Steven T. Zech and Michael Gabbay
Summary and critique by Jillian J
Zech and Gabbay conclude that social network analysis (SNA) has made significant contributions to understanding militant operations, particularly regarding the merits and implications of "centralized and decentralized structures, the relationship between efficiency and security, the network signatures of key individuals, and the factors that shape network structure." They go on to criticize the lack of alignment between theoretical and empirical studies about SNA, calling for better integration of network concepts and more precise data and a focus on temporal factors.
Their study "applies network analysis to intrinsically political questions, entailing a focus on group-level nodes engaged in the same conflict." They focus on militant fragmentation, specifically infighting, outbidding, alliance formation, and group constituencies. They discuss how the similarities in terminology highlight a hybrid nature of fragmented militant groups wherein aspects of international systems blend with political party competition e.g. rival constituents or winning a "state".
The authors aim to enhance the understanding of fragmented civil wars and insurgencies. The charts below shows their connections and findings from other papers and cases.
Critique
Zech and Gabbay's analysis was insightful and organized. I think they did a good job of pulling specific analytical claims from each case to support what could have easily been a long-winded analogy. I do wonder if it's a situation similar to the saying, "when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Even so, the points they assert through the organized charts are useful in understanding SNA in terrorism and insurgency cases.
Posts
Jillian - did the authors state whether the analytical claims were derived solely from social network analysis? From reading about it, it seems like an effective tool but that it needs context for guidance towards good analysis.
ReplyDeleteI interpreted this essay as the authors pointing out elements of social networks in the case studies about terrorism and insurgency. They were doing so in order to point out how SNA helps us understand what's going on in those cases. They were analyzing the cases through a SNA lens as opposed to the political science or international relations lens.
DeleteJillian, I am interested to see that the authors commented on the need for more precise data. Based on your review, do you believe the authors are suggesting that the data coding is too subjective or that it was too broad-based which resulted poor outputs? Or am I misunderstanding this statement? SNA doesn't work without good, clean, properly coded data underlying the interactions of individuals in the network which I find is largely missed in your summary if that was a focus at all.
ReplyDeleteIt seemed to me that the authors wanted more studies that focused on SNA so they could pull more relevant data instead of interpreting case studies as they did. They basically had to translate everything they were observing into SNA terms instead of having data already primed for that purpose.
DeleteI really like the way the authors organized the cases and papers in tables. This obviously provides more context behind each node. I do not have much experience with social network analysis but when I visualize a "network" I normally view it with links connecting the nodes, but this structure is a neat approach. The charts are useful but do take away from simplified structure that I am used to seeing.
ReplyDeleteI also thought that was an interesting layout. It was certainly more verbal than visual-- talking about nodes and links instead of illustrating them. But i thought this was almost a middle step between going from an observation to visualizations we typically think of.
DeleteI agree with Chelsie, the chart adds so much to the network analysis. It gives depth into the connection and reasoning. We tried to add the depth of the connection into our exercise, however found it difficult to use.
ReplyDelete