Centrality in Transnational Governance : How Networks of International Institutions shape Power Processes

In this article, I argue that network centrality approaches can illuminate power processes in transnational security governance. Most approaches to power and centrality focus on the direct effects of the possession of resources or ties. By contrast, I argue that centrality can also inform how network structures constrain behavior through diffuse power processes. I illustrate my argument by replicating two important papers on socialization through democratic international organizations and producing order through alliance hierarchies. I demonstrate that using network conceptualizations and measurements of these processes allows for better connections between theory and empirics, more precise hypothesis testing, broadened scope, and improved models. I find that socialization by democratic IOs is more important than dispute resolution mechanisms in preventing conflict and that ordering through hierarchical structures occurs throughout the entire international alliance system