An Integrated Theory of Networks

Abstract

In this chapter, we begin to build the theory which will be developed further in later chapters and then explored empirically in Part III. This theory is fundamentally institutionalist, in that it argues that the fundamental causal forces shaping networks are institutional in character. Like institutional theories in general, it suggests that these institutional factors provide marked constraints upon the scope for optimisation in the choice of network form. They impose limitations on the scope for human agency and also exert pressures for the primacy of certain biases in the ways of framing that choice. These limitations and pressures constrain the options available to agents in particular contexts and these can be explained by the institutional factors that the theory emphasises. However, it allows for a wider range of causal dynamics than do many ‘new’ institutionalist theories.