Multiplex Network Analysis for Complex Governance Systems Using Surveys and Online Behavior

Text analysis, web scraping, and other computational techniques enable policy network researchers to efficiently obtain objective measures of network connections. However, the extent to which these observational methods differ from traditional survey instrument‐based measures remains an open question. Focusing on a large regional policy network of 221 organizations, this study compares a measure of collaboration generated via survey instrument to two different measures based upon internet hyperlinks and Twitter interactions between network actors. We address two questions: (1) To what extent do objective network measures based upon observed online interactions and subjective measures based upon self‐reported relationships reveal the same inter‐organizational partnerships and structural network dynamics? and (2) How useful are online network measures for supplementing survey‐based network measures? We find a significant, but substantively small, correlation between survey‐based measures and online interactions. Thus, online network measures may complement survey‐based measures, but likely reflect different aspects of the overall policy network. We conclude by discussing the potential for multiplex measures of policy networks that draw upon multiple measures to more fully understand policy network landscapes. These results bridge and help to contextualize prior work on policy network measures and virtual policy networks within the broader context of complex governance systems.     

Placing Transport Workers on the Agenda: The Conflicting Logics of Governing Mobility on Bishkek's Marshrutkas

Transport workers are conspicuously absent from both mobilities and urban studies literature. This paper therefore starts out with a double critique. First, transport workers, primarily drivers, are largely disregarded in mobilities and urban transport research. Second, the literature we find on transport workers—mostly based in empirical settings in the global South—remains outside recent and ongoing debates in critical urban transport studies. Providing empirical insights from post‐Soviet Central Asia, this paper strives to close these gaps and delve into the struggles and cleavages that structure informal transport workers’ positions and livelihoods. We argue that the diverse and contradictory logics that govern urban mobility affect the livelihoods and working conditions of informal transport workers, as well as their choices and motivations. These, in turn, significantly shape mobility provision, in terms of urban transport's (lack of) affordability, accessibility, convenience and safety.     

The Relational Sources of Advocacy Strategies: Comparative Evidence from the European and U.S. Climate Change Sectors

How do advocacy organizations make tactical choices? This paper contributes to theory building in advocacy studies by examining how the decision‐making processes of advocacy organizations are affected by the choices of their peers. Drawing on qualitative interviews with practitioners in two contexts—the European Union and the United States—I document that organizations face pressures toward cohesion and differentiation with the tactical choices of other organizations. Other important processes—such as rational evaluation of political opportunities, resource dependence, and ideological constraint—are also reported to be influential, although these processes are sometimes influenced by relational dynamics. These findings suggest new variables and relationships of interest for future quantitative research and provide insight into the growing complexity of climate politics.     

Merchant identities,trading nodes,and globalization: Introduction to the Special Issue

ABSTRACT

The contributors to this Special Issue are concerned by the nature of transregional Asian interactions taking place in the field of commerce. They explore this concern through an examination of the experiences, activities, and histories of commodity traders whose life trajectories criss-cross Asia. The articles share a common geographic point of reference: Yiwu – an officially designated ‘international trade city’ located in China’s eastern Zhejiang province. The introduction to the Special Issue analytically locates the individual papers in relationship to a long-standing body of work in anthropology and history on port cities and trading nodes. In so doing it suggests the importance of considering multiple historical processes to understanding Yiwu and its position in China and the world today, as well as, more generally, for the anthropology of ‘globalization from below’.     

欠发达地区城市公交底线公平的空间分异特征及成因分析——以云南省为例

底线公平是欠发达地区城市公交发展的基础指标。基于底线公平理论,本文从公交服务公平性、资源配置公平性、保障公平性三个方面,建立了城市公交底线公平性测度指标体系,采用PCA模型对欠发达地区城市公交的底线公平性进行测度分析,以云南省为例获取城市公交底线公平的空间分异特征,并对其影响因素进行分析。结果表明,云南省城市公交的底线公平性总体较差,空间分布呈现“圈层”特征,全省城市公交底线公平的整体空间分异与主因子空间分异特征吻合;平均候车时间、公交站点覆盖率、公共汽电车责任事故死亡率、公交运营车辆人车比等指标是影响公交底线公平的关键指标。     

The character of a global transport infrastructure: Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days

Jules Verne’s Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours, serialized in 1872 and published in English in 1874 as Around the World in Eighty Days, displays through its hero the character, in both senses of the term, of the new global public transport system that had transformed long-distance travel in the nineteenth century. Verne’s fiction imagines the community defined by this system in three particular elements: A high-speed public transport network creates a community of people by extending their synchronic collective sense of ongoing separate simultaneous activity and, collaterally, unifies them historically as contemporaries defined by the current mode, form and speed of their transport network; it creates this community of people irrespective of the individual purposes for which they use the transport system; and individuals comprehend this networked community by projecting an omniscient-like perspective through which they imagine themselves and others as circulating bodies in it.     

Social Processes in Lobbyist Agenda Development: A Longitudinal Network Analysis of Interest Groups and Legislation

How are lobbying agendas formed? While individual interest matters, a social process may also affect why lobbyists choose legislation on which to lobby. In a crowded environment, looking at what credible others do may help lobbyists lower their search and information costs with regard to an issue. Using longitudinal network data on lobbyists' legislative choices, I analyze the choices of organizations using an actor‐based dynamic model of network change that conditions agenda changes on the choices made by other organizations. The results suggest both a “bandwagon” process in which organizations converge on “popular” bills and an influence process in which lobbying organizations influence each other when their lobbying agendas overlap. In support of the quantitative findings, interviews with lobbyists show that the policy domain is a social community that consists of ongoing relationships, trust, and information sharing.     

芝加哥华人：19世纪70年代至20世纪30年代的跨国移民与商业活动

论文通过中英文原始资料,追述了芝加哥唐人街历史,论证了19世纪70年代至20世纪30年代的芝加哥华人社区在跨国移民与商业网络中的重要作用。认为芝加哥所拥有的水陆空交通枢纽的优越地理位置让城中的华人杂货业得以扩大生意范围;芝加哥的国际化氛围还培养了中餐精致饮食文化的先驱;城内的华人洗衣业也成为美国中西部城镇洗衣业的典范。这些特征都表明了芝加哥城内的华埠社区是美国中西部地区跨国移民与商贸中心的一个重要枢纽。华人企业家们不仅仅为他们个人商业的成功做出了贡献,同时也为美国中西部地区华人社区及家乡父老的集体生存、发展与成功做出了重要的贡献。     

China's Air Passenger Transport: An Analysis of Recent Trends

Two China-based transportation geographers examine trends and developments revealed by the release of the most recent official data on traffic and airport capacity within mainland China's domestic air passenger transport system. The focus of the study is the uneven spatial distribution of airports and airport service hinterlands, as well as the hierarchical nature of passenger flows centered within the axis Beijing-Shanghai-Guangzhou (Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan are not included in the analysis). Among the questions investigated are the efficiency/balance within the system, as well as the extent to which the distribution of airports and air passenger flow volumes reflect basic patterns of economic and urban development within the country, and conform with a hub-and-spoke model. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: L50, L93, O18, R40. 5 figures, 5 tables, 30 references.