Situation-Centred Network Analysis: Towards a Framework for Relational Policy Process Research Methods

This session explores relational approaches that can inform empirical methods of policy process analysis, including methods such as social network analysis and analytical frameworks such as the networks of action situations approach and radical relational ontology. This contribution scrutinises their suitability for policy process analysis applications. Social network analysis has moved to a multilevel approach of covering both actors and venues as nodes in networks (Lubell, 2013), while economic network analysis models games on graphs to derive equilibrium outcomes between network structures and economic games (Goyal, 2007). The management and transition framework in water governance (Pahl-Wostl et al., 2010), some approaches to industrial ecology (Chertow and Ehrenfeld, 2012), and social network analysis capture social and biophysical underpinnings of networks (see e.g., Bodin et al. 2019; Ingold, 2017, Kharrazi et al., 2013) of relevance to the policy process. However, underlying epistemologies and ontologies receive little attention, despite their importance for sound methods. Indeed, relational approaches are diverse and their linkages to methods and theories used to analyse the policy process vary, as reviews of relational approaches in public administration (Bartels and Turnbull, 2019) and sociology (Emirbayer, 1997) suggest. Nonetheless, important approaches to analyse the policy process, such as the multiple streams, policy networks, discourse and advocacy coalitions, actor-centred institutionalism, veto points or punctuated equilibria, share in common a notion of points, stages, social spaces or networks, where policy action takes place. These action situations can be diverse with distinct characteristics both empirically and conceptionally that require specific attention to institutions, material and immaterial transactions and the heterogeneity of networks, for example. The action situation has become a core unit of analysis in several strands of the social sciences, including actor-centred institutional analysis (Mayntz, 2004; Ostrom, 2005; Scharpf, 1997), actor perspectives in development sociology (Long 2003), and transaction-centred approaches (Commons, 1931; Emirbayer and Mische, 1998; Hagedorn, 2008). They emphasise the power of the situation in shaping behaviour, resembling situationism in social psychology (Kelley et al., 2003) to some extent (see also Hornung et al., 2019). It is conceivable that changing situations greatly influence policy processes, considering the explanatory power of relations in situations compared to substantive traits of what people bring to a situation. Yet, many biophysical, institutional, or information variables of situations are influenced by linked situations and experiences from related situations can be transmitted. Capturing the network of related situations thus becomes paramount. Accordingly, research uncovered multiple action situations that make up social-ecological systems (e.g., Gritsenko, 2018; Grundmann and Ehlers, 2016; Kimmich, 2013; McGinnis, 2011; Möck et al., 2019; Oberlack et al., 2018). All are embedded in networks with a diversity of biophysical, informational, institutional and actor linkages, as summarised with the concept of networked action situations. However, to date policy process analysis showed little interest in biophysical variables. Drawing on the contributions to this panel and recent research, we develop a typology of relational approaches to analyse roles of networked action situations in the policy process and evaluate implications for empirical research to construct a framework that guides methods.