Quantitative Network Analysis: Perspectives on mapping change in world system globalization

1. Quantitative Network Analysis: Perspectives on mapping change in world system globalization Douglas White Robert Hanneman

2. The Social Network Approach • Structure as: • Nodes and edges, or… • Actors and relations • Dynamics as: • Agency – “bottom up” building of ties, but • Embedding – within the emergent constraints of macro-structure

3. Structure • Nodes can be individuals, organizations, locations, or analytical aggregates • Relations can be material exchange, information flow, or shared status • What is fundamental are the ties or absence of ties between actors, in addition to the attributes of the actors

4. I. Network structures in the world system • Commodity chains • Trade systems, transport and communication • Business networks • City systems • Interstate power

5. Commodity chains White’s analysis of the input-output matrix of the Danish economy – seen as a network – scaled by equivalence of position. (available for the U.S., U.K, Holland, Italy, France, Australia)

6. Transportation and communication • Volume, speed, cost of movement of: • Bulk goods • Luxury goods • Information • Between: • Spatial locations • Population centers • Organizations/states

7. Trade network (13th century)

8. Business networks • Corporate interlocks • Market exchanges • Shared technology (e.g. licensing) • Shared niche space • Business groups Evolution of the interorganization contracts network in biotech – R&D and VC links for 1989 – 1999 (Powell, White, Koput and Owen-Smith forthcoming, AJS)

9. City systems Settlement systems have been seen as systems that evolve toward hierarchical networks. Networks like this may have an exponential degree distribution.

10. Interstate power • Treaty/alliance networks • Exchange of recognition • Bloc membership • Co-membership in supra-national organizations

11. II. Summarizing structures • Density, degree, reach • Centrality and power • Cohesion and sub-groups • Positions and roles

12. Density, degree, reach • How much connection is there? • Which nodes have how much connection (social capital)? • Which actors are closest to, most influenced by which others?

13. Centrality and power • Which actors have most ties? • Which actors are closest to most others? • Which actors are “between” others?

14. Cohesion and sub-groups • Are there blocs or factions or sub-groups? • Which actors are connected, how tightly, to which groups? • What roles do actors have with respect to relations between groups? • Level of cohesive membership as a predictive variable (Predictive Structural Cohesion theory)

15. Roles and positions Regular equivalence of positions in the 13th century main European banking/trading network • Can actors be classified according to which other actors they have ties to? • Can actors be classified according to which other kinds of actors they have ties to? • Actors “roles” in the structure (e.g. “core nation”) Same scaling method as Smith and White 1992 that showed a virtually linear core-periphery structure in the contemporary world-trade system

16. III. Dynamics • Actors make relations • Relations condition actors • Micromacro links between probabilistic attachment bias and network topologies • Macromicro effects of network topologies on actor activities and behaviors

17. III. Network dynamics in the world system • How and why do world systems expand, contract, and change structure? • Homophily • Exchange • Power-laws (degree preference) • Cohesion and shortcuts

18. Homophily • Forming (or breaking) ties is not random • Actors may have preferences to form (or sustain) ties with “similar” others • The macro-result is local clustering and formation of factions

19. Network exchange • Ties may be formed (or dissolved) proportional to the cost/benefits to actors, and… • Constraints due to presence of relations and existing embedding (alternatives available to each actor) • Macro-result may tend to “structural holes” and extended networks

20. Power laws • Actors with ties may use ties as social capital to accumulate further ties, and… • Actors with few ties may prefer to establish ties with actors with more ties • Both tendencies have the macro-result of exponential distributions of ties • Exponential networks create relatively short average path-lengths (shortcuts) unless the hub distributions are too extreme

21. Examples of scale-independent networks and effects on alpha Proteome yeast alpha=2.4 (Amaral) hierarchical organization, reduces alpha Greek Gods alpha=3.0 (H&J Newman) with no real organizational constraints, pure 'scale free' alpha (courtesy B. Walters) Biotech alpha=2.0 (Powell, White, Koput, Owen-Smith) cohesive organization, reduces alpha

22. Cohesion and shortcuts • Competing tendencies toward closed and cohesive local structures and… • Extensive short-distance structures… • Lead to “mixed” models, such as…

23. Ring Cohesion • Cohesion is an important predictor of network attachment, demonstrated in schools (AdHealth), industry (e.g. biotech), kinship, social class, and other fields and organizations. Ring cohesion theory focuses on preferential attachment-to-cohesion mechanisms and how they are constructed. • Ring cohesion analysis has now been completed for biotech and numerous kinship examples (work underway with Wehbe, Houseman) and is being done on the 13th C. world-system networks

24. Further applications of ring cohesion • Nord-Pas-de-Calais study: spatial and kin-connected dimensions of ring cohesion (joint scaling model; with Hervé Le Bras) • Networks of the previous world-system (13th century trade and monetary linkages; with Peter Spufford) • Networks of the first world-system (Jemdet Nasr; Henry Wright)

25. IV. Conclusions • How networks are formed (probabilistic biases), how multiple networks and levels interlock, what is transmitted has powerful predictions, • Including micro-macro (predictive linkages) with more global structural and dynamical properties of networks and their structural transformations • With macromicro feedback for quantitative changes and qualitative transformations of systemic properties at the level of local interaction