lot of
strategy results in this database. This indicates that this
database is a good choice with regards to these
specific key terms and relevant terms.
30/09/2023 Jstore Democratic 34.017 results. This key term produces moderate
Republic of results within this database.
Congo
30/09/2023 Jstore DRC 15.157 results. Again, this relevant term produces a
smaller number of results by using this specific
database.
30/09/2023 Jstore Congo 164.917 results. This relevant term produces a
significantly higher number of results in comparison
to the other options of this key concept/term.
30/09/2023 Jstore Zaire 42.588 results. This relevant term produces, again, a
moderate number of results in this database.
30/09/2023 Jstore DR Congo 48.807 results. This relevant term produces like the
others, a moderate number of results in this database

30/09/2023 Jstore Mobutu Sese 1.773 results. This key term produces a comparatively
Seko low number of results in this database.

30/09/2023 Jstore Mobutu 6.463 results. This relevant term produces again a
low number of results in this database

30/09/2023 Jstore President 4.437 results. This relevant term also produces a low
Mobutu number of results in this database.

30/09/2023 Jstore Joseph- 1.218 results. This relevant term produces, like the
Desire others, a low number of results in this database.
Mobutu
30/09/2023 Jstore Dictator 835 results. This relevant term produces a low
Mobutu number of results in this database.

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Mia Burgener Academic Skills Midterm

30/09/2023 Jstore Cold war OR 2 results. Neither of these are relevant so therefore
geopolitical using the ‘’OR’’ Boolean tool with all relevant terms
standoff OR does not produce relevant results in this case.
East-West
conflict OR
Soviet-
American
conflict OR
Post-World
War II Rivalry

30/09/2023 Jstore Cold war OR 729.876 results. This combination of the terms
East – West produced an extensive number of results. I chose
Conflict these two terms to combine using the “’OR’’ Boolean
tool as the two terms in the individual search of each
had produced the largest number of results.
Therefore, combining these two terms in my search
using all key concepts will produce better results.

30/09/2023 Jstore American 158.630 results. Using all five relevant terms gives
foreign policy me a large number of results. This means that this
OR US foreign database contains an extensive number of articles
policy OR related to this key term, therefore being a good
Washingtons database to use going forward with regards to my
foreign policy research question.
OR US global
strategy

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30/09/2023 Jstore Democratic Republic 197.481 results. This shows that there are a
of Congo OR DRC OR large number of articles containing the five
Congo OR Zaire OR DR relevant terms. This means that this
Mia Burgener Academic Skills Midterm
Congo database produces results for my research
question.

30/09/2023 Jstore 6.463 results. This number of results shows

that by using this database, it gives me a
large number of results for these 5 relevant
terms.

30/09/2023 Jstore Cold War AND 4.705 results. The results produced by this
American foreign search were largely relevant to my research
policy OR US foreign question. Using the combination of AND and
Policy AND Congo AND OR Boolean tools, I was able to find
Mobutu OR President substantial results that were very effective
Mobutu OR Joseph- towards my research. The articles produced
Desire Mobutu OR were more refined than the previous
Dictator Mobutu individual searches as expected based on the
explanation I learnt from the Academic skills
workshop. However, I had to search
extensively through the results to figure out
if the articles were relevant so I must apply a
more refined advanced search to get the
best results.

30/09/2023 Jstore East-West conflict AND 1.126 results. Using different key words and
US foreign policy AND a different combination, a smaller, more
Congo AND Mobutu relevant set of results was produced. Some
articles were already produced by the
previous advanced search; however, the
concentration of relevant results was greater
using this combination of key terms.

30/09/2023 Jstore Cold War (Item title) 6 results. 2 of the results were relevant to my
AND American foreign research question therefore, no more
policy AND Congo combinations would result in substantial
(item title) AND articles relevant to my research question
Mobutu

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Mia Burgener Academic Skills Midterm

SocINDEX (EBSCO):
Before I started on my search, I used SocINDEX’s Sociology Thesaurus to look for further synonyms of
the key concepts, which did not give me more than the ones written in my first table. I used a similar
strategy to the one I used in Jstore by searching for each term individually to see if the database had
a good enough number of results for my key terms. In comparison, this database had much fewer
results for my key terms, but I felt that it could still be a useful database to enlist in my Systematic
Literature Search. I then conducted my research using the tool for searching for Subject Terms. This
allowed me to narrow down my search results. Finally, I then combined the search sets with the
search history tool and used limitations to narrow down my results. Below is a documentation of my
literature search.

30/09/202 SociINDEX Cold War 9,689 results. This database has a

3 fair number of resources on this
(EXBCO)
key term.

30/09/202 SociINDEX Geopolitical standoff No results found.

3
(EXBCO)

30/09/202 SociINDEX East-West conflict 91 results found. This database has

3 limited amount of resources on
(EXBCO)
this key term

30/09/202 SociINDEX Soviet-American conflict 11 results found.

3
(EXBCO)

30/09/202 SociINDEX Post-World War II Rivalry I result found.

3
(EXBCO)

30/09/202 SociINDEX American foreign policy 1,427 results.

3
(EXBCO)

30/09/202 SociINDEX US foreign policy 831 results.

3
(EXBCO)

30/09/202 SociINDEX American diplomacy 227 results.

3
(EXBCO)

30/09/202 SociINDEX Washingtons foreign policy 44 results

3
(EXBCO)

30/09/202 SociINDEX US global strategy 17 results

3
(EXBCO)

30/09/202 SociINDEX Democratic Republic of Congo 1,574 results

3

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Mia Burgener Academic Skills Midterm

(EXBCO)

30/09/202 SociINDEX DRC 510 results

3
(EXBCO)

30/09/202 SociINDEX Congo 2,488 results.

3
(EXBCO)

30/09/202 SociINDEX Zaire 1,569 results.

3
(EXBCO)

30/09/202 SociINDEX DR Congo 152 results.

3
(EXBCO)

30/09/202 SociINDEX Mobutu Sese Seko 50 results.

3
(EXBCO)

30/09/202 SociINDEX Mobutu 96 results.

3
(EXBCO)

30/09/202 SociINDEX President Mobutu 32 results

3
(EXBCO)

30/09/202 SociINDEX Joseph-Desire Mobutu 2 results.

3
(EXBCO)

30/09/202 SociINDEX Dictator Mobutu 4 results

3
(EXBCO)

1/10/2023 SocINDEX SU Cold War OR SU Geopolitical
standoff OR SU East-West conflict
(EBSCO)
OR SU Soviet-American conflict OR
SU Post-World War II rivalry
This produced 4,992 results. This
search has the ID of S1. I used the
tool of selecting Subject Terms to
get results.

1/10/2023 SocINDEX SU American Foreign Policy OR SU
US foreign policy OR SU American
(EXBCO)
diplomacy OR SU Washingtons
foreign policy OR SU US global
strategy
This search produced 729 results
and has the Search history ID S2. I
used the tool of selecting Subject
Terms to get this result.

1/10/2023 SocINDEX SU Democratic Republic of Congo This search produced 1,466 results
OR SU DRC OR SU Congo OR SU and has the Search History ID S3.
(EXBCO)
Zaire or SU DR Congo

01/10/202 SocINDEX SU Mobutu Sese Seko OR SU This search produced 40 results and
3 Mobutu OR SU President Mobutu had the Search History ID S4. The
OR SU Joseph Desire Mobutu OR number of results for S1, S2, S3 and

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Mia Burgener Academic Skills Midterm

(EXBCO) SU Dictator Mobutu S4 did not produce a large number

of results, but I expected the
following step would reduce the
number of results found even
further

01/10/202 SocINDEX S1 AND S2 AND S3 AND S4 65 results were produced by using

3 the searching history tool to select
(EXBCO) Limiters
all four of the previous searches
Scholarly (Peer reviewed journals) and chose ‘’Search with AND’’. This
gave me the expected result of a
References Available much smaller set of results.
Source Types However, I still wanted to get an
even more refined search result and
Academic journals so I enlisted the tool of Limiters and
Source Types. I then got the result
of 10 articles of which 4 were
relevant.

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Mia Burgener Academic Skills Midterm

References:
Afoaku, O. G. (1997). THE U.S. AND MOBUTU SESE SEKO: WAITING ON DISASTER. Journal of Third
World Studies, 14(1), 65–90. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45193674

Clark, J. F. (1998). Foreign Intervention in the Civil War of the Congo Republic. Issue: A Journal of
Opinion, 26(1), 31–36. https://doi.org/10.2307/1166550

Clark, J. F. (2011). A Constructivist Account of the Congo Wars. African Security, 4(3), 147–170.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/48598817

Collins, C. J. L. (1993). The Cold War Comes to Africa: Cordier and the 1960 Congo Crisis. Journal of
International Affairs, 47(1), 243–269. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24357094

Collins, C. J. L. (1997). Reconstructing the Congo. Review of African Political Economy, 24(74), 591.
https://doi-org.mu.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/03056249708704284

de Villers, G., & Jean Omasombo Tshonda. (2002). An Intransitive Transition. Review of African
Political Economy, 29(93/94), 399–410. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4006787

Dickson, D. A. (1993). U.S. Foreign Policy toward Southern and Central Africa: The Kennedy and
Johnson Years. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 23(2), 301–315. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27532280

Iandolo, A. (2014). Imbalance of Power: The Soviet Union and the Congo Crisis, 1960–1961. Journal
of Cold War Studies, 16(2), 32–55. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26924483

Kabwit, G. C. (1979). Zaire: The Roots of the Continuing Crisis. The Journal of Modern African Studies,
17(3), 381–407. http://www.jstor.org/stable/160489

Komisar, L. (1992). THE CLAWS OF DICTATORSHIP IN ZAIRE: The “Leopard” Still Rules. Dissent (0012-
3846), 39(3), 326–330

McCormick, S. H. (1994). Zaire II: Mobutu, Master of the Game? Current History, 93(583), 223–227.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/45316995

McNulty, M. (1999). The collapse of Zaire: Implosion, revolution or external sabotage? Journal of
Modern African Studies, 37(1), 53. https://doi-org.mu.idm.oclc.org/10.1017/S0022278X99002979

Reid, S. A. (2018). Congo’s Slide Into Chaos: How a State Fails. Foreign Affairs, 97(1), 97–117.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/44822018

Reno, W. (2006). Congo: From State Collapse to “Absolutism”, to State Failure. Third World Quarterly,
27(1), 43–56. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4017658

Young, C. (1994). Zaire: The shattered illusion of the integral state. Journal of Modern African Studies,
32(2), 247. https://doi-org.mu.idm.oclc.org/10.1017/S0022278X0001274X