Insights from Network Analysis in Somalia

2019 ◽  
pp. 489-499
Author(s):  
Mircea Gherghina ◽  
Sandra McNeill ◽  
Khadir Abdi
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Qualitative Methods ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Power Network ◽  
Holding Power ◽  
Armed Actors

This chapter uses network analysis to reveal the dynamics and intricate relationships between business, political elites, and armed actors in Somalia. The prolonged civil war has fostered cooperation, in the form of loose networks between the private sector and those holding power. Network analysis could help uncover informal relationships not necessarily otherwise exposed. By modelling an interpretation of the information which can be generated in this way, it considers the interactions between key actors and shows how network analysis can map a topology of those interactions to unravel how groups interact or diverge in terms of ideological positions or different interests. Through the modelling of an anonymized network, the chapter first assesses the method itself and the often-concealed ties as they exist or otherwise. Then, adding context and analysis from qualitative methods, it considers the implications and applications of the data; finally, it recommends to apply the findings to policy-making.

Institution, network and elites’ political attitudes: An analysis of the “Wen Jiabao Phenomenon”

2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 105-115
Author(s):  
Sangkuk Lee
Keyword(s):  
Network Analysis ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Political Attitudes ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Standing Committee ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Policy Work

Unlike China’s other top leaders, PremierWen Jiabao has presented his political views after the 17th CCP Congress. Wen’s assertive attitude for further political reform has attracted attention from international as well as domestic media. This article utilizes both institutionalism and network analysis to explain this uncommon political phenomenon, while it illuminates the drawback of the attribute perspective which has been used popularly to infer the attitudes of China’s political elites. This study argues that Wen’s attitude with personality has been produced by some institutional and network factors. They include: the decline of a powerful rival, different functions of the party and state in China’s policy-making and implementation, division of policy work among Politburo Standing Committee leaders.

The Colombian Private Sector in Colombia’s Transition to Peace

2019 ◽  
pp. 255-278
Author(s):  
Angelika Rettberg
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Contextual Factors ◽  
Business Strategies ◽  
Profit Motive ◽  
Civil Action ◽  
The Many ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Armed Actors

During the Colombian civil war, businesses undertook both civil and uncivil actions, but the civil action of a “pro-peace coalition” was among the many factors moving the conflict toward its (uneasy) settlement in 2016. This chapter documents the civil action efforts of a pro-peace coalition, explores how support for these efforts changed over time—particularly in the last two attempts to negotiate peace, in Caguán (1998–2002) and in Havana, Cuba (2012–2016), and focuses on the motivations behind them. Contrary to simplistic analyses, it demonstrates that the profit motive alone cannot explain business strategies in contexts of conflict and peacebuilding. Contextual factors, the type of organization, and access to politics are important in understanding how business factions respond to armed conflict, including those participating in civil action within the “pro-peace coalition” and those aligning themselves with armed actors. The explanation of Colombian business strategies to address armed conflict holds lessons for understanding business-led civil action in other countries.

The Lebanese Civil War 1975–90

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 105-124
Author(s):  
Jamal Wakim
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Economic Role ◽  
Lebanese Civil War ◽  
Organized Violence ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Leftist Parties

This article argues that the Lebanese Civil War (1975–90) was in essence a terror of state directed by mercantile economic and political elites (the comprador class) controlling the Lebanese state and society against the middle and poorer classes (the working class). The aim of this terror or organized violence was to subdue the subordinate classes, which in the late 1960s and early 1970s rebelled against the confessional system that operated for the benefit of the comprador class. The rebellion was expressed by members of the working-class joining cross-confessional nationalist and leftist parties. Hence, violence was aimed at reestablishing the confessional order as a means to restore a hegemonic system that served the interests of the comprador class at a time when this class was rehabilitating its economic role by resurrecting the financial system, which had received a severe blow in the late 1960s. It effected this rehabilitation through the Taif Agreement signed between Lebanese parliamentarians in 1989, under the auspices of Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the United States, to favor the new mercantile elite led by Rafiq Hariri.

Political and corporate elites and localised educational policy-making: the case of Kingswood Academy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth McGinity
Keyword(s):  
Educational Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Single Case Study ◽  
The North ◽  
Corporate Elites ◽  
Thinking Tools ◽  
Important Site

This chapter reports on data and analysis to theorise the role that both corporate and political elites played in the development and enactment of localised policy-making at Kingswood Academy; a secondary school in the North of England. The analysis offered reveals how a single case-study school provides an important site to explore the ways in which the educational policy environment provides the conditions for elites to play a significant role in the development and delivery of localised policy processes in England. Bourdieu (1986; 1992) provides the thinking tools to undertake this theoretical and intellectual work, and I deploy his conceptualisation of misrecognition as a means of interrogating how the involvement of corporate and political elites in the processes of localised policy-making reproduces the hierarchised power of particular networks, which ultimately contribute to the privatisation of educational ‘goods’ as marketised commodities.

Framework for power network analysis

1983 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 182-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lj.B. Jocić ◽  
C.K. Cretcher ◽  
T.A. Trygar
Keyword(s):  
Network Analysis ◽  
Power Network

14. Détente in Decline, 1977–9

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W. Young ◽  
John Kent
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Middle East ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Peace Treaty ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Jimmy Carter ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
The Soviet Union

This chapter examines the decline of détente during the period 1977–1979. Détente suffered in part from being identified with Richard Nixon. After 1973, conservatives increasingly questioned détente, felt that the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I) benefited the Soviet Union most, and were disturbed by an apparent pattern of communist adventurism abroad, in the 1973 Middle East War, Angola, and South-East Asia. The chapter first considers détente and policy-making during the time of Jimmy Carter before discussing the conflict in the Middle East, in particular the Lebanon Civil War, and the Camp David summit of 1978 that resulted in an Egyptian–Israel peace treaty. It then analyses the Ogaden conflict of 1977–1978), the ‘normalization’ of Sino-American relations, and the Sino–Vietnamese War. It concludes with an assessment of the SALT II treaty.

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