This course introduces theories and methods used for the analysis of political networks. Political networks describe how political actors - such as participants of the policy process - form and maintain relationships, and the analysis of political networks can help us to understand how these relationships influence political or policy outcomes. Network concepts are increasingly prevalent across a wide range of social science disciplines, and are often used as a tool to study complex phenomenon such as cooperation, diffusion of innovation, and social capital. This course will introduce students to major research questions in the study of networks, as well as their applicability to understand real-world problems in public policy and political science. Students will learn, through hands-on training in R, how to manage network data and perform essential descriptive and inferential analyses on these data.
Data Types: Networks
Methods: Network analysis, Descriptive statistics, Data management, Visualization
Substantive Areas: Environment/Sustainability, Ethics/Privacy, Security/Defense, Web/Social Media
Programming Languages: R, Other