In Congressional races, political networks play an important role in ensuring minority representation

A number of retirements in Congress ahead of the 2018 midterms have opened up the possibility for increased Latino representation in the US House of Representatives. But, the past has shown that Latino candidates aren't always selected for, or win elections in, majority Latino districts and that Latinos and non-Latinos who are elected don't always represent the views of their constituents. In new research, Angela X. Ocampo finds that political networks have a large influence on whether a Latino or non-Latino gets onto the ballot as a candidate. These networks are also often able to push candidates forward based on their legislative priorities, which may or may not align with the preferences of their constituents

Parties, promiscuity and politicisation: business-political networks in Poland

Research on post-communist political economy has begun to focus on the interface between business and politics. It is widely agreed that informal networks rather than business associations dominate this interface, but there has been very little systematic research in this area. The literature tends to assume that a politicised economy entails business-political networks that are structured by parties. Theoretically, this article distinguishes politicisation from party politicisation and argues that the two are unlikely to be found together in a post-communist context. Empirically, elite survey data and qualitative interviews are used to explore networks of businesspeople and politicians in Poland. Substantial evidence is found against the popular idea that Polish politicians have business clienteles clearly separated from each other according to party loyalties. Instead, it is argued that these politicians and businesspeople are promiscuous. Since there seems to be little that is unusual about the Polish case, this conclusion has theoretical, methodological, substantive and policy implications for other post-communist countries

Causality in Political Networks

As the study of political networks becomes more common in political science, greater attention to questions of causality is warranted. This essay explores competing visions of causality in political networks. Independent essays address issues of statistical model specification, identification of multi-step personal influence, measurement error, causality in historical perspective, and the insights of field experiments. These essays do not agree entirely on the nature of causality in political networks, though they commonly take seriously concerns regarding homophily, time- consistency, and the uniqueness of political network data. Serious consideration of these methodological issues promises to enhance the value-added of network analysis in the study of politics

Automated construction and analysis of political networks via open government and media sources

We present a tool to generate real world political networks from user provided lists of politicians and news sites. Additional output includes visualizations, interactive tools and maps that allow a user to better understand the politicians and their surrounding environments as portrayed by the media. As a case study, we construct a comprehensive list of current Texas politicians, select news sites that convey a spectrum of political viewpoints covering Texas politics, and examine the results. We propose a ”Combined” co-occurrence distance metric to better reflect the relationship between two entities. A topic modeling technique is also proposed as a novel, automated way of labeling communities that exist within a politician’s ”extended” network.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

DREAMS REALIZED AND DREAMS DEFERRED: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND PUBLIC POLICY IN PITTSBURGH, 1960-1980

This dissertation analyzes the impact of civil rights, women's rights, and gay rights activists on public policy in Pittsburgh during the 1960s and 1970s. It challenges several of the interpretations which other scholars have made about the history and impact of the New Left and social movements in the United States since 1960. This study applies social network analysis to politics to explain the successes and failures these social movements had in the city in winning the reforms that they sought for their communities. As the activists grew in their political sophistication, so their political networks matured. Pittsburgh activists did not ignore the means of power that social movement scholars traditionally study, power at the polls and in the streets. But in addition to such tools, activists built a base of trust, respect, and mutual support between themselves and local politicians. By gathering and disseminating information about the problems afflicting their communities, African-Americans in the 1960s and feminists and gays in the 1970s won converts to their cause among the city's political elite. Leaders within the three movements leveraged their growing rapport with political leaders to win appointments to government commissions for community members and appropriations for programs aiding their communities. These positions brought activists further contacts and alliances with leaders at other levels of government. Using their political networks, these Pittsburgh activists in the 1970s protected and sometimes advanced their cause even in the face of federal budget cuts and growing organized opposition to school desegregation, abortion, and gay rights

Dynamic Models of Mobilization in Political Networks

The Eastern European color revolutions, and more recently the post-election unrest in Iran pose a pressing question: how can local organization networks facilitate large-scale collective action? The final result of a collective action is contingent upon two factors, the relational structure of the network of the individuals involved, and their mutual learning, imitation, and belief-updating dictated by the network structure. I propose a formalization of the Granovetter threshold model for participation in collective action in networks, which takes both the network structure and belief updating into account. In order to make verifiable predictions, I outline a graph theoretical model for threshold updating using the DeGroot model. I demonstrate that full connectivity in a social network sometimes can hinder collective action. Later I will show that with some assumptions on the structure of the social network, repeated threshold updating takes the network to an equilibrium on the network graph; hence, the updating procedure acts as an equilibrium selection mechanism based on network parameters and initial participation thresholds. When these assumptions do not hold, cycles of participation and disengagement can occur. Furthermore, using this model one could find the network structure that brings about a particular asymptotic action equilibrium. Unlike the Granovetter/Kuran model, this model predicts non-monotone participation levels and heterogeneous outcomes at the final equilibrium, where some individuals act and some do not. Hence, it provides a more realistic model of mobilization dynamics, which can explain the ebb and flow in large-scale political demonstrations

<Political Networks in Asia>Contending Political Networks: A Study of the "Yellow Shirts" and "Red Shirts" in Thailand's Politics

This essay investigates two bitter antagonists in the turbulent politics of contemporary Thailand: the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), with its members labeled the "Yellow Shirts, " and the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), or the "Red Shirts." Each of the two foes, typically regarded only as a social movement, actually has a vast network connecting supporters from many quarters. The Yellow Shirt network is associated with the monarchy, military, judiciary, and bureaucracy. The Red Shirt network, organizationally manifest in a series of electorally triumphant parties, is linked to exiled ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, his "proxies, " and groups and individuals who opposed the military coup that ousted Thaksin in 2006. The significance of the two antagonistic networks can be gauged from their different influences on democratic processes over several years. Using concepts of political networks to examine the PAD and UDD within the socio-political context in which they arose, the essay focuses on several aspects of the networks: their political conception and perspectives, their organizational structures (for decision making and networking), and the strategies and activities of their members. The essay critically analyzes key and affiliated characters within the PAD and UDD, as well as the functional mechanisms of the networks, in order to evaluate the positions of the two networks in contemporary Thai politics

Party Nexus Position Generator

The role of networks has been growing attention in recent decades in explaining political behaviour. Political nexus aspects also get on the agenda in studying various resources of status attainment. Despite the general realization of these relevant network implications, some conceptual and measurement issues are still debatable. In this paper, we introduce a new tool for measuring political acquaintanceship networks, the Party Nexus Position Generator (PNPG). We will show how one of the most widely used SNA-instruments, the technique of position generator, could be transformed to apply for the measurement of political networks. We tested the tool in two countries, Germany and Hungary, with surveys administered by different methods: online and face-to-face. The presentation of findings on German and Hungarian political networks may help us understand how the broader settings affect the composition of political networks and their influences on political behavior. Results from two different countries may also contribute to assess the validity of the PNPG tools introduced by our study