Social Networks and International Public Administrations

Abstract

During the last decade, scholarly interest in International Public Administrations (IPAs) has been increasing steadily. Today, IPAs are recognized as autonomous actors in international public policy-making. The research focus is now on measuring different kinds of autonomy of action and analysing how different IPAs make use of it to influence multilateral policy outputs and outcomes. Traditional methods to measure an IPA’s autonomy and influence mostly rely on attributional data, such as an IPA's formal mandate, its budget, staff numbers or offices. While the external environment of an IPA has been identified as a crucial factor, only little research has been conducted on how to conceptualize and measure the interplay between the external environments, in particular the network an IPA is embedded in, and an IPA’s attributes. This panel aims to add to this new strand of research and invites papers that analyse IPAs trough a social network perspective. Social network analysis (SNA) is becoming increasingly popular in social sciences because it offers new explanations, based on another type of information – relational data. The relations of an actor and its position within a network reveal information about the possibilities to exert influence within the policy-making process. Thus, we expect to gain important insights into the workings and influence of IPAs by adding a layer of relational data to IPA research.