Exceptional or just well connected? Political entrepreneurs and brokers in policy making

Policy brokers and policy entrepreneurs are assumed to have a decisive impact on policy outcomes. Their access to social and political resources is contingent on their influence on other agents. In social network analysis (SNA), entrepreneurs are often closely associated with brokers, because both are agents presumed to benefit from bridging structural holes; for example, gaining advantage through occupying a strategic position in relational space. Our aim here is twofold. First, to conceptually and operationally differentiate policy brokers from policy entrepreneurs premised on assumptions in the policy-process literature; and second, via SNA, to use the output of core algorithms in a cross-sectional analysis of political brokerage and political entrepreneurship. We attempt to simplify the use of graph algebra in answering questions relevant to policy analysis by placing each algorithm within its theoretical context. In the methodology employed, we first identify actors and graph their relations of influence within a specific policy event; then we select the most central actors; and compare their rank in a series of statistics that capture different aspects of their network advantage. We examine betweenness centrality, positive and negative Bonacich power, Burt’s effective size and constraint and honest brokerage as paradigmatic. We employ two case studies to demonstrate the advantages and limitations of each algorithm for differentiating between brokers and entrepreneurs: one on Swiss climate policy and one on EU competition and transport policy.

In Search of Political Influence: Strategic Choices and Media Coverage of Political Parties, Interest Groups and Social Movements in Western European Countries

Outside lobbying is a key strategy for social movements, interest groups and political parties for mobilising public opinion through the media in order to pressure policymakers and influence the policymaking process. Relying on semi-structured interviews and newspaper content analysis in six Western European countries, this article examines the use of four outside lobbying strategies – media-related activities, informing (about) the public, mobilisation and protest – and the amount of media coverage they attract. While some strategies are systematically less pursued than others, we find variation in their relative share across institutional contexts and actor types. Given that most of these differences are not accurately mirrored in the media, we conclude that media coverage is only loosely connected to outside lobbying behaviour, and that the media respond differently to a given strategy when used by different actors. Thus, the ability of different outside lobbying strategies to generate media coverage critically depends on who makes use of them.

The political and the social Leaders of the Jewish community of Sepphoris in the second and third centuries

by Adolph Büchler

The Jews in Egypt and in Palestine under the Fāṭimid Caliphs : a contribution to their political and communal history based chiefly on Genizah material hitherto unpublished

by Jacob Mann

Political Sociology of Islam Integration: the Role of Liberal Law

In Europe and North America, migration and integration has become a busy subfield of political sociology. Of particular interest in this respect is the integration of Muslims and Islam, which has dominated the debate in Europe. Broadly conceived «political opportunity structures» have received much attention in this context. But the role of liberal law in the integration of Islam has been largely ignored, not by lawyers of course, but by political sociologists who have thus delivered far too negative and truncated pictures of Muslims and Islam in Europe. This is the deficit we sought to redress in Legal Integration of Islam; A Transatlantic Comparison (2013) (co-authored with John Torpey). Some of this study’s main ideas and findings are presented in the following.