Environmental Policy and Governance Env. Pol. Gov. 20, 135145 (2010) Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.

com) DOI: 10.1002/eet.532

Exploring the Composition of Communication Networks of Governance a Case Study on Local Environmental Policy in Helsinki, Finland
University of Helsinki, Department of Social Policy, Finland

Arho Toikka*

ABSTRACT Governance (Rhodes, 1996; Kooiman, 1993, 2003; Pierre, 2000) is one of the most popular new concepts in policy science and administrative science. The literature does not constitute a unied theory, but a single theme runs throughout: policy decisions are referred to as being made by networks of organizations. However, the network governance literature has not built on the previous literature on policy networks and the methods of social network analysis. The structure of the governance network can make a difference in policy-making, but the structures have often been neglected in governance research. Here, the combination of social network analysis and governance literature is suggested as a possibility for investigating network structures. In particular, we investigate how and why the organizations involved choose their communication partners. The methods of exponential random graph modelling (sometimes referred to as p* models) (Snijders et al., 2006; Robins et al., 2007a, 2007b) enable the simultaneous modelling of structural effects and individual variables and their effects on network structure. As of yet, there are few substantial applications. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the composition of a policy network and the effects of network and actor variables on the empirically observed network. The environmental policy of the city of Helsinki, Finland, is used to demonstrate the approach. Copyright 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
Received 2 April 2009; revised 22 December 2009; accepted 19 January 2010 Keywords: governance; policy network; exponential random graph model

Introduction
system dictates resource use (Ostrom, 2009). The SES framework, as well as policy science in general, has emphasized the complexity of governing when no actor holds all the necessary information or the necessary resources for efcient policy. In policy science, this has been conceptualized in the theory of governance (Kooiman, 2003; Pierre, 2000; Pierre and Peters, 2005; Rhodes, 1998). The government has given way to
* Correspondence to: Arho Toikka, University of Helsinki, Department of Social Policy, PO Box 18, Snellmaninkatu 109 Helsingin Yliopisto, Finland 00014. E-mail: arho.toikka@helsinki.
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networks of public and private organizations, which are responsible for policy formulation and policy choice, as well as implementation. However, the concept of a network is often underdeveloped in governance research (Christopoulos, 2008). In the informal sense, networks are assumed to be simple membership structures, but real life governance systems are complex communication structures, where the interplay of institutions produces policy. Policy depends on collecting information dispersed in various organizations. As organizations seek to mobilize the information required for policy-making, they form communication links. As individual organizations establish communication links, a complex structure of interwoven links is born. The purpose of this paper is to develop methods for evaluating the structure of this complex network. As the governance organizations draft policy, collect information and settle policy disputes through the network, the communication structure who talks with whom is important. The aim here is to model the network composition with structural effects and actor attributes. Do the organizations in the network choose their communication partners based on their previous partners, or solely on the basis of the information they hold and the status they have? The aim is to build on the earlier literature on policy networks (see Brzel, 1997, for a review) and the methods of social network analysis (Wasserman and Faust, 1994; Carrington et al., 2005). The policy network approach mapped the structures of political communication between organizations (Laumann and Knoke, 1987), but was criticized for lack of theoretical focus and explanatory potential (Dowding, 1995). Connections between the method of policy networks, governance and socialecological systems are strong, but they have not been united in full. The governance literature should benet from applying the insights learned from policy networks, and provide the connection between theory and method. A governance network, then, refers to a specic type of policy network, which is a subcategory of social networks. The governance network is a collection of the collaborating actors making policy decisions. The governance literature has various denitions and debates over the meaning of network. Different conceptualizations of these networks have ranged from corporatism to post-modern network societies (van Kersbergen and van Waarden, 2006, p. 148). Whether the network is autonomous from the state (Rhodes, 1996) or the state plays an important role in the workings of the network (Pierre and Peters, 2005) is one of the debated features of the network. Governance has even been assumed to result in different policy instruments than government (Jordan et al., 2005, p. 481). Democratic accountability and openness are pointed out as important features of the process (Hirst, 2000, p. 28). Here, the simplest possible denition based on the policy network concept is used. The network of organizations is charged with negotiating policy. The governance network is the set of actors, each of who may communicate with any number of others. The network is a communication structure: policy decisions are affected by the communication structures that result from individual communication links between organizations. The analysis of the individual links and the resulting structure is reported here. The paper uses the methods of exponential random graph modeling, a method of statistical social network analysis, to explore the composition of governance networks. Why do organizations choose the communication partners they do choose? The actors can base their choice of contacts on multiple criteria, based on both the network itself and various background variables. It is assumed that there is some freedom to choose communication partners, even if one actor may be able to issue punishments for non-compliance. The goal is to explore the effects of different background variables and the network itself on the composition of the whole network. The exponential random graph model (Robins et al., 2007a; Snijders et al., 2006) is a statistical model where the dependent variable is the presence or absence of ties between all pairs of actors in the network, and the explanatory variables are different network effects and attribute variables. As the ties in the communication networks cannot be considered independent from each other, standard regression assumptions do not hold and a special model making dependence assumptions instead is needed. The modelling enterprise is demonstrated using a data set based on the environmental governance network in the City of Helsinki, Finland. The main body of the data is the network of communication in the drafting and planning of environmental policy programs. As is usual with environmental policy, especially when it is conceptualized as policy for sustainable development, the policies made concern a wide variety of issue areas. Environmental policy includes energy policy and handling pollution, but construction guidelines and education programmes too. To be able to make sensible policy for such diverse areas, the number and range of organizations needed to plan policy is signicant. The network consists of 78 political, administrative and non-prot organizations, and private
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companies. The data was established by semi-structured interviews with organizational representatives, and complemented by archival records. The data is based on policy processes in a metropolitan city, but it is assumed that the conclusions would hold for national policy as well. The next section describes the theoretical background in more detail and justies the link between the theory and the method. It is followed by a background section on the case study and data, describing the processes of environmental decision-making in Helsinki. Then, the exponential random graph model is presented, followed by the actual results and discussion.

Networks of Decision-Making
This section discusses the modeling of governance networks and the theoretical predecessors of the present work. The current discussion on governance connects to discussions on socialecological systems and on policy networks. The focus is on networks. A dissection of denitions of networks in governance justies the use of explicit network methodology. The concept of governance networks has multiple meanings, as the governance literature is a multidisciplinary, non-uniform tradition. From international relations to corporate governance, these traditions share the focus on a decision-making process where multiple actors contribute (van Kersbergen and van Waarden, 2004, pp. 151152). In public administration, the recent practices of private provision of public services, such as contracting out or publicprivate partnership, are often used to exemplify governance. Environmental policy researchers have adopted a network approach, too (for example Cashore et al., 2007; Jordan et al., 2005). The literature has diverged into two strands: environmental governance and natural resource management. Environmental governance research has focused on the new aspects of governance: the admittance of private actors into the decision-making process through the mechanisms of publicprivate partnerships or voluntary agreements. The natural resource approach has applied social network analysis for stakeholder analyses (Prell et al., 2009, p. 502). Environmental policy and resource management have also used the conceptualization of socialecological systems, where a governance system is embedded into a complex system of interacting physical properties and rules (Ostrom, 2009; Folke et al., 2005). The SES approach points to a governance network as a subsystem. Social network analysis has been used in this context, but usually for personal networks. For example, personal social network structures have been found to contribute to local-environmental knowledge and in turn, to resource use (Crona and Bdin, 2006). The governance networks here are social networks of organizations, with the objective of policy making. As the concept of network has so many different applications, we need to clarify the denition of governance network used. Here, governance network is the group of actors involved in planning public policy. The elected government does not have the resources to make complex policy decisions without utilizing the expertise of administration and public partners. To utilize the resources, the government has to admit private interests into the policy process. However, it is not a simple trade-off between political power and technical expertise. It is also about developing shared visions of the system and of the policy process, about games about rules (Stoker, 1998, 22). The decision-making networks are autonomous, self-organizing structures (Rhodes, 1996, p. 658), or the emergent structures of interactions between the members of the network (Kooiman, 1993, p. 4). The network structures are the results of interdependencies between the organizations, due to the increased complexity of the information required for efcient policy-making. The governance network should be interpreted as the complete pattern of interactions, with vastly differing positions for actors. The theoretical foundations from the policy network tradition are linked to this pattern (Marsh, 1998; Klijn and Koppenjan, 2000, pp. 138142). The policy network tradition offers tools to systematically differentiate between network positions. However, the policy network tradition was criticized for sticking to simple descriptions of the networks (Dowding, 1995), with weak links between method and substantial theory (Peters, 1998). The early attempts at policy network analysis in the 1980s tried to build on the observations of the changing polity, and the criticism of these humble attempts is fair (Richardson, 2000, pp. 10061008). However, policy networks moved on, and fully edged modelling approaches have been become available (Thatcher, 1998). The methods have been rened within the research tradition as well as combining the framework with other approaches
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(Thatcher, 1998, pp. 404406), using social network analysis as a method to ll the gaps in theory elsewhere. The governance network approach here is an example of the latter. Previous ways of statistical modeling of policy networks have modelled personal networks in various settings (Christopoulos, 2006; Diani and McAdam, 2003) and the effects of organizational networks in negotiation from initial preferences to nal decisions (Stokman and Zeggelink, 1996). Here, the approach is slightly different. The aim is to model communication partner choice. The development of new methods (Snijders et al., 2006) and more efcient computer programmes (Snijders et al., 2007) has enabled the comparison of different motivations or factors in communication or collaboration partner choice in the network. Exponential random graph models are a family of statistical models where the dependent variable is the presence or absence of a tie between a pair of actors, and independent variables are different dependencies between the ties, called network effects, and actor attribute variables (Robins et al., 2007a, p. 173). The network variables describe interdependencies in the ties between organizations. They are different structures of the network: in effect, we are trying to build a model for estimating the presence or absence of a single tie, taking all the other ties and the structural tendencies they display as data. Starting with simple dyadic (pair-wise, or how much does an ego tie toward an alter depend on the alter tie toward the ego) dependence assumptions (Holland and Leinhardt, 1981), moving into triadic and more complex structural effects (for example, structural balance, or friend-of-a-friend-is-a-friend, explanations (Pattison and Wasserman, 1999; Wasserman and Pattison, 1996), recent advances have enabled the use of any number of interdependencies at all levels of network structure to be modelled (Snijders et al., 2006). The actor attributes correspond to regular survey data, in that they describe qualities of the actors, independently of each other. Then, what structural and actor-level effects should we look for when looking at the governance network? For both, there can be local and global effects. Networks have been described through various observation points for the actors. The actors can observe the network at different levels: actor, dyadic, triadic and global (Contractor et al., 2006, p. 687). The actors obviously prefer to have communication ties, but as argued they do not uniformly prefer having more ties after a certain number. The ties can be said to have diminishing utility. For triadic effects, the same type of effect would be expected to be observed. Groups of three are the smallest units that form network subgroups. Being part of these subgroups is probably benecial to the actors involved, but as the group grows the possibilities to take advantage of the network become more costly in time and resources. When calculating the advantages and costs in creating ties, the actors observe not only their own position, but also that of the prospective partner. Thus, when looking to build new connections, the actors will take into account not only the number of their own connections, but also that of others. As the actors have to share the time and compromise capabilities with all others linked to a particular other, they could prefer other things equal, others less constrained and strained by prior communication partners. In terms of the governance literature, the forces driving the dyadic partner choice can be viewed as two alternative hypotheses. First, the story of the hollowing out of the state (Rhodes, 1996, p. 661; Laumann and Knoke, 1987) depicts a network of interlinked sectors with a more-or-less hollow core. From the point of view of a single organization, communication partners with fewer connections might be favoured, because they are easier to inuence, as they are more dependent on you for their communications within the network. Second, an alternative reading of the proponents for the enduring importance of the state in the political process (Pierre and Peters, 2005) would be that even in the network, the centrality of the state is sustained. As a pair-wise prestige hypothesis, the rst account suggests that popular central actors would be shunned when new network partners are sought out. Respectively, if the state actors are able to retain their position, the network would steer toward a structure of hubs and peripheries, when well connected actors are preferred over others. In policy negotiations, the possible advantages of well connected partners arise from the ability to broadcast your message to a wide audience. Even if your inuence only goes so far with the big players, a small inuence on multiple opinion leaders adds up and can go a long way. Thus, the attractiveness of powerful communication partners might work in two different directions. Whether organizations seek to connect with less-connected organizations in the hope of having considerable inuence over them or with more-connected organizations in the hope of focusing their inuence in the heart of the network is an empirical question. At the level of a triad, a group of three organizations, the simplest effect is the friend-of-a-friend-is-a-friend explanation. The importance of the third in the network context is obvious: with just two actors, the whole network
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idea is empty. The theoretical drive behind this paper is establishing a link between governance theory and communication network patterns. Thus, how and why organizations form tightly knit subgroups in the network is interesting. If the objective for communication is simply the spread of information, building links to actors who are already linked to your communication partners is inefcient. Policy inuence can be assumed to be different: duplicated communication of similar preferences can be assumed to be more inuential (Borgetti, 2005, p. 59). These network effects are supported by the actor level effects. Any number of actor attributes making them more stimulating communication partners could be hypothesized, but undoubtedly the most important when looking at governance networks is the attractiveness of the central government and the political and administrative organizations representing it. If the state is able to control network formation, it should have advantageous network positions. As we are controlling for other effects at the same time, this should be visible in basic popularity. The state actors should be expected to have more connections than otherwise similar actors with otherwise similar situations. If the state still holds unique, indispensable resources for policy-making, the effect could even dominate all other effects. Most likely, there is a positive effect for state actors popularity, and the strength of the effect can serve as a guideline to evaluate how the necessary resources for policy-making are dispersed in the society. Another effect based on the different types of actor involved is to control for actors building links to similar actors. As there are multiple organizations representing the state in the process, this is also important as a control for the popularity effects, so the links between the administrative actors do not appear solely as state control over the network. However, the effect is not only interesting as a control variable, for all types of actor, whether they establish more or fewer links to similar organizations. Any number of similarity variables could be used, but here we settle for the simple: the typology of organizations, distinguishing between political and administrative organizations within the public group, and between various types of non-prot, company and research organizations with the group of private organizations. How strongly each of these groups gets involved with actors within their own reference group could be an interesting factor in establishing the variable costs of communication. It is probably less costly to communicate with similar organizations, due to shared organization cultures and possible links outside the realm of policy-making. As the driving force behind governance networks is the mobilization of resources, we should try to include variables for different resources. Being part of the state organizations can already be viewed as a resource of sorts, but the most discussed resource in the literature is expert knowledge. The increased complexity of policy problems requires a diverse knowledge, not only on a technical level, but also tacit, local knowledge about the different policy solutions and their interactions. How to combine and liken these different expertises is a hard methodological problem. Again, I use a simple variable for determination of expertise: over a dened set of policy problems, a certain set of organizations is reputed to hold the necessary expertise for problem solving. Expertise is obviously not the single important resource in governance. Here, it is the only one included in the model, but other resources whose importance could be stipulated include material resources for policy research. In the related policy network research, resource variables such as money and staff have been used (Laumann and Knoke, 1987). However, the measurement of these variables is complicated: the size of the organization is not a good of indicator of the amount of resources available for policy negotiations and networking. Thus, these are excluded here, but, where data is available, they could be included as well.

Background
The analysis focuses on the policy process and communication networks in environmental policy-making in Helsinki, Finland. I concentrate on the process of drafting and preparing for the Helsinki Ecological Sustainability Programme (HESP), the main environmental policy document for the city. The HESP was an explicit product of a networked communication process, as the policy measures as well as the goals were determined in the collaboration of city agencies and private organizations. The process was originally initiated by the City Board, the executive body for local policy, but their call for action was general enough to include almost any policy measures. The collaborative drafting process of the programme started in 2003, and was completed in 2005. The draft version put together with the help of numerous organizations passed the city legislative unanimously, and the programme was in force from 2005 till 2008. The widespread approval of the programme is interesting: no
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political debate happened and the prepared document was accepted as is, which speaks for the governance instead of government hypothesis, as argued by some of the most extreme governance writers (e.g. Rhodes, 1996). The object of analysis here is limited to the drafting phase of the process, but this at least serves to underline the importance of the phase for policy results. The network data analysed is based on 78 semi-structured interviews with organizational representatives. The organizations to be included were chosen on the basis of ofcial listings of communications for recent Helsinki Environmental Policy Programmes. A single representative was chosen to be interviewed for each organization, based on job titles and meeting minutes from the process. These representatives were then questioned about different communication links with all the other organizations in the data, and they were given the option of bringing up new organizations as well. No organizations outside the original list were mentioned in more than a few interviews. This probably indicates that the original list was comprehensive of those actually involved: it should be noted that any organizations wishing to inuence the process but who have no connections at all are excluded from the data. This poses no problem for the present analysis, estimating the effects of the actual network, but rules out the possibilities of using the data for the analysis of democratic representativeness of the network, for example. The organizations included are political and administrative actors in the city organization itself and non-governmental, non-prot organizations, as well as private corporations. The various agencies and organizations of the city bureaucracy were treated as separate organizations, even if they are all ofcially supervised by the political actors. State agencies are semi-autonomous, as tasks are delegated downwards (van Kersbergen and van Waarden, 2004, p. 154). The extent of autonomy varies between city-owned enterprises and traditional agencies, but all of them have some power over their own goals and the means to achieve them. Different institutionalized cultures and competing goals can put two organizations, formally both part of the city, on the opposite side of an issue. Governance literature has often emphasized the admittance of private organizations into the policy process, but from the network perspective the intergovernmental relations are just as important and equally relevant for the justication of abandoning policy process models focusing on the legislative body. Here, the drafting network for HESP included city agencies from an energy utility and public transport company to an education board and research organization. The differing preferences for these organizations are especially visible in environmental policy. Environmental policy has important effects on the behaviour of many of the organizations, but is only tangentially related to their main goals providing a certain service. A lot of the policy process concerns tting these goals together in a coherent policy document. The non-governmental organizations in the data include residents associations, environmentalist groups and a few trade unions. Trade unions are involved in the process because of their ability to provide specialist information. The residents associations are more interesting: they can also provide important information to the process, but the role of their tacit knowledge and lay-expert knowledge (Yli-Pelkonen and Kohl, 2005, p. 4) is more complicated. Local environmental policy has to account for many unique features of environmental and social conditions. The lay-expert knowledge locals have is more complex than just observations about their surroundings and information about values attached to them, but it can also complement scientic information about the relations of objects. The data lists all communication links for each organization, along with certain statistics about the organization itself. The network density, or the number of observed ties compared with the number of possible ties, is 0.207. As argued above, the hypothesis put forward by governance theory is that in a governance network there are structural effects that cannot be reduced to actor level attributes. In the exponential random graph model, we would expect to nd structural effects that still hold when actor attributes are controlled for. In other words, communication partner choice is not just based on with whom you wish to communicate, but also with whom they already communicate.

Model
To dene the endogenous network effects and the exogenous attribute effects in detail, I next explain the relation between the theoretical approach laid out in the previous sections and the model we apply in the analysis section. The approach and terminology of Snijders et al. (2006) is followed.
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The rst network variable is the number of connections a communication partner has, and whether a greater number makes it more or less attractive as a new partner. As discussed, in the governance network, popularity or prestige effects might work two ways more partners may make it either more or less attractive. Another thing we have to account for is the relative importance of another extra tie. The difference between having one or two partners may be huge, but the difference between 32 and 33 negligible. Making the assumption of decreasing importance allows us to account for this, as well as solving some issues with model degeneracy (Snijders et al., 2006). The assumption is modelled with an alternating k-stars -parameter. The parameter measures popularity, but with each extra link assumed to be less important than the previous one.1 A positive alternating k-star effect means a preference to connect to others with more previous connections, and a negative one a preference for those with fewer connections. The second variable measures whether the communication partners of ones previous partners are more (or less) attractive when building new connections. Social networks have strong tendencies for transitive triadic structures a friend of a friend is a friend, at least statistically more often than not. This effect also carries over for larger network structures, or larger cliques with more members. In the governance network, I expect to nd a positive effect for subgroup building, even though the effect estimated is two directional, and it is possible to nd a negative effect as well. As with popularity, the triangular effects or alternating k-triangles -effects are estimated simultaneously for all sizes of subgroups, with a decreasing importance for larger groups. Again, a positive effect would imply a preference for connecting to the communication partners partners, a negative one a preference for avoiding them as partners. However, we want to make sure the observed transitivity effect is really transitivity and the triads do not result from a tendency to build open-jaw structures that are prerequisites for the triads. For a triad to occur, there needs to exist a path between two actors. If there is a tendency to build these paths between a certain pair of actors, this can result in what appears to be transitivity. I include an alternating k-two-paths parameter to account for this, as suggested by Snijders et al. (2006). A positive tendency for these structures would imply a network structure with two highly connected central actors with a starlike structure around them, but the most important interpretations if a signicant effect is found are combinations with the transitivity parameter. Then, we use actor attribute variables to supplement the three network variables. I use three fairly simple attribute variables: organization type, organization type similarity and an issue area expertise variable. The rst two are answers to the criticisms governance literature has received, as they measure whether governmental organizations are more attractive communication partners than others. The organization type variable has six categories: the city organization is divided into central administrative (under direct political control, with no autonomous agenda), sectoral administrative (city owned, but with own agenda and at least some decision-making power over methods to achieve set goals) and subsidiaries (city-owned companies with still higher autonomy). The private organizations are grouped into for-prot companies, local associations (mainly residents associations) and other non-prot groups, including environmentalist organizations as well as some single-issue groups. The similarity variable uses the same data, but measures whether organizations are more or less likely to build connections to organizations of the same type. This is important to control for two possible effects. First, as governmental organizations have more connections in the network than non-governmental ones, we need to control for the similarity effect to make sure the organization type effect actually holds. Second, controlling for this homophily effect allows us to rene the interpretation of transitivity effects. When the organizations are making connections to similar partners, they might make them to partners with a similar background or partners with a similar set of connections. Differentiating between these two allows for better estimates of actual network structure inuence. The last variable in the model is the issue area expertise. Reliable measures of a complex issue such as expertise are difcult to attain, so I have used a rather simple and crude measure: self-reported expertise over 15 different areas important in environmental policy making. These include both scientic knowledge and practical information, for example expertise in ecological construction, as well as local environmental knowledge. The range of expertise areas is from a minimum of 1 (some single issue organizations) to 13 (the city environment centre). Such
1

It would be possible to estimate this parameter or the speed of the decrease (Hunter, 2007), but I use the parameter setting suggested by Robins et al. (2007b, p. 198). Env. Pol. Gov. 20, 135145 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/eet

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a simple measure does not give us a very detailed picture of expertise and policy-making, so the main interest in its inclusion is to see whether the observed network effects still hold when we account for the fact that some organizations are already more attractive partners before the networking begins.

Analysis
Using the exponential random graph model with these variables, we obtain parameter estimates for their exponential effect for the probability of a tie, similar to logistic regression coefcients (Snijders et al., 2006, p. 104). The analysis was carried out with the software package SIENA, Version 3.1 (Snijders et al., 2007). The number of ties is xed to the observed density of the network. Thus, we are trying to simulate the network building process and establish a combination of parameter estimates that produces a network with the best correspondence to the observed network. A stochastic Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm was run and iterated until model convergence was achieved. The model converged well, implying that the inherent randomness in stochastic modelling should not be an issue for model stability and the results. The analysis proceeds with a backward elimination procedure of non-signicant effects. The t-ratio, parameter estimate divided by standard error, was used to determine signicance. A t-ratio of 2 was used as the cutting point (as per Snijders et al., 2006, p. 137). The full model displays a strong preference for transitivity, along with a negative popularity estimate with a very large standard error. The full model parameter estimates are listed in Table 1 as Model 1. The preconditions parameter is small. The largest of the attribute effects is status similarity. This is likely explained by the preestablished connections between the different city agencies. The status effect is actually slightly negative, which means organizations are more likely to build links to non-governmental organizations than governmental ones, controlling for network position, expertise and status similarity. The expertise effect is positive, but not very strong. When the variable with the smallest t-ratio, popularity, is removed, the other parameter estimates remain stable except for one: when preconditions for transitivity are eliminated, the popularity effect disappears, too. The nal model (Table 1) has one very strong structural effect, with signicant but smaller attribute effects. The preference for transitivity or subgroup building is the strongest inuence over network partner choice. The attribute effects are similar to those of the full model, with a medium strength status similarity effect, a small positive expertise effect, and a small negative status effect. Given the task of preparing and drafting an environmental policy for Helsinki, the various organizations that got involved were rst and foremost looking for collaboration partners that would complete small subnetworks by opening the last missing link between any two actors in the group. Connecting to similar organizations was preferred, possibly because it is easier to establish communication when you share a certain institutionalized organization culture. The number of issue areas where an organization had expertise did contribute to the link building, but as the data does not estimate the strength of expertise this effect might be speculated to be stronger with more rened data. The weak negative status effect means that, after we account for subgroup building and the tendency for intergovernmental relations, the administration is actually less attractive than private organizations when it comes to negotiating policy.

Model 1 est. Popularity Transitivity Preconditions for transitivity Expertise Status Status similarity 0.858 1.453 0.028 0.210 0.111 0.458 s.e. 0.737 0.243 0.018 0.023 0.027 0.101 est.

Model 2 s.e.

1.347 0.200 0.121 0.468

0.218 0.020 0.029 0.101

Table 1. MCMC estimates for non-directed communication relation in Helsinki environmental governance network with their standard errors
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The governance literature has pointed to the increased inuence of non-governmental actors in policy-making. The present analysis gives empirical support to the literature. The conclusions of the model here are that tightly knit subgroups where all the actors are familiar with each other are what the non-governmental actors prefer, when they are let into the process. Private actors have been involved in the modern policy-making processes, and the question is whether they have any real inuence. From this perspective, the policy process appears to be more driven by mobilization of expertise and nding answers to the complex issues at hand than a traditional power struggle between competing factions. In environmental policy in particular, it is hard to form a two-sided cleavage in the opinions. The problem has multiple levels and dimensions. Even the ultimate goal good environment might be agreed upon by all. The differences in denition manifest themselves at the more specic level. The struggles over costs and sharing the costs and the collaboration over nding efcient and agreeable policy measures to deal with the problems gives rise to a different policy process. Governance should be treated as a useful framework for analysing policy processes with multiple actors and multiple dimensions rather than a theory to replace old policy science models. The biggest source of disagreement between governance writers and their critiques has been the diminishing role of the state. This role should an empirical question, and the use of governance terminology should not be read as an argument for a historical change from government-led policy to completely private decision-making.

Conclusion
The aim of the analysis here was to demonstrate how policy network structures come to be, as results of individual communication partner choices accumulating. As the literature on governance highlights the importance of networks, the network position of potential partners was assumed to be one of motivations behind organizations choices, but the governance literature has been fairly vague in its denition of networks, and has not incorporated the insights from earlier work on policy networks and the new methodology developed with the social network analysis tradition. Here I used a network denition explicitly based on social network analysis. A network is a list of relevant actors and a list of all of their links for a single relation, in our case a general communication relation. Such a simple denition of a network avoids many debates over what constitutes a network and what does not, as we do not have to discuss whether new public management is really pervasive or not, for example. In the single network analysed, the empirical analysis gave support to this governance hypothesis. The network has an effect beyond the individual characteristics of the network participants. The network effect was stronger than the effects of actor attribute variables. The preference for transitive structures, or building completely connected subgroups, was very strong. This effect overwhelmed the effects of the publicprivate divide and the amount of expertise in the policy area under scrutiny. Still, the result should not be read to suggest that governance has, indeed, replaced government. However, it should be taken as providing some justication for governance as a theoretical framework for policy analysis and the processes of decision-making. The governance approach highlights a different aspect of policy than most others: the development of a detailed policy document from the starting point of a general, even vague, idea or goal. This process is characterized by a balancing act between political struggles, or settling differences in opinion and preference, and the mobilization of expertise. The organizations, too, are simultaneously trying to nd information and combine knowledge bases into usable data, as well as positing themselves at advantageous network positions. This networking should be at the core of further governance research. Here, the data is a single observation from a single network. Using exponential random graph modelling, the next step should be to move into longitudinal data from multiple networks. The most fruitful would be panel data over numerous observations, but such data is not easily accessible, and has problems with reliability. If resources are available, the best data would be collected by observations, as longitudinal data also suffers from memory recall issues if collected by interviews. Data from multiple networks would allow a comparative approach, but also establishing a range of parameter values for the different effects. The comparison could enable at least two different goals: rst, the comparison of different governance cultures, for example in different issue areas, in different legislations, or at varying levels of government; second, the comparison of effect sizes when the amount of autonomy given to the network varies. The task of the
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network given by the legislator might range from technical solutions for a set goal to almost full-blown autonomy, where goal-setting is part of the task and the network itself arises from need, not from government mandate. Even abandoning the exponential random graph models, the explicit network should stay at the epicentre of governance research. The theme of networks is evident throughout the governance literature. Without a denition that enables empirical research of network structures, network terminology is just hollow buzzwords. This paper has aimed to demonstrate one possible approach to explicit network research. Hopefully, the research approach and the results presented have convinced readers of the fruitfulness of the endeavour.

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