Frans N. Stokman

University of Groningen | RUG · Interuniversity Center for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS)

Prediction of and confrontation with 2021 dutch coalition agreement

Policy networks are usually defined and analyzed in the context of collective decision making. In the long history of policy networks, the focus was first, however, on key positions in networks, assuming that such positions are powerful. Concepts like influence and power were not yet clearly distinguished, resulting in quite some misunderstanding a...

We examine the negotiations held under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change in Paris, December 2015. Prior to these negotiations, there was considerable uncertainty about whether an agreement would be reached, particularly given that the world’s leaders failed to do so in the 2009 negotiations held in Copenhagen...

De hier gepresenteerde index is een gebruikersvriendelijke index waarmee snel inzichten worden gegenereerd in de stand van zaken op twaalf hoofddimensies van duurzaamheid in de regio. Elk van de hoofddimensies is weer gemeten op basis van een aantal indicatoren. In totaal zijn 34 indicatoren gebruikt. De resultaten voor de drie Noordelijke provinci...

This article reviews key ideas in social network analysis methods. Key concepts for describing the connections of individuals and groups into networks of social relations are introduced and defined. The article identifies the terminology of points and lines for understanding sociograms and reviews concepts of adjacency, degree, centrality, and form...

This research note presents analyses of the upcoming UNFCCC negotiations in Paris (November 30th to December 11th, 2015). We aim to contribute to an effective agreement in Paris by sharpening negotiators’ expectations concerning the likely developments and obstacles to reaching an agreement, as well as to demonstrate the application of the Exchange...

This paper presents our predictions for the outcomes of the most controversial issues at the 15th Conference of Parties (COP) Meeting in Copenhagen, December 7-15, 2009. For these predictions we used methodology that was developed at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, in collaboration with consultancy firm Decide (dutch group). Based on...

This November 2009 paper presents our predictions for the outcomes of the most controversial issues at the 15th Conference of Parties (COP) Meeting in Copenhagen, December 7-15, 2009. For these predictions we used methodology that was developed at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, in collaboration with consultancy firm Decide (dutch gro...

Many local councils aim to (re)connect citizens to public planning. This article presents the Collaborative Communities through Coproduction (3C) method as a way to establish cooperation between residents and professionals in improving neighborhood livabiliy. The authors describe common challenges to citizen participation and identify the dilemma o...

This article uses a policy network perspective to assess the independence of regulatory agencies (RAs) in liberalized public utility sectors. We focus on the de facto independence of RAs from elected politicians, regulatees and other co-regulators. We go further than previous studies, which only undertook a general analysis of the de jure independe...

The reasoning underlying the attitude of stakeholders towards the implementation of a means can be captured in causal cognitive maps about the effects of the means on relevant goals. For acyclic cognitive maps with weighted-directed signed links we propose quantitative measures for the weight of the paths between means and goals and a measure for t...

Many real-life social dilemmas contain third parties who cannot make decisions in the dilemma, but are affected by its outcome (receive externalities) nonetheless. Dilemmas with identical payoffs for decision-making actors may greatly vary in their externalities for third parties. If actors value the welfare of thirds, externalities will affect act...

In collective decision making bilateral deals can increase or decrease the likelihood of finding compromises, depending on whether such deals have externalities. Positive externalities mean third actors profit from bilateral deals, whereas negative externalities mean bilateral deals hurt third actors. We develop the first model of collective decisi...

Research on the presidency of the EU shows mixed results. Although most scholars agree that the EU presidency is not able to advance its domestic interests in the European forum, Tallberg (2006) provides evidence for presidency effects. In the present paper, we empirically estimate presidency-based power in the Council of the European Union on the...

Purpose The aim of this paper is to investigate the effects of task and informal networks and their interaction on cooperative types of employee behaviour. Design/methodology/approach Two studies are used to examine the research question. The first dataset consists of book‐length ethnographies providing information at the team level. The second da...

European legislation affects countless aspects of daily life in modern Europe but just how does the European Union make such significant legislative decisions? How important are the formal decision-making procedures in defining decision outcomes and how important is the bargaining that takes place among the actors involved? Using a combination of d...

According to the account of European Union (EU) decision-making proposed in this chapter, this is a bargaining process during which actors shift their policy positions with a view to reaching agreements on controversial issues. Formal institutions, such as the procedural rules explored in Chapter 3, matter in this process. They define the set of ac...

The aim of this study is to apply and compare different explanations of legislative decision-making in the European Union (EU). Two features of the research design are particularly important with respect to achieving this aim. First, the selection of cases must cover a sufficient number and variety of cases to count as a test of the explanations. S...

European legislation affects countless aspects of daily life in modern Europe but just how does the European Union make such significant legislative decisions? How important are the formal decision-making procedures in defining decision outcomes and how important is the bargaining that takes place among the actors involved? Using a combination of d...

In dit artikel worden drie fundamentele processen van collectieve besluitvorming als gemeenschappelijke productie in sociale systemen onderscheiden: (1) overtuigen; (2) ruilen en (3) afdwingen. De condities waaronder deze processen dominant zijn worden uiteengezet, alsmede het type netwerk dat bij ieder proces centraal staat. Corporatisme en lobbyi...

Although shifts in policy positions are a fundamental feature of the European Union (EU) bargaining process they have not yet been studied systematically. This article provides evidence on the extent to which position shifts occur and tests alternative models of the bargaining process that predict such shifts. We examine a subset of the DEU data se...

What is the structure of the political space in which decision-making actors operate in the European Union? Are there consistent alignments of actors? This article addresses these questions by examining a new data set containing information on the preferences of the Commission, the Member States and the European Parliament on 174 issues raised duri...

This special issue examines legislative decision-making in the European Union (EU). By focusing on specific examples of legislative decision-making and actors’ preferences in those situations, we aim to address questions of interest to mainstream Europeanists.

In this paper we both describe and analyze the meeting process and the evolution of a friendship network among sociology freshmen in the Netherlands. We develop a theory that explains how changes in the network structure depend on one or more of four main effects: proximity, visible similarity, invisible similarity, and network opportunity. We form...

This study focuses on externalities of exchanges of voting positions in collective decision-making. Exchanges are represented by nonconstant two-person cooperative games. It is assumed that the rate of exchangeis specified by the Raiffa-Kalai-Smorodinsky solution,and a model is specified to identify the exchanges. Externality effects of these excha...

We present a model that integrates the contradicting Burtian and Krackhardtian broker theories to explain effectiveness of brokering for individuals within account management organizations. Using data on a network of 55 individuals in a financial account management organization, we test how brokerage of different resource relationships and Simmelia...

In this paper we empirically investigate various benefits and costs associated with broker characteristics of individuals who operate in the account management system of financial service providers. We narrow our focus to broker positions in two specific task-specific knowledge networks that facilitate account management. We study the effect of bro...

In this paper we empirically investigate various benefits and costs associated with broker characteristics of individuals who operate in the account management system of financial service providers. We narrow our focus to broker positions in two specific task-specific knowledge networks that facilitate account management. We study the effect of bro...

This paper introduces a methodology for strategic intervention in collective decision making.The methodology is based on (1) a decomposition of the problem into a few main controversial issues, (2) systematic interviews of subject area specialists to obtain a specification of the decision setting,consisting of a list of stakeholders with their capa...

In 1988 the European Union reformed the allocation of its Structural Funds to effectuate broader participation of local and regional parties and institutions in the Member States. This might affect the corporative and sectoral oriented government structure in Ireland, which was chosen as a test case for this study, with decision issues for plan per...

In 1988, the Reform of the Structural Funds of the European Union introduced new political structures, where one of the main objectives was to encourage participation of a much broader range of actors in the decision making process. In the present research, we limit our analysis to just one Member state, Ireland. As Ireland is a centralized, unitar...

For the sixth and last time we present the productivity and the international impact of Dutch sociologists, measured in tperiod 1995-1997. Table I gives the ranking of the fifty most produictive sociologists. This productivity is measured as a weighted sum of the publications, where the weight is based on the quality of the journal publisher, the n...

This article evaluates two competing dynamlc policy-network models and one static network model by applying them to local politics in Amsterdam. In the dynamic models an influence relation results from the acceptance of an influence request. The first model, Control Maximization, represents the view that politics are primarily power driven, and the...

Intra-organizational network research had its first heyday during the empirical revolution in social sciences before World War II when it discovered the informal group within the formal organization. These studies comment on the classic sociological ...

Simulation models for collective decision making are based on theoretical and empirical insight in the decision making process, but still contain a number of parameters of which the values are determined ad hoc. For the dynamic access model, some of such parameters are discussed, and it is proposed to extend the utility functions with a random term...

Interuniversity Center for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS), University of Groningen, The Netherlands In policy networks actors use access relations to influence preferences of other actors. Establishment and shifts of access relations and their consequences for outcomes of decisions are the main focal points in this paper. Unlike most p...

Friendship networks usually show a certain degree of segmentation: subgroups of friends. The explanation of the emergence of such groups from initially dyadic pair friendships is a difficult but important problem. In this paper we attempt to provide a first contribution to the explanation of subgroup formation in friendship networks by using the LS...

The aim of this paper is to explain principles of object oriented modeling in the scope of modeling dynamic social networks. As such, the approach of object oriented modeling is advocated within the field of organizational research that focuses on networks. We provide a brief introduction into the field of social networks and present an overview of...

In policy networks actors use access relations to influence preferences of other actors. Establishment and shifts of access relations and their consequences for outcomes of decisions are the main focal points in this paper. Unlike most policy network studies, we therefore do not take the network and its relations as given and constant. Instead we d...

Friendship networks usually show a certain degree of segmentation: subgroups of friends. The explanation of the emergence of such groups from initially dyadic pair friendships is a diflicult but important problem. In this paper we attempt to provide a first contribution to the explanation of subgroup formation in friendship nelworks by using the LS...

We introduce principles of self-organization in a dynamic individual oriented model of the evolution of friendship networks. The main aim of the model is to explain the emergence of structure in a friendship network from an initial situation of mutual strangers. In contrast to the individual behavioral rules in previously developed models, we expli...

In this article the productivity and international impact of Dutch sociologists are measnred over the period 1993-1995. The productivy is measured a a weighted sum of the publications. Appendix 2 contains the list of sociologists that took part in the study. Table I gives the ranking of the fifty most prodtictive sociologists. The international imp...

Two dynamic models of collecuve decision maklng are Introduced and lllustrated wlth a simple example. A more extensive presentation and appllcauon concerning the European Community can be found In Bueno de Mesqulta and Stokman (19941. The two dynamlc models reflect two alternative views of collective decision making and politics. The flrst, represe...

Application of the model to artificial data shows that actors with strong preferences in the center have more possibilities to realize good outcomes than other actors. On the basis of an empirical application it is shown that a Nash equilibrium does not always arise after a large number of iterations unless actors have learning capabilities or are...

In this article the productivity and international impact of Dutch sociologist is measured over the period 1992-1994. The productivity is measured as a weighted sum of the publications. Appendix I contains the list of sociologists that took part in the study. Table 2 gives the ranking of the ranking of the fifty most productive sociologists. The in...

Publishing sociologists: the top-50 in the period 1991-1993 Table 2 in this article contains the top-50 sociologists in terms of their publications in the period 1991-1993. Last year a similar ranking was presented by the authors. The method on which the publications are weighted is similar to last year, but the references, are gathered directly fr...

Table I in this article contains the top-50 sociologists in terms of their publications in the period 1988-1990. The score is based on the scientific reports of Dutch universities. The publications is weighted according to it's size and scientific quality of the journal or publisher. In case multiple authorship, the publication score is equally div...

In this paper, scientific productivity of academic institutions, research groups, and researchers in Sociology is measured by counting the numbers of scientific publications. We investigate whether the use of weight factors for length, quality, and multiple authorship has arty effect on productivity ranking. We conclude that this is not the case fo...

Competing models of policymaking are integrated at a higher theoretical level into a two-stage model that distinguishes two different phases in the processes: the decision-taking phase and a prior phase in which significant actors interact to influence each other's policy positions. It is argued that these two phases are characterized by completely...

2nd revised edition

The article is oriented towards the dynamics behind the network of interlocking directorates. In the interorganizational perspective the stability of different types of interlocks/lines between corporations is of strategic importance; in the intraclass perspective, the camers of persons. The article therefore analyzes both. It shows that particular...

The idea that knowledge is a commodity that can be used by machines in various ways forms the entry to our discussion of knowledge based systems. We will limit ourselves to those systems that are in an active dialogue with their human user. As a consequence, the use and structuring of knowledge in autonomous systems, like robots or visual pattern r...

In this chapter, a theory and methods are given that enable to analyze relations within and between groups and coalitions in decision-making bodies on the basis of actual behavior of the individual group members. The theory is suitable for the analysis of roll calls, interview questions with three response categories and preference rank orders. The...

De laatste jaren zijn de ontwikkelingen op het gebied van hardware en software in een stroomversnelling geraakt waardoor voor programmatuurontwikkeling een geheel nieuwe situatie aan het ontstaan is. Deze nieuwe situatie zou men als volgt kunnen samenvatten. Het grootste deel van het rekenwerk zal worden verricht op vrij krachtige microcomputers (P...

Artikelen over modellenbouw, theoretische sociologie en sociologisch onderzoek.

In Section 1 it will be shown that all main types of graphs have been used to represent social systems. Section 2 gives a survey of the possibilities of the package GRADAP (GRAph Definition and Analysis Package) for graph definition, management and analysis. GRADAP provides facilities to analyze all major types of graphs. A direct data interface wi...

In this paper a graph theoretical elaboration of the stochastic cumulative scaling model of Mokken (1970) is given to determine: (a) cumulative scales of vertices on the basis of their relations with other vertices in a simple graph; and (b) cumulative scales of relations in a multigraph. In Stokman (1977) both graph theoretical elaborations are gi...

Corporate networks studies have been restricted mainly to the private or business sectors. Network analyses involving both corporations and state or government agencies have been extremely rare. In this paper, the intercorporate network of interlocking directorates in the Netherlands, based on 86 large corporations and financial institutions, is st...