Social Network Analysis as a Complementary Methodological Tool in History
Committees of experts play a decisive role in the Swiss policy-making process. Expertise is awaited from those commissions, which have an influence in diverse policy areas such as defence, economy, cultural and social policy or environmental matters. Scientists, along with industrialists, politicians and civil servants, hold an important place in those commissions. Working on the 20th century, we look at all the committees of experts at several dates (1910, 1937, 1957, 1980, 2000 and 2010), which represents 1’094 commissions and 9’026 persons, of whom 1’009 scientists. Bivariate statistical analyses on those data show that scientists not only represent a significant proportion of commission mandates but also often have key positions, either as committee president or holding several mandates simultaneously. These observations, however, do not concern every academic domain equally and undergo changes during the 20th century. A phenomenon of power concentration in the hands of scientists in the fields of law and economics can be observed in the middle of the century. Conducting social network analysis on our data helps understanding where the power of influence stands in the committees of experts and who, among scientists, holds it. The ways individuals are related to each other through their participation in commissions show power centres and strong networks among scientists of the same field. In a historical perspective, this methodology allows the display of data to show the developments and changes over time. In this case, it is a powerful complementary tool to bivariate statistics in order to understand which scientific knowledge has a power of influence on the Swiss policy-making process and to show the changes that can be observed over a long period of time. The presentation will have a double purpose: on the one hand, it will show the results of a network analysis in a historical perspective and, on the other hand, it will discuss the relevance of such a methodology in history.
