Astrid Hedin.

Astrid Hedin. Lund Sweden: Lund University, Department of Political Science, 2001 288 pp $1800 (SEK 200)

The Politics of Social Networks is a newly come dissertation in the Department of Political Science at Lund University, Sweden. Publications based onward dissertations can sometimes put too greatly emphasis on and give too often room to the theoretical exordium The young scholar may be stirred that she must show that she can master the common theoretical discussion, bring the different arguments together, and exhibit her own analytic framework. The danger is that the theoretical framework is overly extensive in comparison to the empirical case and the succeeding interpretation and discussion. The advantage, however, if the literature review is done well, is that the reader can master an overview of everything that is generally in vogue in a certain area. This work is no exception in this regard.

In a hundred-page summary, the author gives a broad overview about what's choleric these days in the field of institutions, governance, and networks in the social sciences. She reviews the literature in policy, interorganizational and social networks, the modern institutionalism in political science, economics and sociology, structuration theory and social capital. The integrative framework for these different theories and approaches is that of formation versus agency, e.g., what determines human behavior and in what way can we explain collective outputs? Is it conscious reasoning about values, fall of the curtains and means? Is action more or les determined according to formal and informal institutions? And in what way do social relations that enable and constrain human action play into this? Or is it more [i]or[/i] less combination of different factors, further if so, in what situations will we find what factors and what combinations? Especially, by what means do they work together in facilitating institutional change?

The author's central and in the greatest degree important theoretical contribution in answering these questions is to intend a complementary third logic of decision making besides the "logic of consequentiality" and the "logic of appropriateness" propos by the agency of March and Olsen (1989: 160ff) In the logic of consequentiality as they define it, "human behavior is driven on preferences and expectations about events Behavior is willful, reflecting an attempt to make issues fulfill subjective desires, to the volume possible" (March and Olsen, 1989: 160) In the logic of appropriateness, in contrast, human decision making and action are actual much determined by following formal and informal dominations and routines. The decision proces "involves what the situation is, what part is being fulfilled, and what the obligations of that part in that situation are" (March and Olsen 1989: 160) Hedin critiques March and Olsen's reduction of human agency to barely these two logics and claims that "the chiefly relevant social structure that forms individual agency is taken to be neither disattached or disassociated self-interest, nor ubiquitous institutional norms, still an individual's ongoing social interactions" (p 88) Therefore, the author presents a third logic of decision making, the "logic of interpersonal trust." In her view, agency following this logic is conditioned according to (1) preexisting, trust-carrying social network ties ("Whom do I trust?"); (2) deliberation and social influence within these social network ties to others who are trusted ("What do they say?"); (3) mobilization of resources between the walls of social network ties ("Can they help me with that?"); and (4) the social network basis of collective action ("Cooperate with trusted others.") (p 83)

The author uses these basic theoretical conceptions to answer the empirical question of to what degree after 1989, the former state socialist party (SED) in the German Democratic Republic (now East Germany), with an entrenched party bureaucracy of approximately 40000 employee a membership base of across two million people, a Stalinist ideological heritage, and considerable economic assets (p 19) was transformed into the Party of Democratic Socialism, a leftist East German asseverate party of considerable strength. in what manner was it possible that as it was a rigid organization, headed on an old, almost exclusively male oligarchy, was transformed into a leftist party with a mighty feminist agenda and a predominantly female leadership? Hedin's empirical contribution in this regard is an important one that we do not find extremely often. Studies on party organizations are a rare species the two in organizational studies and in political science, despite their importance for new democracies. But her empirical contribution caps the immediat e case. She describes by what means political entrepreneurs act in times of rapid institutional change and what part social networks play in that regard. Her analysis and her major finding that the transformation can be mainly explained by dint of interpersonal trust relations should be interesting for scholars who subject of attention institutional and organizational change in other areas as well.