In between ultimate frisbee and lying around in bed sick, I managed to attend a workshop on network theory at the International Studies Asssociation.
I spent some time there thinking about different things scholars mean when they say they are doing network theory, and what is the value added to IR of this basket of approaches.
Here are some tripartite thoughts on the matter, and you can probably guess which approach I’ll be taking in my new book.
1) Network theory provides a way to describe social relations that are neither hierarchies nor markets. This approach is associated with Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink’s work on advocacy networks and continues to hold some sway among “network analytic” scholarship, like Taylor Seyboldt’s recent analysis of the network structure of the humanitarian aid community. I actually don’t buy this approach however. Hierarchies are also networks (Wendy Wong’s great new book uses network theory as a way to describe and analyze variation in the organizational structure of different NGOs, and the same analysis could be applied to firms.) Furthermore, networks can be hierarchical rather than flat. Markets are distinct not in terms of structure but substance.
2) Network theory provides different conceptual tools for measuring (and visualizing) “structure.” IR theorists talk a lot about structure versus agency and yet have tended to have a very thin understanding of what structure is, generally arrived at deductively and treating it as a constant rather than measuring how it may vary by context. Emilie Hafner-Burton, Miles Kahler and Alex Montgomery have a good overview of the kinds of tools we’re talking about, and they distinguish this approach explicitly from the “networks as organization” approach above. The problem with this approach, I think, is that it equates network “theory” with “network analysis tools” and that the use of the tools as a method for measuring or visualizing often doesn’t involve very sophisticated theorizing about what those relationships mean and how they relate to the agency of actors embedded in network structures.
3) Network theory provides a set of propositions about the sources of political outcomes that are relational rather than instrinsic to actors. I like this approach the best because it both limits network theory to something analytically useful (that is, it’s not just another form of organization) and broadens it to include many methodologies besides social network analysis. For example, one could take the theoretical propositions associated with SNA (such as “actors with a high level of betweenness centrality will have the ability to function as brokers”) or “actors with high in-degree centrality within a network will exert greater influence over the categorical meanings within a network” and then examine the extent to which these insights hold true in different network settings by using more qualitative methodologies including comparative case studies, process-tracing, elite interview or focus groups. I think what’s most important is not that we’re able to create colorful maps or measure ties precisely, but that we’re taking relational factors seriously as causal and constitutive forces in world politics.
Reinventing the wheel here Charli. Check out my chapter on ‘Structures” for a detailed account on what structure is, then check out my chapter on ‘Agency’ for an complex account on relations as productive of outcomes.
Erm, chapters where?
I’m going to guess he’s referring to his book titled “Agents, Structures, and IR.”
I had the same question as Jarrod. When I see “chapter” I don’t know whether a person is referring to a sole-authored book or some chapter in someone’s edited volume. Hopefully Colin will elaborate – while I’d love to try to a) figure that out for myself and b) try to figure out which piece of my many points he considered ‘re-inventing the wheel’ in the context thereof since unfortunately I have many other things to do.
I will add that if Colin is reacting to my statement that “structure” is generally under-theorized in IR, I don’t think that is negated by an example of one or even a few scholars who have so theorized it. But nor is my post attempting to reinvent the concept of structure or agency – it’s just some off-the-cuff ruminations about different ways of doing network theory.
Yeah sorry, there’s me thinking it was obvious. Charli, I think a few things are worth mentioning here. First British humour obviously doesn’t travel to well in ‘cyberspace’. Second,I was reacting to your claim that ‘IR theorists talk a lot about structure versus agency and yet have tended to have a very thin understanding of what structure is, generally arrived at deductively and treating it as a constant rather than measuring how it may vary by context.’ That’s only partly true, and as you point out, it’s not that one or two people attempting to adress this makes you wrong, it’s that there isn’t one account of structure in the field, there are many, but people mostly just use the term (and agency) without really thinking of what it is they mean by it, or what the implications of different accounts are.
Ah. Well yeah, that’s basically what I was saying – though you put it much better with your deeper knowledge of the concept of ‘structure.’ My question to you then is, to what extent do you think that thread of network theorizing is or is not useful in pushing those various structure/agency debates forward?
I’m kind of open to that, but it depends how it plays out in practice. But I suppose what I really think is that the idea of pushing the structure/agency debates forward is the wrong way to think about it for me. There are different positions on this issue, and of course, I have my preferences, but it’s a problem with no solution; or to put it another way, it’s a problem with too many solutions. I know that doesn’t help too much, but it’s the best I can do.
Great post Charli, and I have a few additional ideas to toss out there. Highly tentative and I myself need to flesh these out more. But, in response to #2 and 3, both of which could be related, I think one key avenue IR theorists have not fully explored is: what would the payoff be if we engaged relational (some would add configurational) approaches in sociology that link with network theories, and this could be cashed out in different ways, if IR theorists, for example, engaged Mustafa Emirbayer’s works, or even Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory, etc. I think one potential contribution (something, PTJ and Dan have already alluded to) is the possibility of challenging, if not, collapsing even the agency-structure dichotomy altogether, and replacing it with a transactions/configurations of social relations/social networks ontology, implying that agency is, in fact, reducible to recurrent transactions, and structures are the aggregation, or particular configuration of those transactions, structures which can include social networks and other patterns of activity. Whether someone is theorizing the formation of states, or even revolutionary social movements, this would imply examining the transactions between social sites which constitute them as actors within networks, or as embedded within them. Moreover, this allows us to also theorize the role that social networks play in constituting collective identities (and Margaret Somers has done interesting work which explores the role that narratives play in constituting said identities and social networks), and likewise, how those actors and networks constitute subsequent narrated identities. It’s tough to really convey my thoughts here in detail, but in sum, I think you and the other Ducks here are on to something, and if a relational sociological approach is combined with network analysis, it can generate extremely interesting insights in IR, esp. for those interested in advocacy networks and social movements. So, the different ontology on offer is especially what is important here (and sorry Colin, I may very well be proposing a different scientific ontology than the one you were referring to in your book, but someone needs to say it). Even if we ventured down the path Somers offers further, in terms of philosophical ontology, that might take us in the direction of what PTJ identifies as an “analyticist” philosophical ontology that recognizes the central role narrative plays in knowledge-production. At the end of the day, there is much to be said regarding a critique of critical realism’s ontology, which tends to retain the agency-structure dichotomy or at least, correspond with it, and I think a relational approach that utilizes transactions and networks offers one potential way out of this conundrum, or at least, a different take on it, but a different engagement with the philosophy of science will likely be needed to do so of course.
And of course my caveat is that I still have much work ahead of me in terms of fleshing out those very tentative thoughts, but I agree Charli that your numbers #2 and #3 are potentially rewarding, and issues I’m considering in my own research as well. That’s what a PhD is for ;-)
Thank you for this deep and insightful response. It gives me a lot to chew on, and I will follow up on some of the cites.
Good stuff here
On Charli’s query to Colin: I guess I should make a plug for Chapter 2 of Struggle for Power in EME which tries to develop a comprehensive link between network/relational accounts and agent-structure questions in IR. Colin and I have a running disagreement about some issues involved but I think it is a productive one.
True. I guess I should have qualified my statement that the ties-as-structure argument leads to the use of SNA rather than qual methods, since your work and Stacie Goddard’s are examples to the contrary. Which is to say, I guess, that you guys’ work occupies a brokerage role between approach 2 and approach 3… :)
This is a great discussion and I agree with Charli on point three. I simply want to add that the research team working on the ‘Professions in International Political Economies’ project at the Copenhagen Business School (I’m the PI) using a relational approach in mapping professional peer networks across a range of socioeconomic cases (such as coordination on addressing low fertility, and the developing of ratings for carbon markets), as well as using optimal matching on career sequences (such as staff working on financial surveillance programs). If anyone is interested send me an email and I will keep you in the know – ls.dbp@cbs.dk. It is certainly an area where many assumptions of IR theory are up against the wall for a good frisking.
If actors can be in several relationships at the same time, attempts to substitute relational concepts for agency and structure may not quite work. Existence of multiple relations at once suggests there is something — a social structure, a Bourdieuian field [no guarantee I have that concept remotely right because I cannot understand B even in English translation], whatever — more encompassing than any single relationship and that the actor can shift around among the relationships or use one to affect another in a more or less self-conscious way that is seoparate from any of the relastionships.
Well, on a more modest level, perhaps one could say that a relational approach does not necessarily substitute concepts such as agency and structure, but allows us to reconceptualize their ontology in a profoundly different way. Instead of treating agents or structures as if they possess essential properties, they are considered the accumulation of processes (a process as opposed to an attribute ontology here). Said processes are captured by the transactions between social sites. Rather than seeing agency as the site (like an atomized individual) itself, it instead derives from the transactions between individuals, hence entities such as personalities, identities, intersubjective understandings, intersubjective knowledge, collective actions, etc. are themselves formed by recurrent processes and are maintained that way. So, you can have concepts like agency and structure, but instead, agency is viewed azs part and parcel of those multiple transactions and relationships, in fact as part of the structure itself, hence problematizing the dichotomy in a sense, or forcing us to rethink it. Can we speak of the knowledge, identities, or even collective actions of agents without their numerous, simultaneous even, social relationships? If anything, I view a relational approach as instead posing a challenge to structurationist conceptions of agency and structure, or to discussions that remove the processual and interactive bit from mutual constitution. Instead of considering Giddens a relational thinker, for example, I view so-called relational theorists as a direct challenge to him, among others. Bourdieu though, I’m not sure there.