全球外交访问网络的形成与演化——基于大数据的社会网络分析

Explaining the Formation and Evolution of Global Diplomatic Networks:New Evidence from Network Analysis of Large-scale Event Data

国家如何选择外交出访对象国?为何一些国家的外交出访更频繁,而另一些国家接待的外国来访更多?如何解释全球外交访问网络的形成和变化?既有研究着重关注访问国与接待国的双边层次和国家层次因素的影响,然而却在理论上忽视了潜在第三方因素和外交网络的结构性影响;在研究方法上,则忽略了观察量之间相互依赖对模型估计造成的偏差,并且在数据上缺乏涵盖全球的外交访问信息。本文基于社会网络分析的理论和方法,将全球双边外交访问理论化为外交访问网络的形成过程,并将国家、双边和网络结构层次上的因素整合为一个统一的理论框架,用以解释国家间双边外交访问如何推动全球外交访问网络的形成和演化。利用"全球事件、语言与语调数据库"(GDELT)的海量事件数据提取全球外交访问数据集(1979—2020),并借助最新发展的网络分析方法对理论框架假设进行实证检验。结果表明,除了国家和双边层次的因素之外,外交访问网络自身存在的对等性、优先连接、同质性、传递性等网络效应,同样驱动了全球外交访问网络在过去40年间的演化。本文的研究为系统理解全球外交网络的演变提供了一个新的研究框架和新的方法借鉴,并产生了一个新的基于大数据路径的全球双边外交互访数据集,对于外交政策和国际政治的研究具有重要意义。

How does a country choose target countries for diplomatic visits?Why do some countries pay more diplomatic visits than hosting foreign visits?What causes the formation and evolution of the global diplomatic visit network?Existing research focuses on factors at the dyadic-and country-levels of visitors and hosts while theoretically ignoring potential influence from third parties and the structures of diplomatic networks. Methodologically, they also ignore the interdependence among observations that could result in biased model estimation.Moreover,they are constrained by the lack of data covering diplomatic visits around the world.Leveraging the social network analysis,this article theorizes the global bilateral diplomatic visits as the formation of diplomatic visit networks,and integrates factors at the national,dyadic,and network structure levels into a unified theoretical framework.Utilizing the Global Event,Language,and Intonation Database(GDELT)project,it builds a global diplomatic visit data set(1979—2020),which is then used to test the hypotheses derived from the theoretical framework.The results show that,in addition to country-and dyadic-level factors,network effects,such as stochastic equivalence,preferential attachment,reciprocity,and homophily,of the diplomatic visit network itself have also driven the evolution of the global diplomatic visit network in the past 40 years.Consequently,this article provides a new framework and new approach for the systematic understanding of the evolution of global diplomatic networks.It also produces a new global bilateral diplomatic exchange data set based on the big data approach,which has important implications for the studies of foreign policy and international politics in the age of big data.