# Seminar _Re-analyzing social network studies: What is the enemy of my enemy?_ (Winter 2015/2016)

**+++ News +++** **13 January 2016**  
Questions, help, guidance (PZ 1006)  
_by appointment_ |  In this seminar we re-analyze social network data that has been used in published research. By varying the applied methodology we attempt to find out whether different methods of analysis would have lead to different results for the same research questions. The seminar, thus, touches the important issue of reproducibility in empirical social science. Participants will learn to apply simple and more sophisticated techniques to statistically analyze empirical social network data.   
We will re-analyze the hypotheses and findings published in Maoz et al. (2007) using data publically available from the Correlates of War Project (http://www.correlatesofwar.org/). In short, the paper addresses the question whether indirect relations, such as being an enemy of an enemy or being a friend of an enemy, have an influence on the occurrence of interstate conflict. In this seminar we are not interested in this research question per se but rather take it as a starting point to understand how the applied methodology affects the obtained findings.  
Prerequisites: Interest in quantitative methods for social network analysis and the ability to learn to work with statistical software, in particular R (http://www.r-project.org/). (Participants will get a short introduction and code examples.) It is not mandatory to have any previous knowledge about social network analysis, nor about social science, political science, or international relation research.   
Main reference: Zeev Maoz, Lesley G. Terris, Ranan D. Kuperman, and Ilan Talmud (2007). "What is the enemy of my enemy? Causes and consequences of imbalanced international relations, 1816-2001". Journal of Politics, 69(1):100-115.  
  
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## Schedule

#### Tentative schedule of participants' presentations

No. | Topic | Date | Presenter  | Slides (pdf)  
---|---|---|---|---  
1 | _Repeat analysis of Maoz et al._ | 25 November 2015  | - | -  
2 | _Control for past alliances and conflicts_ | 2 December 2015 | Arno Fontaine | Pres. 2  
3 | _Control for covariates_ | 2 December 2015 | Dennis Soell | Pres. 3  
4 | _Analyze the probability of interaction_ | 9 December 2015 | Timon Behr | Pres. 4; Table1; Table2  
5 | _Analyze the conditional probability of conflict_ | 20 January 2016 | Qaiser Jamal | -  
6 | _ERGMs for the conflict network_ | 16 December 2015 | Lena Pollak | Pres. 6  
7 | _ERGMs for the alliance network_ | 16 December 2015 | Dagmar Sorg | Pres. 7  
8 | _STERGMs for the conflict network_ | 20 January 2016 | - | -  
9 | _STERGMs for the alliance network_ | 13 January 2016 | - | -  
10  | _TERGMs with pseudolikelihood estimation_ | 20 January 2016 | - | -  
  
## Material

_Some documents are only locally accessible - seepossibilities for remote access_. 

**Slides**

  * slides.pdf **(last updated: 28 October 2015)**
  * **Topic list:** slides_topics.pdf **(last updated: 28 October 2015)**
  * slides_regression.pdf **(last updated: 11 November 2015)**



**Rscript**

  * Introduction to R **(last updated: 27 October 2015)**
  * Statistical analysis with R **(last updated: 03 November 2015)**
  * Specifying and estimating ERGMs with R **(last updated: 11 November 2015)**



**Data**

  * International relations (Oneal and Russet, 2005) (file **cmps2005.zip**)
  * Pre-processed data (file **data_seminar.zip**)



**Software**

  * R project page. 
  * R Studio. 
  * **statnet** project page. 
  * visone homepage. 



## Literature

### Paper to be re-analyzed

  * Zeev Maoz, Lesley G. Terris, Ranan D. Kuperman, and Ilan Talmud (2007). What is the enemy of my enemy? Causes and consequences of imbalanced international relations, 1816-2001. _Journal of Politics_ , 69(1):100-115. (local copy) 



### International relations data

  * John R. Oneal and Bruce Russett (2005). Rule of Three, Let It Be? When More Really Is Better. _Conflict Management and Peace Science_ , 22:293-310. (local copy) 



### (Separable Temporal) Exponential Random Graph Models

  * Hunter, D. R., Handcock, M. S., Butts, C. T., Goodreau, S. M., and Morris, M. (2008). ergm: A package to fit, simulate and diagnose exponential-family models for networks. _Journal of statistical software_ , 24(3). (local copy) 
  * Krivitsky, P. N., and Handcock, M. S. (2014). A separable model for dynamic networks. _Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B (Statistical Methodology)_ , 76(1):29-46. (local copy) 



## Further information

  * LSF entry