Policy brokers and policy entrepreneurs are assumed to have a decisive impact on policy outcomes. Their access to social and political resources is contingent on their influence of other agents. In social network analysis entrepreneurs are often associated with brokers, because both are agents presumed to benefit from bridging structural holes; e.g. gaining advantage through occupying a strategic position in relational space. We aim here to conceptually and operationally differentiate policy brokers from policy entrepreneurs premised on assumptions in the policy process literature. In the methodology employed we first identify actors and their relations of influence within a specific policy event; then select the most central actors in a cohort; and finally compare their rank in a series of statistics that capture different aspects of their network advantage. We employ two case studies: One on Swiss Climate policy and one on EU competition and transport policy.
