Transnational think tank networks: Multipliers of political power or a new form of expertise monopolies at the European level

Abstract

This article examines the involvement of European think tanks (TTs) in transnational TT networks as a particular form of their social capital based on empirical data from website materials and semi-structured interviews with representatives of TTs from Brussels, London, Paris and Ljubljana, their networks and European institutions. This paper built on Bourdieu’s field theory and elements of social network analysis (SNA) contributes to a theory of the relation between fields and social networks. This study shows that positions of field members can be derived from network ties between them using different elements of SNA and Gephi software for the visualization of the TT social capital. Overall, this article argues that transnational TT networks contribute to establishing social boundaries of the transnational field of European TTs horizontally differentiating the TT field from other social fields and vertically transposing it from national to European level. Furthermore, TT social capital manifested in interaction of European TTs in these transnational TT networks determines the relational structure of their transnational TT field due to democratic deficit of the EU transnational administration which incites TTs to establish formally representative groups.