In this continuing series of posts taken from the notes for my Intro to Political Analysis class, we’ll look now at networks and what they tell us about power.
Networks are composed of nodes and ties. Nodes are like points. Each represents an actor. An actor can be any individual, institution, nation-state, or social group with a distinct personality. It can even be a chemical.
Ties are like lines connecting nodes. They can represent any relationship—economic, romantic, religious, chemical. These ties have characteristics, like strength, direction, and elements. Strength can be dichotomous (binary) or cardinal (being represented by a number on a scale.) A tie can be undirected (two-way) or directed (one-way, and assymetric.) The elements of a tie can be univalent (just one relationship), or multivalent (with multiple strands of relationships.)
This is what a total (left) and partial (right) dominance hierarchy look like drawn as networks. The arrows point to the dominators (so A has the most dominance in both networks.)
Francis Bass 