Virtual Openness: Analyzing Inter-governmental Organizations Relationships on the Web

The study of global governance has documented an increase in organizational complexity and a proliferation of actors involved in it. A key feature of this evolving feature of global governance is how inter-governmental organizations (IGOs) have opened up for participation also of non-state actors. However, we have little systematic data on which non-state actors IGOs cooperate with and whether there are systematic differences between how IGOs different types of non-state actors, such as NGOs and firms. Further, it is hard to trace, with existing datasets, the evolution of how IGOs have become more embedded with other organizations over time. In this paper, we draw on recent developments in organizational analysis to map changes over time in IGOs' webpages and web-links to other organizations. Websites have become a key source of official public representation of social entities, where actors portray their activities, identity, and their relationships. These relationships are manifested in web hyperlinks across different organizations websites. We analyze hyperlinks stemming from a sample 35 international organizations and identify which other actors and organisations they are linked to. Using network analysis and structural topic modeling, we study variation in those patterns based on a range of IGO and non-state actors' attributes.