‘‘iron triangle.’’ A closely related stream of European work on policy networks grew
out of studies of corporatism and interest intermediation (Katzenstein 1978 ;
Lembruch 1984 ). A second stream of research arose from an international group
of researchers studying complex interorganizational relationships in government
in the 1970 s (e.g. Hanf and Scharpf 1979 ). This work emphasized that policy-
making and implementation required complex coordination and negotiation
among many diVerent actors. A third stream of policy network research grew out
of work on ‘‘community power studies,’’ which essentially examined the social
structure of politics in cities. Work by Lauman and Pappi ( 1976 ), in particular,
advanced this into the study of policy networks.
All of these approaches combine two somewhat opposed images of political
organization and process: all of them stress that political structure and process is
highly diVerentiated, comprising the participation of a diverse range of actors; the
opposing image suggests that these actors are linked together around their mutual
interest or interdependence in speciWc policy domains. Thus, the network
approach has the advantage of representing the ideas of both pluralists (empha-
sizing diVerentiation) and elite theorists (emphasizing connectivity).
The next generation of policy network research began to clarify diVerences
internal to networks and to articulate mechanisms by which they worked. Notably,
Rhodes ( 1985 ) distinguished Heclo’s concept of ‘‘issue networks’’ from ‘‘policy
communities’’ in terms of the stability and restrictiveness of networks. He also
articulated a ‘‘power-dependence’’ perspective that provided a framework for
thinking about why and how networks were formed and how they operated. In a
recent review of the policy network literature, Rhodes ( 2006 ) contrasts this
‘‘power-dependence’’ approach with the rational choice institutionalist approach
to policy networks developed by Scharpf ( 1997 ).
Some of the policy network literature has drawn on the network analysis
techniques described above. Laumann and Knoke’s ( 1987 ) massive study of Ameri-
can policy networks and Knoke, Pappi, Broadbent, and Tsujinaka’s ( 1996 )
comparative study of labor policy networks oVer important examples.
5 Organizations
.........................................................................................................................................................................................
The study of organizations is another area in which network institutionalism is well
represented. La Porte’s ( 1975 ) work on complexity, which deWned organizational
complexity in terms of the number of units and the number of interconnections
between these units, provides an early precursor to this network institutionalism.
network institutionalism 81