Transnational business networks: the European corporate elite through the lens of network analysis and sequence analysis

With Philippe Blanchard & Antoine Vion

Does the accumulation of capital generate a transnational business community? This project takes the angle of "interlocking directorates" ("ID"), that is, networks of people holding simultaneous leading positions in several major companies, based in two or more countries. Yet we intend to push this approach further by examining sociologically how much interlockers resemble each other, interact with each other and, possibly, coordinate their activity. We combine and cross-fertilise the structural, network angle of ID studies, with the biography-oriented research on the sociology of elites. All along we keep a systematic, wide-scale empirical perspective, through a rigorous prosopography of interlockers in five core capitalist countries over a six-year period.