Is the corporate elite disintegrating? Interlock boards and the Mizruchi hypothesis

TL;DR

This paper introduces novel Bayesian methods and the concept of a hull to analyze changes in interlocked corporate board networks over time, testing the Mizruchi hypothesis of disintegration of corporate elite power.

Contribution

It extends Bayesian models for longitudinal social network analysis and introduces the hull concept to handle node changes over time, advancing network comparison techniques.

Findings

Provides evidence on the stability or disintegration of corporate elite networks over time.

Develops a new methodological framework for longitudinal social network comparison.

Offers tools to analyze social networks with changing nodes.

Abstract

This paper proposes an approach for comparing interlocked board networks over time to test for statistically significant change. In addition to contributing to the conversation about whether the Mizruchi hypothesis (that a disintegration of power is occurring within the corporate elite) holds or not, we propose novel methods to handle a longitudinal investigation of a series of social networks where the nodes undergo a few modifications at each time point. Methodologically, our contribution is twofold: we extend a Bayesian model hereto applied to compare two time periods to a longer time period, and we define and employ the concept of a hull of a sequence of social networks, which makes it possible to circumvent the problem of changing nodes over time.