Information Exchange in Policy Networks

Abstract

Information exchange in policy networks is usually attributed to preference similarity, influence reputation, social trust, and institutional actor roles. We suggest that political opportunity structures and transaction costs play another crucial role and estimate a rich statistical network model on tie formation in the German toxic chemicals policy domain. The results indicate that the effect of preference similarity is absorbed by institutional, relational, and social opportunity structures. Political actors choose contacts who minimize transaction costs while maximizing outreach and information. We also find that different types of information exchange operate in complementary, but not necessarily congruent, ways.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 290 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.