Conference Agenda

Like other state agencies, the Central Bank of Chile (CBoC) operates not only under formal rules but also within social relationships that permeate elite circles. Granovetter (1985) refers to this issue as the problem of embeddedness: economic actors are embedded in concrete social structures, which might determine their decisions. Accordingly, we should expect various social groups to seek to influence the CBoC’s decision-making. Despite this, there is a striking dearth in the literature regarding the power dynamics in which the CBoC is embedded. Little is known about the precise nature of the relationship between the CBoC and different actors with interests in its policy decisions. This study addresses this issue by implementing a novel methodological approach that combines relational and event-based strategies to reconstruct an elite network. We identified individuals who have participated in social events covered in the “society pages” of El Mercurio, the daily newspaper widely regarded as the voice of Chile’s most influential sectors. Applying an automated data extraction method, we collected data from El Mercurio’s digital edition. This research strategy allowed us to identify individuals featured in photographs along with their names and occupations. Based on this data, we reconstructed the web of ties and connections that constitute the CBoC policy network. This paper thus provides new insights into the structural underpinnings of the network in which the CBoC is embedded. We show how central characteristics -such as kinship ties and educational backgrounds- shape patterns of integration of the CBoC board within Chile’s economic elite.

What factors best explain how political leaders decide to defect or stay with fading ruling parties in hybrid regimes? This paper applies network analysis to understand the dynamics of ruling party breakdown in hybrid regimes. Whereas previous work on party collapse has looked at coordination dynamics and defection processes, this paper expands this approach by integrating social network analysis to study in depth a single case of party collapse in post-Soviet Georgia – the ruling “Citizen’s Union of Georgia” (CUG) before and during the Rose Revolution in 2003. Relying on an extensive new database with the careers of all members of the Georgian parliament, we construct a network based on whether MPs have worked in the same location in the past. We find that the main leaders of the two camps – Eduard Shevardnadze and Mikheil Saakashvili – are not the most degree central figures in this network. In fact, Saakashvili, having spent most of his career elsewhere, has no connections to speak of. Instead, it is grey eminence Zurab Zhvania who emerges as one of the best-connected among potential leaders. Despite fine-grained temporal data on when individual CUG members decided to abandon the faction, we also find little evidence for cascading effects in a diffusion model. Direct connections to Shevardnadze also don’t have any statistically significant effect on willingness to defect – but connections to Zhvania make a defection more likely. At the same time, none of the network measures or connections appear to explain why MPs would join the opposition factions. Information from semi-structured interviews with the actors involved confirm the importance of Zurab Zhvania as a king-maker, but also shed light on why he was not a viable patron, like Shevardnadze, and could not become a leader of the opposition, like Mikheil Saakashvili. Both his ethnic background and rumors about his sexual orientation made him a non-starter as electoral candidate and thus also not an appealing patron to form an alternative faction. But it still allowed him to orchestrate a process of withdrawing support from the current, but weakening patron, Shevardnadze. Our study’s mixed methods approach – combining a contagion model that relies on the collection of extensive background information to construct social networks among all MPs with in-depth semi-structured interviews with the actors involved – allows us to paint a more complete picture of the elite politics leading up to and accompanying one of the central cases in the last wave of democratization.

Studies of elites have long looked at network interlocks and career pathways. However, the link between these, the set of organizations through which elites accumulate the capital that lifts elites into the upper echelons of power and prestige - needs a common framework. In this paper, we propose to use biographies of elites to map the organizational overlap in CVs. In doing so, we show how it is possible to simultaneously identify the set of key organizations for the formation of elites and the set of elite individuals integrated by these organizations. By using Breiger’s (1974) notion of the duality of persons and groups in two-mode affiliation networks, we expand and change existing methods for elite identification (Larsen and Ellersgaard 2017) to career networks.

We discuss how the CV can be used as a data source and propose analytical techniques and measures, the k-circles, that take their heterogeneity and incompleteness into account. We demonstrate that these measures are uniquely robust to systematic biases in missing data and omissions. We argue that a relational measure of centrality based on this, k-score, can identify key organizations and individuals that are close to the concept of the overlapping circles of power as conceptualised by C.W. Mills (1956). Using data from the Danish version of Who’s Who, we then show that biographical data using the k-circles measures can allow us to identify a cross-sectional ‘elite within the elite’ on a year-to-year basis between 1910 and 2020. This elite is shown to be similar to an elite identified through contemporary affiliation network data, albeit with higher levels of the most inheritable form of capital, economic capital. We discuss how data on career networks based on biographical data to a larger extent than affiliation network analysis of current positions enables us to identify the key institutions for capital accumulation and mutual self-affirmation of status across this cross-sectorial elite.

We conclude the paper by discussing how k-circles can be applied to other two-mode networks enabling scholars to identify core groups of both individuals and organisations at the same time. Furthermore, we show the potential in the analysis of elites and key organisations by showing the historical changes for key elite individuals and the changing organizational landscape of the Danish corporate elite between 1910-2020. In doing so, we discuss the extent in which the k-circle measure provides a analytical framework capable of measuring changing elite dynamics in a uniform way across quite varied historical epochs and heterogeneous biographical records and suggest future possible applications for k-circles in the study of the duality of persons and groups.

The U.S. currently has the least progressive tax system in its history, allowing wealth to concentrate at the top while limiting resources available for public investment. This presents a paradox: despite public support for progressive taxation, such reforms consistently fail to pass in Congress. Research has identified two primary obstacles to progressive tax reform: institutional inertia favoring the status quo and strong political opposition from wealthy individuals (Page and Seawright 2023). The vast majority of multi-millionaires and billionaires oppose higher taxes on the wealthy, and empirical studies show that political outcomes disproportionately align with their preferences rather than those of the broader electorate (Gilens 2005, 2014). However, the precise mechanisms through which the ultra-wealthy exert their influence over tax policy remain poorly understood.

This study investigates one potential avenue of influence: the social and institutional connections between the ultra-rich and members of the U.S. Congress. We hypothesize that legislators who share educational backgrounds with billionaires—attending the same universities and programs during overlapping time periods—are more likely to oppose progressive tax policies. These connections may facilitate informal networks of influence, shaping political attitudes and decision-making in ways that privilege elite interests.

To test this hypothesis, we compile a novel dataset that maps the educational trajectories of U.S. Congress members and billionaires using publicly available records from the official Congress website and Forbes magazine. We identify overlap in higher education institutions, academic programs, and graduation years to construct measures of social exposure to the ultra-wealthy. Using roll-call votes on tax-related legislation as an outcome variable, we examine whether legislators with greater exposure to billionaires are systematically more likely to vote against progressive tax reforms. Our analysis controls for key confounders, including party affiliation, age, personal wealth, and university prestige, to isolate the effect of elite social ties.

Preliminary results indicate that legislators with stronger educational linkages to billionaires are significantly more likely to oppose progressive tax policies compared to their peers with weaker or no such ties. This finding provides quantitative evidence that elite networks serve as a conduit for economic influence, potentially undermining efforts to implement policies aimed at reducing wealth inequality. By shedding light on this underexplored mechanism, our study contributes to a broader understanding of how economic elites maintain their privileged positions through social and institutional channels.

These findings have important implications for both scholarship and policy. They suggest that addressing economic inequality requires not only institutional reforms but also greater transparency regarding the social networks that shape political decision-making. Future research could expand on this work by examining other forms of elite connectivity—such as shared board memberships, professional affiliations, and philanthropic networks—as additional pathways through which the wealthy influence tax policy.

This communication discusses strategies for combining social network analysis (SNA) and multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) in order to examine the social foundations of political nomination. It aims to detect if ties leading to political appointments connect individuals with similar social backgrounds and if their social proximity varies according to the environment in which they met. This question will be discussed throughout the examination of the answers of the Brazilian National Development Bank (BNDES) directors regarding the source of their nomination and the circumstances of establishing the relations that led to it. The data was gathered throughout 41 interviews with presidents, vice-presidents, and directors of the BNDES conducted between 2012 and 2016. These interviews also collected systematic data on their social origins, education, cultural practices, and political positions that were used to build a geometrical social space. The distance between the directors in each pair of axes of the MCA was measured when a tie between them is reported. As a result, it is possible to analyze how social homogeneity is expressed in these political appointments and to detect homophily among these political/expert elites. Next, the information on the origin of the ties was mobilized to discuss how homophily varied according to the environments where they met: banking, politics, academia, State bureaucracy, or mundane relations.

Lobbying is often perceived as a tool for entities with large financial or social capital to influence policymaking, potentially sidelining ordinary citizens’ interests. However, large-scale quantitative studies confirming or rejecting this perception are lacking. Indeed, most existing studies survey the actions and the interactions of small samples of stakeholders or policymakers. This paper leverages on a comprehensive dataset of face-to-face interactions between high level European Commission (EC) representatives and stakeholders to provide a detailed analysis of the EC lobbying network. More specifically, we examine whether there exist a highly interconnected core of actors that could dominate the network.

Indeed, network theory is particularly well-suited for studying power concentration in lobbying contexts. First, topological measures, like rich club coefficients, offers a concrete evidence for the existence of a hierarchical structure within the network. Second, it permits the identification of central actors and of the determinants of centrality. Third, integrating higher-order interactions offers insights into coalition formation and collaborative lobbying strategies.

Accordingly, we model these interactions by constructing a hypergraph where the nodes represent EC officials and stakeholders, and a hyperedge connects entities that participate in the same meetings. This hypergraphic perspective allows us to analyze both the micro and the macro structures of interactions. We apply this approach both to the full network containing stakeholders and policy-makers and to the network of stakeholders only. Our analysis highlights the presence of a robust core-periphery structure, with a few well-connected entities that occupy the center of the network and enjoy a stable integration in the EC policy-making process. Examination of the core composition reveals that companies and trade associations maintain closer relationships with the EC, while NGOs show increased core presence in the stakeholder-only network. This suggests different engagement strategies among stakeholder groups, with NGOs potentially focusing more on coalition-building and shared meetings. A regression analysis of company centrality identifies several determinants. The number of full-time equivalent staff dedicated to lobbying activities and company size are strongly associated with higher centrality. Companies with EU-based headquarters and those with global or European levels of interest also exhibit significantly higher centrality. These findings provide quantitative evidence supporting the perception of lobbying as a tool dominated by well-connected actors, while also revealing heterogeneous lobbying strategies across stakeholder groups. Our findings can be used to assess the performance of the EU consultation process with respect to its objectives of increasing the legitimacy of the European policy process and of maintaining an open, transparent and regular dialogue with stakeholders.