Political Networks

The Political Networks Section aims to provide a multidisciplinary space of convergence for scholars with diverse research interests who share an understanding of the importance of network processes and their analysis in political life. This is coupled with strong attention to the integration (and advancement) of theory and empirical data. Political networks are conceived of in a broad sense - as defined around political actors, events that are relevant to the political biographies of individuals, as well as around the use of digital communication technologies within political dynamics. Thus, ties may consist of exchanges of resources, information, and symbols, as well as of collaborations and communications that may occur both on- and offline. This section proposal is endorsed by the Standing Group on Political Networks. Based on the successful past ECPR GC sections, the following panels were included: Panel 1: Climate Policy Networks 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 exclusive 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 2: Comparing Political Networks 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. The panel thus invites papers with an explicit comparative research design related to any type of political networks. Panel 3: 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, which obtain discourse, semantic, and socio-semantic networks from text data, and shows how network research might benefit from approaches that 1) use text as a database for political networks; 2) utilize various text analysis approaches to find ties between actors; or 3) combine text analysis with social networks. Panel 4: Network Analysis in International Relations and Security Studies This panel examines the added value of using network analysis to examine questions of international cooperation pertaining to IR and European studies. We welcome submissions that apply a relational approach and discuss the advantages and challenges of such methodological innovations in fields such as foreign policy analysis or crisis management. This panel seeks to cross-fertilize IR research with relational public policy scholarship and to critically examine the usability of relational approaches in IR and European studies. We understand relationality to encompass any theories united by an emphasis on the theoretical and analytical significance of connections, ties, transactions, and other kinds of relations among entities. Panel 5: Organisational and Social Movement Networks The last decade has seen a number of contentious actions that developed across Europe and beyond, part of which 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 good provision addressing the economic, environmental, social, and political consequences of the economic crisis. The following dimensions of networks are expected to be explored: a) the nature of alliances: specifically, the types of ties; the types of alliance structures, and clustering effects between groups and services; b) the type of actors involved in the networks; c) the degree of contentiousness; and d) the frames and collective identities at stake within networks. Panel 6: The Politics of Environmental Networks Environmental problems such as the climate emergency, biodiversity loss, natural resource depletion, and the associated environmental justice concerns have spurred a vast amount of research on environmental governance spanning across mono- to polycentric, adaptive, collaborative, and transformative approaches, which have increasingly adopted network perspectives. However, there is a lot to be learned about how politics in different environmental networks relates to the broader governance contexts and systems shaping policy and, ultimately, socio-environmental outcomes. Examining politics within environmental networks encompasses a broad array of research, including power dynamics, patterns of collaboration and conflict, framing and mobilization processes, crisis management, transboundary governance systems, and coalitional behavior. The paper abstracts submitted to this panel will be considered for the eponymic Special Issue in the Politics and Governance journal. Panels 7 and 8: Political Networks: Issues, Methods, and Challenges Politics is relational. Actors involved in political processes are interdependent through various interactions and relations, spanning from collaborative and conflictual relationships to the exchange of information and resources to institutional co-membership to the joint articulation of beliefs. Over time, such relational patterns form network structures that enable and constrain political action; a network perspective is thus crucial for the understanding of the political world (Victor et al. 2017). The past decade has seen a rapid expansion of research on political networks both in terms of empirical scope and methodological innovations, including multi-level, multi-modal, and longitudinal analyses. We invite a wide range of contributions that reflect these developments with a focus on integrating empirical and methodological advances with political theory. Short Bios: Maria Brockhaus is a Professor of International Forest Policy at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She uses policy network analysis to study forests’ role in climate change action and the political economy of deforestation in the Global South. Petr Ocelík is an Associate Professor at the Masaryk University. He uses SNA to study climate and energy policies in the Czech Republic.