Working Papers

Multiplex Networks and Interest Group Influence Reputation: An Exponential Random Graph Model

Michael T. Heaney — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 11:55:58 PST

Interest groups struggle to build reputations as influential actors in the policy process and to discern the influence exercised by others. This study conceptualizes influence reputation as a relational variable that varies locally throughout a network. Drawing upon interviews with 168 interest group representatives in the United States health policy domain, this research examines the effects of multiplex networks of communication, coalitions, and issues on influence reputation. Using an exponential random graph model (ERGM), the analysis demonstrates that multiple roles of confidant, collaborator, and issue advocate affect how group representatives understand the influence of those with whom they are tied, after accounting for homophily among interest groups.

Coalition Portfolios and Interest Group Influence over the Policy Process

Michael T. Heaney et al. — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 07:50:55 PDT

While not all interest groups participate in coalitions, some groups join multiple coalitions to form portfolios of coalition memberships. We test hypotheses that the composition of coalition portfolios increases the influence of interest groups over public policy when: (1) the number of coalitions in a group’s portfolio gets larger; (2) the average size of the coalitions in a group’s portfolio gets larger; and (3) a group’s portfolio improves its position within the overall network of coalitions. We evaluate these hypotheses using a study of 115 interest groups involved in the debate over the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. The results support hypothesis three; groups gain influence over the policy process when their coalition portfolios increase the extent to which they are situated between other groups in the coalition network. However, the ability of groups to proactively augment their coalitional betweenness may be muted by feedback in the policy process.

Network Coevolution and Democracy: A Spatial Econometric Approach

Aya Kachi — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 06:50:19 PDT

Regime transitions are contagious according to the diffusion-of-democracy literature: a country's regime is affected by others' through various predefined networks (e.g. geographical proximity), as well as by the country's own political, economic and social attributes (e.g. GDP levels). My account departs from the existing diffusion theory by allowing for countries' self-selection into peer regime networks based on their democracy levels in the past. For example, a country can form stronger dependency ties with countries that demonstrated similar democracy levels in the past (homophily). In the longitudinal setting, the traditional diffusion mechanism with the presence of self-selection generates the "co-evolutionary dynamic" between country networks and democracy levels. With this recursive feedback process between tie formation and democracy levels, it becomes extremely difficult to evaluate empirically how each country's level of democracy is determined, because we need to distinguish the following three processes statistically. First, country-specific attributes determine the level of democracy as in the earliest democratization studies. Second, other states' democracy levels also predict a country's regime as demonstrated in the conventional diffusion studies. Finally with my theory of endogenous network formation, the seeming diffusion effect is partially a consequence of their self-selection into peer networks. A newer spatial econometric model, an "M-STAR + Co-Evolution" model, is one of the first that allows us to test for all of these three dynamics behind democratization. In my first-cut analysis, I find that all three processes indeed exist.

Gender, Social Networks, and Voting Behavior

Scott D. McClurg et al. — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 08:08:40 PST

This paper examines how interpersonal social networks help explain the voting behavior of men and women. We argue that the gender gap in voting is influenced by the partisan and gender composition of networks, rather than just the latter. Building on this foundation, we explain how gendering in network construction and impact helps create a cleavage between men and women even under conditions that are often close to "random mixing." Analysis of the 2000 American National Election Study shows the voting gap is related to men excluding women from political networks, men being less exposed to females who support Democrats, and men being more strongly influence by women who support Republicans. The principal conclusion of the paper is that the role of social networks in explaining gendered voting is a function of combined partisan and gender segregation, principally by men.

Military Leadership, Service Networks, and Priorities in Military Spending

Michael E. Flynn — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 07:16:22 PDT

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How does political competition among domestic actors influence foreign policy choice? Studies examining this question often focus on the role of economic or partisan interests, and how they influence the preferences civilian decision-makers who are subject to the electoral pressures of their constituents. Less attention has been paid to how the preferences of other influential, unelected, actors influence state behavior. I examine the influence of one such group by looking at how the preferences of American military leaders shape decisions on American military spending and force structure. Using tools from the field of network analysis, I find support for the idea that military leaders occupying key positions can influence defense spend- ing priorities in favor of their respective branches. Results also show how the influence of military leaders has changed over time, and is conditional upon the institutions governing the relationships between civilian decision-makers and military leaders.

Disagreeing About Disagreement: How Conflict in Social Networks Affects Political Behavior

Casey A. Klofstad et al. — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 09:18:13 PDT

At the center of debates on deliberative democracy is the issue of how much real deliberation citizens experience in their core social networks. These “disagreements about disagreement” come in a variety of forms, with scholars advocating significantly different empirical approaches (e.g., Huckfeldt et al. 2004; Mutz 2006), and coming to significantly different substantive conclusions. We tackle these discrepancies by investigating the effect of conceptual and measurement differences on key findings relating interpersonal political disagreement to political attitudes and behaviors. Drawing on the 2008-2009 ANES panel study, we find evidence that different measures of disagreement have distinct effects when it comes to individuals’ preferences, patterns of engagement, and propensities to participate. We discuss the implications of these findings for the study of social influence; as interpersonal disagreement can mean different things and does not have easily characterized effects, scholars should exercise caution when making pronouncements concerning its empirical and democratic consequences.

Analyzing Democratization with a Social Network Approach

Steffen Mohrenberg — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 09:18:09 PDT

External factors of democratization are variables on the international level which are assumed to influence democratization within countries. It is plausible to describe some of these factors as relational concepts. From this relational perspective, methods of social network analysis can contribute to the understanding of changes in the level of democracy in countries around the globe.

First, the terms regime, democracy, and democratization are clarified. Second, explanations of democratization are presented as internal and external factors. Third, the basic ideas and principles behind the quantitative analysis of social networks are sketched. Fourth, a list of external factors of democratization with a genuine relational character is identified and discussed. Fifth, the possibility to analyze relational external factors using methods from social network analysis is outlined.

Living Together and Voting Together: The Impact of Congressional Boardinghouse Networks on Voting Patterns, 1825-1841

Paolo Parigi et al. — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 09:18:07 PDT

In the early part of the XIX century, American politics had a local flavor. Weak parties proved incapable of articulating national political identities and Congress operated in large part reactively to the given issues of the day. Yet despite the political fragmentation that characterized this period, by 1830 the contours of a national political stage had emerged (Formisano 1983). In this paper, we focus on the role of shared Congressional living arrangements as a cause of this ideological consolidation. We show that it was only when Congressmen from the South (North) lived in boardinghouses with other Congressmen from the South (North) that they realized their commonality of interests. Further, we use a particular aspect of our data—Congressmen that moved between boardinghouses at the end of the first session—to separate the impact of selection from that of political influence. Rather than choosing to live together on the basis of common regional interests, Congressmen recognized these interests because they lived together.

Mapping the Political Twitterverse: Finding Connections Between Political Elites

Leticia Bode et al. — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 09:18:03 PDT

Twitter provides a new and important tool for political
actors, and is increasingly being used as such. In the
2010 midterm elections, the vast majority of candidates for
the U.S. House of Representatives and virtually all candidates
for U.S. Senate and governorships used Twitter to
reach out to potential supporters, direct them to particular
pieces of information, request campaign contributions, and
mobilize their political action. Despite the level of activity,
we have little understanding of what the political Twitterverse
looks like in terms of communication and discourse.
This project seeks to remedy that lack of understanding
by mapping candidates for federal office in 2010 and their
followers, according to their use of the 4016 most used hashtags
(keywords). Our data set is uniquely constructed from
tweets of most of the candidates running for the U.S. House
of Representatives in 2010, all the candidates for the Senate
and governorships, and a random sample of their followers.
From this we utilize multidimensional scaling to construct
a visual map based on hashtag usage. We find that our
data have both local and global interpretations that reflect
not only political leaning but also strategies of communication.
This study provides insight into innovation in new
media usage in political behavior, as well as a snapshot of
the political twitterverse in 2010.

Cycles in Policy Network Structure and Policy Adoption-Implementation Processes: The Importance of Alignment

Gwen Arnold — Tue, 31 May 2011 14:14:06 PDT

This paper investigates how aspects of policy networks facilitate or inhibit the efforts of public bureaucracies to adopt and implement science policy innovations. Three correlated dimensions of policy networks – permeability, size, and tie strength – strongly influence adoption and implementation outcomes. Policy networks tend to expand and contract cyclically along these network dimensions.

Policy adoption and implementation are not binary variables, but rather continually occurring processes that also cycle. Successful adoption and implementation outcomes are most likely when adoption-implementation and network expansion-contraction cycles are aligned such that adoption occurs when the policy network is more permeable, larger, and more laden with weaker ties, and implementation occurs when the network is less permeable, smaller, and more laden with stronger ties. When cycles are not optimally aligned, adoption and implementation efforts are more likely to fail or stall.

These arguments draw on literature concerning policy networks as well as collective action and social capital. They are illustrated with case sketches that describe the attempts by environmental bureaucrats in six U.S. Mid-Atlantic states to adopt and implement a type of science policy innovation for wetland management. The sketches draw upon more than 90 interviews with environmental bureaucrats and stakeholders in the region, as well as secondary-source analysis and survey research.

Bias in Social and Mainstream Media

Yu-Ru Lin et al. — Sun, 29 May 2011 15:23:55 PDT

The extent of media bias determines the information available to the public and can affect public opinion and decision-making. Social media, such as blogs, powered by the growth of the Internet and related technologies, is envisioned as a form of grassroots journalism that blurs the line between producers and consumers and changes how information and opinions are distributed. They are often seen as democratic entities that allow more voices to be heard than the conventional mainstream media as well as a balancing force against the arguably slanted mainstream media.

Do social media exhibit more or less bias than mainstream media and, if so, to what extent? A systematic comparison between social and mainstream media is critical but challenging due to the scale and dynamic nature of modern communication.

Our major contribution is that we propose empirical measures to quantify the extent and dynamics of "bias" in mainstream and social media (hereafter referred to as "News" and "Blogs", respectively). Our measurements are not normative judgment, but examine bias by looking at the attributes of those being mentioned, against a null model of "unbiased" coverage.

We focus on the number of times a member of the 111th US congress was "referenced", and study the distribution and dynamics of the references within a large set of media outlets. We consider "the unbiased" as a configurable baseline distribution and measure how the observed coverage deviates from this baseline, with the measurement uncertainty of observations taken into account. We demonstrate bias measures for slants in favor of specific political parties, popular front-runners, or certain geographical regions.

Using these measures to examine newly collected data, we have observed distinct characteristics of how News and Blogs cover the US congress. Our analysis of party and ideological bias indicates that Blogs are not significantly less slanted than News. However, their slant orientations are more sensitive to exogenous factors such as national elections. In addition, blogs' interests are less concentrated on particular front-runners or regions than news outlets.

While our measures are independent of content, we further investigate two aspects of the content related to our measures: the hyperlinks embedded in articles and sentiments detected from the articles. The hyperlink patterns suggest that outlets with a Democrat-slant (D-slant for short) are more likely to cite each other than outlets with a Republican-slant (R-slant). The sentiment analysis suggests there is a weak correlation between negative sentiments and our measures.

To better understand the distinctive slant structures between the two media, we propose to use a simple "wealth allotment" model to explain how legislators gain references from different media. The results about blog media's inclination to a rich-get-richer mechanism indicates they are more likely to echo what others have mentioned. This observation does not contradict our measures of bias -- compared with news media, blogs are weaker adherents to particular parties, front-runners or regions but are more susceptible to the network and exogenous factors. This simple generative model helps reveal differences in the process of coverage selection between the two media.

Examining Mechanims of Political Disagreement

Scott D. McClurg et al. — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 08:42:03 PDT

This research seeks to develop and test hypotheses about how political disagreement in social networks aects political behavior. We conduct experimental research to test whether subjects' acquaintances act as independent sources of information, and examine two dierent models of
how such social stimuli may produce effects|either via information seeking, or information shortcuts. These tests are important because prior research is ambiguous on whether causal effects come from networks, and on potential mechanisms of infuence. Our results back aspects of both models, but more strongly support the notion of disagreement as a heuristic|subjects
primed to consider disagreement before a mock election exhibited a less-orderly information search process; those primed to consider disagreement after the election (but before voting) displayed lower rates of ambivalence, and evidence that such information helped clarify their
decisions.

National Security and Global Financial Governance

Annelies Z. Kamran — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 12:51:10 PDT

One threat in the post-9/11 world that was previously subsumed under the Cold War rubric is the threat of instability in financial markets that can undermine the legitimacy of the governments of states. Understanding the structure of international finance is thus crucial to issues of global governance, the more so because the contemporary structure of finance can threaten any individual state beyond its capacity to cope. All the actors in finance (whether commercial or investment banks, central banks, or other types) are connected by each financial transaction they make, as well as every regulatory or enforcement transaction; all transactions are relationships. All of these relationships together make a network. By examining these relationships using network analysis, we should see how all financial actors are wired together—not just the position of the biggest or most prominent. We should also be able to see second- and third-degree relationships. Network analysis thus allows us to explore a “map” of the financial terrain on which various strategies for security may be employed. These strategies can include checks to stop cascades and regulations to break up actors with high measures of centrality.

The Effect of Network Structure on the Provision of Security

Annelies Z. Kamran — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 12:51:09 PDT

The term “security” has many more dimensions in the post-9/11 world than it had during the Cold War. Threats may come from different sources, at different speeds, and have different targets. All the actors involved in the provision of security from a specific type of threat create a network—not just states or states in intergovernmental organizations, but all the actors in the “ecosystem." If we look at the relationships among these actors using network analysis, we should be able to map the structure of the entire network. Contrary to the assumptions in most International Relations literature, networks can be centralized (as in hierarchical states) or not, as in markets. The networks transnational actors have created to meet different threats exhibit different structures, from dense and highly centralized to diffuse and dispersed. The network’s structure may thus have a positive or negative effect on the provision of security, depending on the type of threat that is to be met.

POLITICAL BELIEF NETWORKS: Socio-Cognitive Heterogeneity in American Public Opinion

Delia Baldassarri et al. — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 04:09:22 PDT

Most research on public opinion assumes that American political views are structured by a belief system with a clearly-defined liberal-conservative polarity; however, this is not true of all Americans. In this article we document systematic heterogeneity in the organization of political attitudes and explain its basis in the sociodemographic profile of the respondents. We use Relational Class Analysis (RCA), a network-based method for detecting heterogeneity in collective patterns of opinion, to identify distinctive belief networks, each shared by a different group of respondents. Analyzing ANES data between 1984 and 2004, we identify three groups of American citizens: Ideologues, whose political attitudes strongly align with either liberal or conservative categories; Alternatives, who are instead morally conservative but economically liberal, or vice versa; and Agnostics, who exhibit weak associations among political beliefs. Respondents' sociodemographic profiles, particularly their income, education, and religiosity, lie at the core of the different ways in which they understand politics.

Social Capital in Coordination Experiments: Risk, Trust and Position

Meredith A. Whiteman et al. — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 09:51:22 PDT

Social capital theory is exemplary in attempting to integrate both individual and institutional perspectives in the study of governance, but interactions between the individual and institutional components remain underexplored and unspecified in many situations. We extend the theory from its focal attention on prisoners dilemma games to an important and understudied class of collective action problems of critical concern for governance— coordination tasks ranging from simple matching games to more complex tasks involving conflict (battle of the sexes) and assurance problems (stag hunt). Laboratory experiments provide a means of observing the impact of institutional influences (bridging and bonding network capital), individual predispositions (trust and risk aversion), and their interaction on the ability to coordinate in these settings. The results confirm that neither individual nor institutional components alone can explain coordination, and that interactions between these components must be understood in terms of the specific task context being studied.

Networking Networkers: An Initial Exploration of the Patterns of Collaboration among the Members of a New Community in Political Science

Ramiro Berardo — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:08:27 PDT

Social Network Analysis in the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence

Arie Perliger et al. — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:08:26 PDT

Interpersonal Networks and Democratic Politics

Anand E. Sokhey et al. — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 18:40:23 PDT

Social Networks in Comparative Perspective

David A. Siegel — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 07:59:44 PDT