Political Networks

This Section aims to provide a multidisciplinary space of convergence for scholars who, while holding diverse research interests share an understanding of the importance of network processes and their analysis in political life, coupled with strong attention to the integration (and advancement) of theory and empirical data. The Section conceives of political networks in a broad sense, as defined around political actors, events relevant to the political biographies of individuals, and around the use of digital communication technologies within political dynamics. Thus, ties can consist of exchanges of resources, information, and symbols, as well as collaborations and communications that may occur on- and offline. Based on the successful past ECPR General Conference Sections, we propose the following seven Panels: Panels 1 and 2: Climate Policy Networks I and II Climate change is a ‘wicked problem’ and a major challenge to governance and policymaking. Policy network analysis allows us to capture the ‘wicked’ complexities of formal institutional and informal linkages between diverse yet interdependent policy actors, and enables us to explain how such arrangements shape climate change policymaking and policy implementation. The call is open to theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions to climate policy networks, specifically but not exclusively multi-layer, comparative, and longitudinal network analyses. We particularly welcome studies on climate policy and multi-level governance, coalition politics, and climate network perspectives in socio-ecological systems. Panels 3 and 4: Comparing Political Networks I and II Comparing political networks over time and space is a powerful strategy to support causal explanations on the antecedents or consequences of network structures. Comparisons over space can include cross-country comparisons or within-country comparisons across regions or policy sectors. Comparisons over time can include network observations at several discrete time points or can be based on the dynamic assessment of network evolution. Despite the potential benefit of such comparisons to our understanding of political networks, such research designs have remained rare. This Panel thus invites Papers with an explicit comparative research design related to any type of political networks. Panel 5: From Texts to Networks: Semantic, Socio-Semantic, and Discourse Networks Collecting data on political networks via organizational surveys is a considerable challenge. At the same time, large volumes of texts containing information on political actors and their relations are publicly available. This Panel showcases research activities that obtain discourse, semantic, and socio-semantic networks from text data, and shows how network research might benefit from approaches that: ▪️ use text as a database for political networks; ▪️ utilize various text analysis approaches to find ties between actors; or ▪️ combine text analysis with social networks. Panel 6: Network Analysis in International Relations and Security Studies This Panel examines the added value of using network analysis to examine questions of international cooperation and security governance. All four Papers apply a relational approach and discuss the advantages and challenges of such a methodological innovation in foreign policy analysis and international governance research. The aim of this Panel is to cross-fertilize International Relations research with relational public policy scholarship and to critically examine the usability of relational approaches in IR and security studies. Panel 7: Organisational and Social Movement Networks The last decade has seen a number of contentious actions developing across Europe and beyond, parts of which were unleashed with the 2008 crisis. This Panel aims to explore alliances and repertoires of actions by challengers active in contentious politics and/or groups operating in service and goods provision addressing the economic, environmental, social, and political consequences of the economic crisis. We expect Papers to explore the following dimensions of networks: ▪️ the nature of alliances: specifically, the types of ties; the types of alliance structures, and clustering effects between groups and services ▪️ the type of actors involved in the networks ▪️ the degree of contentiousness ▪️ the frames and collective identities at stake within networks.