Interdependent policy instrument preferences: a two-mode network approach

In policymaking, actors are likely to take the preferences of others into account when strategically positioning themselves. However, there is a lack of research that conceives of policy preferences as an interdependent system. In order to analyze interdependencies, we link actors to their policy preferences in water protection. As actors exhibit multiple preferences, a complex, two-mode network between actors and policies emerges. We analyze whether actors exhibit similar instrument preferences given shared policy objectives or social interactions among them. By fitting an exponential random graph model (ERGM) to the actor-instrument network, we find considerable clustering, meaning that actors tend to exhibit preferences for multiple policy instruments in common. Actors tend to exhibit interdependent policy preferences when they are interconnected, i.e., collaborate with each other. By contrast, actors are less likely to share policy preferences when a conflict line divides them.