2010

THE TRIAD THAT BINDS: HOW COMMON FINANCIAL ANALYST COVERAGE REVEALS DIFFERENT MOTIVATIONS OF CORPORATE LEADERS TO MAINTAIN BOARD INTERLOCKS

Sun Hyun Park — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 11:56:30 PDT

This study explores the structural embeddedness of board interlocks in financial analysts’ firm coverage ties. Drawing on the theories of triangular ties, I conceptualize the relationship between financial analysts, a focal CEO, and the interlock director as a triad and examine how the positivity or negativity of analyst stock recommendations regarding the focal firm CEO and the interlock directors influence the maintenance of the board interlock ties. The theoretical perspectives and empirical findings of this study suggest that a structural shift from open to closed triad, where the focal firm CEO and the interlock director are followed by a common set of financial analysts, makes dyad members prefer partners with similar, rather than better stock recommendations to avoid unfavorable social comparison and cognitive dissonance.

Voting Power Centrality

Jeffrey A. Carnegie — Mon, 24 May 2010 11:52:26 PDT

Organized Opposition: The Anti-Federalist Network

Robi Ragan et al. — Sun, 23 May 2010 08:40:59 PDT

Scholars of the American founding often assume that a substantial part of the Federalist victory in the debate over ratification of the Constitution was due to their superior organization and planning. The Anti-Federalists, according to conventional wisdom, were at best disorganized, if not fractured, in their opposition. The disparity in the extent of their political organizations, however, has never been adequately examined. We propose to look at a simple measure of the organization of the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, the spread of published newspaper essays, to examine the extent and development of their political network during the debates over ratification, from September 1787 through June 1788. We catalog the reprinting of essays in support of, and in opposition to, the Constitution. We then use network analysis to determine the extent of national collaboration between newspapers.

Language Skills and Social Integration: Ethnic Disparities in Bilingual Economy

Ott S. Toomet et al. — Sat, 22 May 2010 05:03:46 PDT

We analyze the relationship between the local language skills and immigrant income in a largely bilingual economy, Estonia. We show that the official language matters little in the private sector, and at the upper end of the income distribution. This is in a striking contrast to what has been found in the literature for single-language dominated economies. Our results point toward importance of co-worker discrimination, possibly through the more subtle aspects of language, or through access to the social networks. This outcome stresses the need for social integration of minorities, and suggest that this does not necessarily happen through the labor market.

Translocal Collaboration in C40 Cities Climate Network

Taedong Lee — Fri, 21 May 2010 04:59:52 PDT

The recent Copenhagen summit highlighted the inability of national governments to agree to binding targets to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. Notwithstanding such policy failure at the national level, cities around the world have come together to mitigate global warming. Given that cities account for 80 percent of greenhouse emissions, this is an important development that state centric accounts of global environmental politics tend to overlook. I probe deeper into an important network that has emerged to facilitate such collaboration. The C40 network seeks to bring together world’s key cities which have displayed a commitment to tackle climate change. Cities collaborate by sharing best climate change practices, exchanging personnel, and serving as a pressure group. Thus, the more embedded is a city in this network, higher will be the benefits it can capture by virtue of its participation. I examine the uneven distribution of collaboration ties among cities participating in the C40 climate change network. Specifically, I study why we observe variations among cities in the number of ties they have with other cities, and what factors influence a given city's decision to collaborate with another specific city. Using social network analysis, I focus on how homophily, an attribute of network structure, and policy performance, an attribute of a given node (or city), influence the distribution of collaboration ties. Homophily suggests that that collaboration is more likely among cities with similar structural characteristics. Employing a recently developed network analysis technique, Exponential Random Graph Model, I find that collaboration between cities is more likely when these cities are located in the same continent. Further, I find that cities with higher level of performance in the climate change area tend to attract more potential partners in relation to cities with lower level of policy performance. Important policy implications follow from my analyses. Given that some cities are less likely to find collaborative partners because of their location, policy intervention is required to correct the structural inequities. Second, cities with superior policy performance will serve as magnets for other cities looking for partners, and will therefore corner higher benefits in relation to cities with lower levels of policy performance. While networks are often viewed as equitable structures, the benefits from participating in the network can be unevenly distributed for reasons which are exogenous (at least in the short term) to the nodal actor. Thus, a conscious policy to redirect network benefits is required if network equity is an important policy objective. More broadly, if the benefits from C40 network are to be evenly distributed, important steps need to be taken to encourage ties with cities which are geographically challenged, and which are late comers to this policy (and therefore have low policy performance).

Modeling Foreign Direct Investment as a Longitudinal Social Network

Nathan M. Jensen et al. — Fri, 21 May 2010 04:59:50 PDT

An extensive literature in international and comparative political economy has focused on the how the mobility of capital affects the ability of governments to tax and regulate firms. The conventional wisdom holds that governments are in competition with each other to attract foreign direct investment (FDI). Nation-states observe the fiscal and regulatory decisions of competitor governments, and are forced to either respond with policy changes or risk losing foreign direct investment, along with the politically salient jobs that come with these investments. The political economy of FDI suggests a network of investments with complicated dependencies.

We propose an empirical strategy for modeling investment patterns in 24 advanced industrialized countries from 1985-2000. Using bilateral FDI flow and stock data, we examine the nature of the networks in relation to a set of covariates - in particular differences in tax rates between pairs of nations. Our statistical model is based on the methodology developed by Hoff (2005), Westveld (2007), Westveld and Hoff (2009b). The model allows the temporal examination of each nation's activity level in investing and attractiveness to investors. Additionally, the model considers the temporal examination of reciprocity between pairs of nations, as well as the notion of clusterability. For both the flow and stock data, there exist a data set based on reports from senders (out-reported-data) and a data set based on reports from receivers (in-reported-data). We extend the model by treating these two data sets as independent replicates (for the flow and stock data separately), conditional on a mean parameter representing an underlying value of FDI, along with random effects within the variance portion of the distribution of the response that allows for discrepancy between the two data points (in and out data). Using a fully Bayesian approach, we also impute the missing data within a MCMC algorithm used to fit the model.

Policy Change Networks, 1945-2008

Matt Grossmann — Wed, 19 May 2010 09:15:13 PDT

Network Selection and "Path-Dependent" Coevolution

Aya Kachi et al. — Wed, 19 May 2010 09:06:15 PDT

Scholars have increasingly become aware that actors’ self-selection into networks (e.g., homophily) is an important determinant of network-tie formation. Such self-selection adds methodological complexity to the empirical evaluation of the effects of network ties on individual behavior. Moreover, the endogenous network formation implies that network-tie structures and actors’ behavior “coevolve” over time. Therefore, in longitudinal network studies, it is very crucial for scholars to understand the nature of coevolutionary dynamics in the data, in order to explain the network-formation and the behavioral-decision-making mechanisms accurately. In this project, we claim that one of the most important aspects of the coevolutionary dynamic is its connection with history dependence. By history dependence, we primarily focus on what Page (2006) defines as “phat” and path dependence. We first establish theoretically that systems with coevolution can easily generate multiple equilibria (i.e., the steady states of the system), using a simple Markov type-interaction model that allows for endogenous tie formation. The potential of multiple equilibria posits an important and very difficult empirical question--how sensitive are equilibrium distributions (over types) to the past states? More simply put, to what extent does history matter? What is at stake in this question is not trivial. If history matters for an equilibrium attained in the society, then we can also analyze the potential policy interventions that could change the path of the social process such that it would lead to a socially optimal equilibrium. As for the empirical strategy, we start with developing a discrete-time Markov model, combining a spatial-logit and p-star model to evaluate the empirical significance of coevolutionary dynamics in the data. The strength of this empirical approach is in its direct connection with the theoretical Markov interaction model, and can provide a foundation for developing statistical tests for history dependence generated by coevolution.

Changes in spatial segregation: influence on the social networks of urban poor in a brazilian city

Maira Rodrigues — Wed, 19 May 2010 09:06:13 PDT

The main concern of this dissertation is to explore the way that a change in the spatial segregation can influence the social networks of inhabitants in a popular district in the city of Campinas. The empiric reference is Vila Castelo Branco, a district built by Cohab – Campinas in 1967 for the low-income population. This case illustrates a process of incorporation of a spatially segregated district and the research developed was the study of the transformation that this spatial change caused to the social network of the people living there. Such proposal is inserted in the debate on the inequality in the access to material and immaterial wealth found by individuals and caused by spatial and relational dynamics. The analysis of the empiric data enlightens the current interpretations about the possibilities of amplification and diversification of social contact from spatial proximity. For the realization of the work proposal, inhabitants’ social networks were built in two periods, one corresponding to the spatial segregation and the other to the current conditions of the district.

Regionalization via Network-Constrained Clustering

David Sparks — Wed, 19 May 2010 09:06:12 PDT

Application of a network-constrained clustering technique, which derives partitions based on observed variables and network structure. Here, I identify discrete political regions within the United States, based on presidential voting by county.

A Network Model of Violent Elections and Clientilism

Christoher J. Haid — Tue, 18 May 2010 10:30:43 PDT

I analyze an electoral model where voters exert efforts on behalf of one candidate or another but not both. A voter also receives benefits from her neighbors that support the same candidate as she supports. A candidate's campaign can influence voters either by vote buying (i.e., offering a wage for efforts) or by acting violently. The type of violence available to a campaign depends upon its social embeddedness (i.e., what it knows about the voters' preferences and place in a social network). When embeddedness is low, campaigns can only use violence to increase the costs of public efforts on behalf of its opponent. When embeddedness is high, violence can be targeted at the opposition's patronage network, reducing the indirect flows of patronage between voters. In the former case, vote buying and violence are substitutes in producing turnout; in the latter they are complements.

Social Politics of Business in Africa: The Context (A Poster)

Lauri Elliott — Tue, 18 May 2010 10:30:42 PDT

One global view of Africa is as a hidden, fragmented continent. In many circles like business, however, there are well-connected, interwoven networks spanning the social, business, and political spheres, as well as the continent. For example, the presidents of countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) today fought in struggles against colonial systems and are considered comrades, and several of them lead major economic systems. This has implications for economic development and dynamics in Africa. This poster introduces the context upon which further research is based. Presented at Duke Political Networks Conference 2010 on May 20, 2010 in Raleigh, NC.

What Can Triadic Census Tell Us about the Development of Public Management Networks?

Aleksey V. Kolpakov et al. — Tue, 18 May 2010 05:33:59 PDT

As Saint-Onge and Armstrong (2004) have noted, the capability to effectively manage complex partnerships is growing in importance as organizations are reconfigured on internally and externally conductive bases. Organizations are becoming more and more involved in complex value-creation networks, where the boundaries between one organization and another become blurred and functions become integrated. This proposed study will show how a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) small school, Metro School in Columbus, Ohio, was built by and continues to operate as an integrated network involving persons from the non-profit sector, school administrative staff, leaders from academia, and members of the greater Columbus community. The intent of this study is to describe and explain the network operations that emerged throughout the development of the school and that now exist during the operation of Metro School. This network analysis thus focuses on lessons learned from the formulation of the Metro concept, its implementation, and the collaborative structure of the network that maintains broader support for the school.

Public administration and policy scholars have raised the issue of treating networks seriously and call for shifting from using the metaphor of the network to real network analysis of public policy and management networks (Hwang and Moon, 2009). The present study examines the structural configurations of the Metro School public management network from a dynamic perspective using qualitative and quantitative data collected during the evaluation study of Metro School in 2008. The qualitative data are represented by the semi-structured interviews with 28 key representatives of 17 organizations involved in the network school project. The quantitative data were gathered by the means of 2-page questionnaires, where each respondent was asked to identify up to 16 individuals that were important in terms of involvement with STEM Network High School. The analysis of triads in the planning and implementation stages of Metro School demonstrates patterns of structural configurations of the network depending on the stage of network development. The Metro school network at the stage of planning exhibited a structural tendency towards hierarchy because of the large number of transitive triads. Analysis of cyclical triads in both project stages points at the impediment of information flow in the network, especially in the implementation stage.

The findings of this study will elucidate just how extensive Metro has integrated into a network with critical individuals filling particularly important roles. Far from being a hierarchical, top-down organization like many schools, Metro was spawned from a small network of critical individuals, expanded into a larger network as the school was being designed, and now operates as a structure with multiple nodes making decisions at the network level. The “take-away” from this project is an in-depth look at how organizations, even traditionally entrenched bureaucracies like schools, are moving away from the standard organization and into post-modern, highly “de-differentiated” and conductive webs, in this case by a network.

Dynamic Models of Mobilization in Political Networks

Navid Hassanpour — Tue, 18 May 2010 05:33:58 PDT

The Eastern European color revolutions, and more recently the post-election unrest in Iran pose a pressing question: how can local organization networks facilitate large-scale collective action? The final result of a collective action is contingent upon two factors, the relational structure of the network of the individuals involved, and their mutual learning, imitation, and belief-updating dictated by the network structure. I propose a formalization of the Granovetter threshold model for participation in collective action in networks, which takes both the network structure and belief updating into account. In order to make verifiable predictions, I outline a graph theoretical model for threshold updating using the DeGroot model. I demonstrate that full connectivity in a social network sometimes can hinder collective action. Later I will show that with some assumptions on the structure of the social network, repeated threshold updating takes the network to an equilibrium on the network graph; hence, the updating procedure acts as an equilibrium selection mechanism based on network parameters and initial participation thresholds. When these assumptions do not hold, cycles of participation and disengagement can occur. Furthermore, using this model one could find the network structure that brings about a particular asymptotic action equilibrium. Unlike the Granovetter/Kuran model, this model predicts non-monotone participation levels and heterogeneous outcomes at the final equilibrium, where some individuals act and some do not. Hence, it provides a more realistic model of mobilization dynamics, which can explain the ebb and flow in large-scale political demonstrations.

Social dilemmas with manifest and latent networks

Armando Razo — Tue, 18 May 2010 05:33:56 PDT

This study implements an agent-based computational model to examine the impact of network structure on simple two-person coordination tasks. The conceptual contribution of the paper is the concept of relational rules, which are heuristic devices that can help harmonize expectations as a function of network ties. With relational ties as a behavioral foundation, the embedded computer experiment manipulates network density in a parametric fashion—thus examining a wide variety of network structures--to examine its impact on coordination. The results indicate that a greater frequency of ties in general does have a positive impact on group coordination. A second manipulation involves variable knowledge of network structure by participants, in particular whether participants are aware of manifest networks or not (these are latent). The impact of network awareness (or lack thereof) does not produce consistent results, and is contingent on particular informational assumptions. In particular, assuming less knowledge of underlying social structures may lead to more coordination than in the case where people make random inferences (that is, they attempt to know more) about latent network ties. Whether the distinction between manifest (known) and latent networks matters also depends on the actual density of the network.

Framing Climate Policy Debates: Science, Network, and U.S. Congress, 1976-2007

Hyung Sam Park et al. — Mon, 17 May 2010 13:41:17 PDT

Debates on global climate change (GCC) have been heavily influenced by such factors as scientific evidence, media coverage, public concerns, partisan interest, and so forth. Focusing on the linkages among the congressional committees, hearings, and invited witnesses (and their sectors), this study investigates the relational conditions under which congressional committees have mobilized climate expertise to discuss climate change issues for the past decades in U.S. Congress. Our findings show that agenda setting and witness selection by the committees significantly differed across the party lines: more environmental scientists were invited to define GCC as a threat in Democratic Congresses, whereas industrial scientists, to search for solutions in Republican Congresses. Except for a few proactive committees, committee jurisdiction was limitedly exercised. Our findings presents strong evidence along which climate policy debates have been framed based on a biased input of climate expertise.

Networks for Representation: Social Capital and the Efficacy of Local Participatory Institutions

Christopher Weare et al. — Mon, 17 May 2010 12:00:15 PDT

Efforts to understand the successes and limitations of civil society institutions have inspired a growing literature on social networks, social capital, and the role that social relationships play in developing group norms supporting collective action and in linking groups to network-based resources. The literature has tended to emphasize broad egocentric networks or informal networks of community organizations, largely ignoring the importance of social capital for supporting engagement of the formal participatory institutions that are arising as a way of improving stakeholder input in many cities. The extant research on community-representing organizations has tended to conceptualize social networks in largely metaphorical terms, and has not systematically investigated the manner in which political networks support their operations. This paper argues that differing forms of network resources will support distinct types of activities undertaken by participatory organizations. Our empirical analysis demonstrates that different network resources are employed in different contexts, while suggesting that civil society organizations must overcome basic organizational hurdles related to internal conflict in order to leverage latent network resources.

Business as Usual? Nonprofits in the US National Elite Network

Scott V. Dolan — Mon, 17 May 2010 10:56:29 PDT

Research in the United States on the distribution of power among elites at the national level has been primarily concerned with the role of business despite evidence from surveys of elite individuals themselves that points to a central core of powerful individuals inclusive of elites from the nonprofit sector. The literature all but ignores public charities in spite of the fact that charities often work with and for groups that seek to expand democratic participation and economic equality. The silence of elite research is particularly troubling given the dramatic growth of the public charity sector in terms of its size, diversity, and amount of resources. Despite this growth, however, some argue that public charities are relatively powerless because they are beholden to a corporate-financed network. Yet, I argue that public charities are potentially autonomous, and the empirical question becomes whether they have the capacity to promote their interests to other elites. The research that follows is part of a larger project that examines the interlocking directorates among the largest organizations in business and the nonprofit sector and looks at whether elite interaction networks are dominated by business—as usual.

The emergence of local elite networks: Structure or preference? - An econometric approach -

Christian Assmann et al. — Mon, 17 May 2010 10:56:28 PDT

This paper analyzes the determinants and causes of communication in local elite networks. The database comprises four rural county elite networks from Poland and Slovakia. Socio spatial processes allowing a flexible incorporation of individual specific information are embedded within a logit framework. Empirical analysis focuses on the assessment of the hypotheses, whether preferences measured by socio demographic factors and political ideology or institutional settings (structure) influence individual communication in local elite networks. The results suggest that while in high performing communities institutional settings, i.e. a common membership in local organizations, are the most important factors determining communication, in low performing communities communication ties are stronger determined by actors’ preferences, i.e. ideological distances and socio demographic factors. Moreover, communication is more centralized for the latter when compared to the former socio spatial process.

Elite Networks, Political Belief Formation and Government Performance: An agent-based approach to a general political economy equilibrium

Christian H.C.A. Henning et al. — Mon, 17 May 2010 10:56:27 PDT

This paper investigates the impact of the embeddedness of politicians in a local elite network on government performance in decentralized and centralized political systems. Formal political decision-making among a set of legislators is modeled via a mean voter decision rule derived from a modified non-cooperative legislative bargaining game of a Baron-Ferejohn type. Legislators’ policy preferences are derived endogenously from political support maximization based on legislators’ beliefs how a rural development policy translates into the welfare of the agrarian and non-agrarian population. Legislators are generally uncertain regarding the political technology, i.e. the welfare changes induced by a policy. Accordingly, legislators communicate with the local elite to learn more about the true political technology and hence to undertake better informed political decisions. However, local elites might be biased in favor of a specific population group, i.e. communication might also bias political beliefs. A trade-off between more efficient policy learning and an increased policy bias induced by an increased embeddedness in local elite networks is identified. Policy bias is attenuated in centralized when compared to decentralized systems, while vice versa the speed of policy learning through local elite networks is c.p. higher in decentralized when compared to centralized systems. Moreover, within a constitutional system elite network structures such as local size, clustering or centralization have an impact on overall efficiency of political decsion-making.