Abstract
Creating or breaking ties are common in social networks. What is less clear is whether patterns of ties, or network structures, also change or exhibit certain regularities. This research argues that actors maintain structural regularities in collaboration networks and examines social processes underlying such regularities. It studies collaboration ties created by 125 rural communities in Nepal with various organizations in 2007 and in 2014 to help implement community initiatives. Data for 2007 captured communities’ ties with organizations needed to execute community water projects for improved access to potable drinking water. Data for 2014 constituted collaboration ties created by the same communities with various organizations to implement other collective initiatives. Data analyses involved examining network descriptives of collaboration networks between communities and organizations for 2007 and 2014 to detect regularities in the networks. Next, bipartite exponential random graph models are estimated to determine network processes and actor attributes affecting formation of collaboration ties at both time points. The network processes include organizational “popularity network” (a tendency for organizations to receive ties from many communities) and “network closure” or cohesiveness between groups of communities and organizations. Community attributes considered are size, remoteness, and perceived future collaboration. Organization attributes include organization type and whether they operate at the village, district, or central level. The estimates are performed separately for 2007 and 2014. The preliminary results indicate the occurrence of change in collaboration ties along with regularity of popularity networks, suggesting that actors combine both change and regularity in collaboration networks.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
COLLABORATION NETWORKS, CIVIC SUSTAINABILITY, NETWORKED GOVERNANCE, COLLECTIVE ACTION
