Analyzing the Role of Social Networks in Local Government Decision-Making about High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing

University Of California-Davis, Davis CA

Investigators

Abstract

This project investigates how social networks shape policy decision-making about high-volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF), a technique for hydrocarbon extraction that is transforming the U.S. energy landscape. The research explores how the structure of local government networks affects the efficacy of policy entrepreneurs (sometimes known as "leaders" or "issue advocates") in convincing local officials in California and New York to adopt HVHF policies. The project also evaluates how the social networks of policy entrepreneurs affect the innovativeness of local HVHF policies. Finally, it analyzes the social mechanisms driving decision-makers? (non)participation in the diffusion of HVHF policies among sub-state jurisdictions. This research advances scholarship by drawing insights from network science that allow quantitative analysis of how human agents' policy entrepreneurs and local government officials' engage with social networks and influence policy diffusion. In addition to its scientific contributions, this research and associated outreach will help local government officials learn how to leverage their information networks most effectively when seeking information about HVHF or other issues of salience to local governance. Such learning is particularly important given the sharp capacity constraints these officials often face. Another important output of this project is an online decision-support tool that will help local officials learn about HVHF policy options. This free, searchable web interface will house hundreds of digitized, archived, and categorized pro- and anti-HVHF policy measures passed by sub-state jurisdictions in California and New York. This project uses social network analysis to illuminate blind spots in policy scholarship. Policy diffusion is clearly a network-reliant process, yet policy scholars all but ignore how learning, imitative, or competitive inter-jurisdictional pressures experienced by local officials may shape diffusion patterns. They also rarely examine the content of policies subject to diffusion. Research on policy entrepreneurs, individuals who push a policy onto the public agenda and help secure its passage, acknowledges the importance of networks in facilitating entrepreneurial advocacy yet devotes little attention to the mechanisms that drive this influence. Scholars who do tackle these questions rarely use quantitative methods. The project addresses these gaps. It quantitatively tests hypotheses about how aspects of policy entrepreneurs? social networks affect their success in convincing decision makers to adopt policy innovations, how ties among municipal decision makers can reveal the social mechanisms underlying policy diffusion, and how policy entrepreneurship can shape the innovativeness of policies and their rate of uptake.