The role of China and Russia experts’ social networks in generating knowledge about authoritarian politics

• In Event: New Advances in Social Network Analysis

Abstract

Public interest in Russia and China has increased in the last decade, and outside experts on Chinese or Russian politics are often asked to explain current events. Who are the members of these expert communities? What are their social structures and which role do their networks play in their assessment of those regimes’ opaque politics? And, as China and Russia close themselves off and information on the ground becomes more difficult to access, should we be worried that experts will turn to their peers for information instead, which may lead the community to fall prey to echo chamber effects?
We have used a snowballing nomination process to collect information on over 2500 China experts, surveying more than 600 of them, and are collecting a similar database on Russia experts. We use the network of nominations to analyze the social structure of these two communities. We find that academics and individuals working for think tanks are most commonly nominated as experts in both communities, and that there is considerable gender-imbalance – in the China watcher community more so than among Russia experts. US-based experts form the core of the China expert community, while Europe plays a more prominent role for Russia expertise. We also find evidence that the global China expert community is more polarized and that its experts have a somewhat stronger tendency to nominate like-minded individuals with a similar background than Russia experts. There is thus the possibility that the community’s consensus is shaped by these homophilic tendencies, and that viewpoints of experts from other regions, such as the global South, are ignored in this process.

Authors

• Franziska Barbara Keller, University of Bern

• Michael Rochlitz

• Arthur McFarlane