Structure, meaning, and network causality

Political scientists have increasingly turned to formal socialnetwork analysis to understand how the webs of personalrelations in which all people are embedded are causally relatedto political phenomena across the subfields. Methodologicallyspeaking, SNA offers a means of systematically examining socialrelations in what have traditionally been qualitative or “analogical”studies of political networks, as well as a means ofchallenging the assumption of unit independence.1 The risingavailability of network data, notoriously difficult to gather fromscratch, has increased the appeal of SNA. Abetted by bothmotive and opportunity, this turn toward taking socio-politicalnetworks seriously is a generally positive development in thediscipline