El surgimiento de la banca en Hispanoamérica durante la década de 1820 tuvo implicaciones en la estabilidad financiera de los nuevos estados independientes y en los modos con los que los actores económicos locales desarrollaban sus negocios. La aparición de novedosos instrumentos de pago, como billetes y cheques bancarios, habilitó transacciones con base en una infraestructura hasta entonces desconocida localmente. Los cheques permitieron el empleo de depósitos y sobregiros como medios para la concreción de pagos, expresando la emergencia del dinero bancario propiamente dicho. Aplicando el Análisis de Redes Sociales sobre la información del archivo bancario, el presente artículo propone explicar los mecanismos que permitieron la difusión de aquel instrumento, propiciando su admisibilidad en la economía de un Estado naciente.

Interest group networks are crucial for understanding European Union (EU) integration, policymaking and interest representation. Yet, comparative analysis of interest organisation networks across EU policy areas is limited. This study provides the first large‐scale investigation of interest group information networks across all EU policy domains. We argue that interest groups prioritise access to trustworthy and high‐quality information coming from partners with shared policy goals. Thus, interest organisations form network ties with other organisations if the latter are from the same country, represent the same type of interest, or are policy insiders. The effect of these three factors varies across policy domains depending on the extent to which the institutional setting assures equal and broad organisational access to decision‐making. Our empirical analysis operationalises information ties as Twitter‐follower relationships among 7,388 interest organisations. In the first step of the analysis, we use Exponential Random Graph Models to examine tie formation in the full network and across 40 policy domains. We find strong but variable effects of country and interest type homophily and policy insiderness on the creation of network ties. In the second step, we examine how the effect of these three variables on tie formation varies with policy domain characteristics. We find that shared interest type and policy insiderness are less relevant for tie formation in (re‐)distributive and especially regulatory policy domains characterised by more supranational decision‐making. Sharing an interest type and being a policy insider matters more for tie formation in foreign and interior policies where decision‐making is more intergovernmental. The effect of country homophily is less clearly related to policy type and decision‐making mode. Our findings emphasise the importance of institutional and policy context in shaping interest group networks in the EU.

Networks famously epitomize the shift from ‘government’ to ‘governance’ as governing structures for exercising control and coordination besides hierarchies and markets. Their distinctive features are their horizontality, the interdependence among member actors and an interactive decision‐making style. Networks are expected to increase the problem‐solving capacity of political systems in a context of growing social complexity, where political authority is increasingly fragmented across territorial and functional levels. However, very little attention has been given so far to another crucial implication of network governance – that is, the effects of networks on their members. To explore this important question, this article examines the effects of membership in European regulatory networks on two crucial attributes of member agencies, which are in charge of regulating finance, energy, telecommunications and competition: organisational growth and their regulatory powers. Panel analysis applied to data on 118 agencies during a ten‐year period and semi‐structured interviews provide mixed support regarding the expectation of organisational growth while strongly confirming the positive effect of networks on the increase of the regulatory powers attributed to member agencies.

Since a few years, humanitarian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are faced with increased insecurity in regions where armed conflicts prevail, such as in Afghanistan, Somalia or Sudan. An analysis of the NGOs’ reaction to this development based on 23 semi-structured interviews reveals that identity matters and plays a crucial role. On the one hand, for reasons related to their identity, addressing this insecurity proves challenging for NGOs, which is why they tend to shy away from taking steps in this direction. On the other hand, identity can facilitate organisational learning and help overcome organisational barriers related to it. In this respect identity allows NGOs to join security networks and cooperate across NGO boundaries, while at the same time using it as an indicator to distinguish between who they can trust and who therefore is part of the network and who is not.

This article explores the use of interpretive methodologies to study civil society networks within the field of third sector research. Interpretive methodologies situate reality as both socially constructed and negotiated and seek to understand meaning and meaning-making practices, which from a critical perspective act as forces of and derivatives of power relations. In particular, we develop the concept “interpretive engagement” to highlight a common but broadly defined focus of study in relation to civil society networks and use it as an illustrative example for highlighting the value of interpretive methods—specifically those that focus on discourses and discursive practices as forms of meaning-making—for advancing scholarship in the field of third sector research. Drawing on research in the field that employs interpretive methodologies and techniques to understand such practices, our interpretive engagement concept demonstrates how interpretive methods can address neglected areas of study in relation to the expressive functions of organized civil society.

Governance networks play a central role in the production of public policy. While governance network theorists have discussed and analysed their importance for governance efficiency they have not given the same amount of attention to the democratic implications of governance networks. It is not possible to make a meaningful assessment of the democratic problems and potentials on the basis of a traditional liberal approach to democracy. What is called for is the development of a post-liberal model for the democratic anchorage of governance networks that combines representative democracy with other forms of democratic anchorage.

If most decision-making processes aimed at solving societal problems have a network-like character, then a key question is how to deal with networks so that they can achieve valuable solutions to societal problems. Managing networks differs considerably from the management advice contained in organisation textbooks, and there is a large and growing literature on how to manage complex processes in networks. After a short discussion of the emergence and characteristics of networks, the article focuses both on strategies to manage processes within networks – here called ‘process management’ – and on attempts to change the characteristics of networks – here called ‘strategies of institutional design’. Finally, we consider the effects of network management and the evaluation of management strategies, and discuss some future research questions.

Governance networks have gained increasing prominence in the wake of the many reports of government and market failure. Drawing on the burgeoning literature, we first define governance networks and then briefly assess their merits and problems. The key claim is that we are now seeing the development of a second generation of governance network research that focuses on new and yet unanswered questions about the prospects of network-based coordination across different levels of governance: the meta-governance of self-regulating networks; the role of discourse in relation to governance networks, and the democratic problems and potentials of network governance. In answering these important questions we can draw on different theoretical approaches to network governance, and these are briefly delineated.

What explains Members of European Parliament's (MEPs’) decisions to recognize some interest groups as relevant policy actors? Addressing this question is fundamental for understanding the role of political elites in shaping patterns of interest representation and interest groups’ role in legislative decision making. Building on theories of legislative behaviour and informational theories of legislative lobbying, we argue that MEPs give recognition to those organizations that are instrumental for achieving key political goals: re‐election, career‐progression and policy influence. The pursuit of these goals generates different patterns of MEP recognition of interest groups. We contribute to the literature in three ways. Conceptually, we propose interest group recognition as a key concept for understanding interactions and links between legislative and non‐legislative actors. We illustrate the high conceptual relevance of recognition for interest groups research while noting its conspicuous neglect in the literature. We address this gap and place the concept central stage in understanding legislators’ attention to and behaviour towards interest organizations. Theoretically, we build on a classic framework explaining legislators’ behaviour and refine it through the lenses of informational theories of legislative lobbying. We argue and show that legislators recognize organizations that enhance electoral prospects in their home Member States, and that legislator–group ideological proximity and an interest group's prominence in a specific policy field affect MEPs’ decisions to recognize some organizations as relevant actors. Our argument acknowledges the importance of the broader context in which MEPs operate and pays attention to how they react to and interact with it. Empirically, we propose an original and innovative research design to identify and measure recognition with the help of social media data. Our measurement strategy constitutes a significant improvement insofar that it reduces the challenges of measurement bias usually associated with self‐reported data generated through interviews, surveys, or the textual analysis of newspaper articles and official documents. Our research design allows using fine‐grained measures of key dependent and explanatory variables and offers the very first analysis of MEP interest group recognition that holds across decision‐making events and policy areas. We test our argument on a new dataset with 4 million observations recording the recognition of more than 7,000 organizations by 80 per cent of MEPs serving in EP8. We find that MEPs are more likely to recognize organizations from their Member State, particularly under flexible‐ and open‐list electoral institutions. MEPs are also more likely to recognize organizations that share their ideological affinities and are prominent actors in policy areas legislators specialize in.

NGOs sponsor a variety of innovative projects relating to the Hungarian and Roma minorities in Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine, as well as for the Roma in Hungary. However, a study of 33 NGOs in this region reveals that the strategies behind these projects tend to vary according to the particular group being addressed. NGO projects emphasizing Hungarian minorities tend to utilize network strategies to increase contact between Hungarians and titulars (Romanians, Slovaks, and Ukrainians), while projects for Roma tend to avoid network strategies, focusing exclusively on status-raising strategies. This paper presents the promises and shortcomings of both approaches, and concludes with an analysis addressing why NGOs should be less hesitant to apply network strategies to Roma projects as well as to Hungarian projects.

In many contexts, an individual’s beliefs and behavior are affected by the choices of their social or geographic neighbors. This influence results in local correlation in people’s actions, which in turn affects how information and behaviors spread. Previously developed frameworks capture local social influence using network games, but discard local correlation in players’ strategies. This paper develops a network games framework that allows for local correlation in players’ strategies by incorporating a richer partial information structure than previous models. Using this framework we also examine the dependence of equilibrium outcomes on network clustering—the probability that two individuals with a mutual neighbor are connected to each other. We find that clustering reduces the number of players needed to provide a public good and allows for market sharing in technology standards competitions.

Many global norms are currently facing substantial contestation by various actors. While contestation is a regular practice in norm dynamics, it can potentially result in the destabilisation of norms. At the same time, international city networks (ICNs) are increasingly positioning themselves in global governance. While research in International Relations has not analysed how ICNs respond to norm contestation and whether they stabilise existing norms and normative orders, this article demonstrates that ICNs are relevant actors in norm dynamics by focusing on their activities. To examine how ICNs stabilise norms, we employ a theoretical framework based on existing approaches in norm research, which assumes that norms must be as robust, resilient and legitimate as possible to maintain their functions in facilitating individual orientation and collective order. Empirically, we analyse the stabilising activities of three ICNs – Mayors for Peace, Rainbow Cities Network and Fast-Track Cities Initiative – as contributions to preventing norm decay in security, human rights and health. We show that these ICNs stabilise norms by supporting them in discourse and practice, by connecting norms in clusters, and by including affected stakeholders. In sum, we present ICNs as relevant actors in global governance due to their stabilising activities and networked capacities.