The Political Significance of Social Media Activity and Social Networks

This paper examines panel data from two waves of the Youth Participatory Politics Survey, a nationally representative sample of young people in the United States. It employs a cross-lagged design to investigate the extent to which common forms of online activity create pathways to online and offline forms of political activity. Specifically, we examine the influence of Friendship-Driven (FD) and Interest-Driven (ID) online activity on online participatory politics and on offline forms of political action. Our findings reveal that FD and ID activity relate to political engagement, but in different ways. In addition, we find that the size of young people’s social networks interacts with both FD and ID online activity to promote political activity. This indicates that having exposure to “weak-ties” (resulting from large social networks) promote higher levels of political engagement. These findings demonstrate the need to specify the kinds of online activities in which youth are engaged and, more broadly, the political significance of social media and social networks     

Fagerholm Goes Oprah: Minor Literature,Global Market,and Gender in Literary Exchange

Abstract

In this article, I study the journey of the Finland-Swedish author Monika Fagerholm’s (b. 1961) novel The American Girl to the pages of O, The Oprah Magazine. This event, here called “Fagerholm goes Oprah”, offers an illustrative example of the global movements of literature today, and of the ongoing negotiation of relations between local and global, the Nordic countries and the USA, minor literature and the global market. The article describes the different phases of the transmission of this novel, studies the means by which a novel from a minor body of literature transgresses its geo-linguistic position and, in this specific case, demonstrates the role of gender. In this way, the novel not only creates fictive, transnational spaces for its female characters and readers, but it also enters and contributes to a network of female agents in widely different geographical and cultural contexts. The event “Fagerholm goes Oprah” is a sign of the ongoing globalization of the literary field, but its reception also reveals the presence of an opposing tendency: the continuing significance of localization in literary exchange. All in all, the novel and its reception illustrate the many strategies used to create a connection between two different cultures, and also display the importance of various cultural currents in the transmission of the novel, such as feminism and Nordic Noir.     

How Can Subnational Governments Deliver Their Policy Objectives in the Age of Austerity? Reshaping Homelessness Policy in Wales

This article explores how a devolved government in a small country, faced with external constraints beyond its immediate control, can deploy policy resources to shape a distinctive approach to public services. We analyse recent homelessness policy in Wales using the NATO (Nodality, Authority, Treasure, Organisation) typology of tools of government proposed by Hood and Margetts, and show how this can be applied usefully to understand the choices that governments must make in conducting relationships with other institutions. We conclude that a combination of Nodality and Authority provide powerful resources for a subnational government which has only limited formal powers and fiscal autonomy.     

Transnational advocacy networks in global supply chains: a study of civil society organizations’ sugar movements in Cambodia

As a contribution to the growing literature on transnational advocacy networks (TANs) in the global production networks, this article examines how civil society organizations (CSOs), which have adopted the TAN approach, influence the sugar industry in Cambodia. Due to ineffective domestic influencing strategies, the CSOs adopted the TAN approach and escalated to an international supply chain movement approach (ISCMA) aiming to influence international stakeholders at each stage of the sugar supply chain in order to leverage boomerang pressure on the sugar producing companies and the Government of Cambodia. Despite its resourceful networking strategies, the ISCMA failed to leverage significant influence on the sugar companies and the government to achieve its demands. The failure was not due to weak networks, but was in part due to the political nexus between the government and the sugar companies. This article suggests that to ensure the effectiveness of CSOs’ actions within the TAN framework in the global production networks, one should take into account the power of the government in relation to local politico-commercial elites.     

Brokers and Entrepreneurs in Human Stem Cell Governance Networks in the United States

The policy debate over embryonic stem cell (ESC) research in the United States mainly focuses on the extent to which the government ought to provide resources for that research. This article addresses the strategic use of network positions to mobilize an effective coordination system for lifting the moratorium on funding of ESC under the Obama administration since March 2009. By identifying patterns of interactions between members in a network of embedded ties, we can explore the major actors who play the role of brokers or entrepreneurs in stem cell research funding policy under the Obama administration. For that, this article utilizes social network analysis and the G&F brokerage roles framework to identify key brokers in facilitating coordination among various members engaged in funding human stem cell research in the governance network.     

Group Structure and Intergroup Relations in Global Terror Networks: Further Explorations

Studies have begun to look at the potentially crucial impacts of group decentralization and inter-group global networking in accounting for the extent and severity of violence in insurgencies and terrorism. Groups may be able to survive more effectively, evade anti-terror or counter-insurgency strategies, and inflict greater damage or more civilian attacks by operating under more or less centralized leadership, or by making use of the resources of other like-minded groups scattered across borders. While some analysts have examined each of these possibilities, few if any have done so simultaneously with both structural and networking indicators or examined the joint effects of these indicators. We propose to do so in this study by combining existing datasets on terrorist structure and networks. Hypotheses and findings in prior studies have indicated that structural decentralization may lead to more civilian attacks if not more destruction since local cells are freer to act on their own, and that group size and centrality in the global terror networks lead to greater lethality and group survival rates. We re-examine such assumptions here with OLS and logit models combining these effects, and find that in addition to group size, network reach (eigenvalue centrality) rather than group interconnections per se (number of allies) appears to have primary impacts on group lethality, targeting, and survival, sometimes in conjunction with decentralized organizational structure.     

Does local ownership bring about effectiveness? The case of a transnational advocacy network

In international development, shared ownership is assumed to be a condition for effectiveness. Academic studies question this relation, claiming shared ownership can instead lead to ineffectiveness. This study analysed the interplay between ownership and effectiveness in a transnational advocacy network for conflict prevention observed 2012–2015. Building on recent discussions about balancing unity and diversity in networks, this article unpacks the ownership/effectiveness relationship into three dimensions: collective identity, accountability processes and a shared advocacy message. We find that the question is not about more or less effectiveness, but about the processes shaping the meaning of effectiveness in particular institutional constellations.     

Delinquent networks in Sweden

This study covers all persons under the age of 20 who were suspected of having committed a crime in the Swedish city of Borlänge (approx. 50,000 inhabitants) during the years of 1975–1977. The juveniles (575 in all) were followed up during a total of 10 years. A sociometric method based on police data was developed for studying co-offending patterns. The method was validated through a smaller number of interviews with the juveniles. This study shows that a large majority of the most delinquency active juveniles was associated with a large network of delinquent relations. The stronger the connection to this network, the more substantial, serious, and long-lasting were the delinquency and other asociality. This network also seemed to be very important with regard to the reproduction of juvenile delinquency in the municipality. At the end of the follow-up period juvenile delinquency in Borlänge had basically the same character as at the beginning, even though the juveniles included in the network were, to a large extent, new. The young offenders who were central figures in the new network had successively learned their roles from the network's old members.This paper is based on results published initially in a report entitledDelinquent Networks (Sarnecki, 1986).     

CRIMINAL ACHIEVEMENT, OFFENDER NETWORKS AND THE BENEFITS OF LOW SELF-CONTROL

This study follows recent research on criminal earnings and examines the impact of underlying traits (low self-control) and personal organization features (nonredundant networking) on the criminal earnings of a sample of incarcerated offenders previously involved in market and predatory crimes. Controlling for various background factors (age, noncriminal income, lambda and costs of doing crime), both low self-control and nonredundant networking independently explain why some offenders are more successful than others in achieving higher monetary standards through crime. Although efficient, brokerage-like networking enhances market offenders' earnings, low self-control emerges as an asset for predatory offenders: the lower their self-control, the higher their criminal earnings. For market offenders, however, low self-control has no direct effect, but it does mitigate the impact of effective networking on criminal earnings. The results emerging from this study have implications for Gottfredson and Hirschi's theory of crime and the advent of a criminal network perspective. Extensions are also made toward the conventional/criminal embeddedness framework and deterrence research.     

The Public Sector Reform Movement: Mapping the Global Policy Network

Public sector reform in both developed and developing countries has now become a routine matter of public policy—reform is almost continuous, if not always successful. While the role of international transfer agents such as the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in promoting reforms has often been noted, there has been no comprehensive mapping of the global network on public sector reform. This article makes a first attempt to map the close to 100 organizations that make up a loose global network around public administration and governance. It then provides a brief history of the evolution of the network, and the key events that encouraged a substantial degree of coherence among its members. It examines the practices and tools that are specific to this global public policy network, and concludes with some observations on policy transfer models. The article shows that in trying to understand the dynamics of public administration reform, we need to pay greater attention to this network, its members, and its influence over national policy priorities.