Status Homophily or Value Homophily? – Predicting tie Formation in the Irish Climate Change Policy Network using Bayesian Exponential Random Graph Models.

Wagner, Paul; Payne, Diane

Abstract

Stakeholders engage in participative inter-organisational policymaking processes in a variety of different ways, for an array of normative reasons, and for a range of instrumental purposes. Understanding exactly which factors shape the actions of stakeholders in a policymaking process is important as it can help explain why we observe particular structural characteristics in a network. This information is useful because it can help decision-makers design strategies to improve the effectiveness and the efficiency of the policymaking process. In this paper, we are interested in identifying whether stakeholders in the Irish climate change policy network are more likely to form ties based on status homophily or based on value homophily. We test these two competing hypothesizes by developing and comparing two Bayesian exponential random graph models, each of which postulates one of the two forms of homophily as a significant predictor of tie formation Our results show that stakeholders are significantly more likely to form ties based on status homophily than they are to form ties based on value homophily. Interpreting our results, we argue that the Irish climate change policy network is fragmented into a number of interdependent subsystems, within each of which a subset of actors that share a common social characteristic engage in the debate over the issues about which they have specialized knowledge. This leads us to argue that the ability of the government to mange climate change will depend on how well they are able to coordinate the complex actions and interactions among and between the subsystems in the network.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: XXXV Sunbelt Conference
• Start Date: Jun 23, 2015
• End Date: Jun 28, 2015
• Deposit Date: Oct 18, 2023
• Related Public URLs: https://www.insna.org/sunbelt-archives