ABSTRACT
Networks are a cornerstone of contemporary public sector institutional architecture (Castells 1996). As networks and network research have expanded, questions related to network theorizing have re-emerged. Earlier positions that networks were a-theoretical; that is, exhibiting descriptive rather than explanatory insights (Salancik 1995, 348) and containing no theory of their own (Oliver and Ebers 1998; Börzel 1998), have been challenged. It is now acknowledged that a broad array of network theories abounds across many areas of scholarship (Börzel 2011; Borgatti and Foster 2003; Kilduff and Tsai 2003), resulting in as Oliver and Ebers (1998, 549) described as a “. . . cacophony of approaches and theories”.
