At Alabama, for example, the cost for tuition + fess will be about $125,000, another $25,000 a year for minimal living expenses, so that would be another $125,000-$175,000. Then you have unexpected expenses, moving expenses, etc.
Do you have at least $250,000-$300,000 or even more? The salary for somebody with a PhD in Poli Sci will not pay off loans of that amount.
If you read my post, you would see that I mentioned that YOU should know what you want to research. Moreover, ideas are cheap. Every fresh graduate student comes in with dozens of them.
I can also promise you that potential PoliSci grad students, and faculty are not searching through the posts on CC for new ideas. I have been in and around academia for decades, and I have rarely seen any potential grad students whose ideas for research are developed and mature enough to be interesting for any person who is already engaged in research.
The only persons that I knew who came in with such ideas for research had either already had a master degree with a thesis or had been working in research for years.
That’s OK, since the point of PhD is to learn how to do research.
The research and writing that you have done are the only things that are really relevant, so you should have led with that.
Based on the language you use, I would guess that you are still pretty young:
So perhaps you should take a step back and reevaluate what you really want to do. You seem to want to have a PhD, but you do not seem to know what that means or how to get around to achieving this goal. You also do not seem to really have an idea as to why you would want a PhD.
Finally - you seem to be most focused on “proving” to us that you are “good enough”.
We are not the people you need to convince. We are the people who are giving you advice as to how to convince the people that you need to convince.
Feel free to ignore the advice. However, I can tell you that people on this thread know more about admissions to PhD programs than you do.