INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE ON SOCIAL AND POLITICAL NETWORKS

Network-analytical applications in the social sciences have produced outcomes with real impact: from strategic positions of exchange in the networks of global trade, to flow patterns of migration and human mobility, the resilience of international financial networks, the digital and physical infrastructures of organizations, to the mapping and disrupting of terrorist and organized crime networks, corruption machines, and the virulent spreading of fake news and disinformation. Capturing both the substantive and methodological breadth of social-scientific network analysis, the four original research articles address a variety of topics, with different approaches, methods, and relational data: counter-narcotics organisational cooperation in Afghanistan, collaboration networks among European cities, networks of employment prospects and destinations of higher education graduates, and the political networks of party switchers. Ebrahimi and Lim's rich multi-layer networks of counter-narcotics stakeholders, to better understand the complexity of collaboration and to optimize the implementation of counter-narcotics policy; Tursie and Boata's Romanian cross-border collaboration networks, to make explicit the potential for more productive exchanges of good practices and successful projects of European cities; Proteasa and Fierascu's normative and empirical graduate employment destination networks, to inform decision-makers in higher education about their opportunities to better prepare and support graduates on the labour market; finally, Fierascu, Parvu, Topirceanu and Udrescu's exploration of the role of party switchers within the broader party system, to better understand incentive schemes for successful political collaboration.