How Transnational Epistemic Elite Networks Segregate
In Prep
Who talks to whom among foreign policy experts — and does shared expertise or shared nationality drive the conversation? The dominant theory of transnational expert coordination predicts that professional knowledge binds experts across borders. We test this using 650,000 Twitter interactions among nearly 2,000 Turkish and American foreign policy elites over a decade. National identity wins decisively: the network splits along national lines, not institutional ones, even among academics and think tank scholars who share professional training and forums. American experts sit at the structural core with hub centrality 8.5 times higher than Turkish counterparts, and ruling elites are net consumers of knowledge production. We formalize these patterns as epistemic elite networks — expert formations that are transnational in reach but nationally segmented in structure, hierarchical, and porous rather than closed.
Concepts: Epistemic Elite Networks, Homophily Methods: Relational event models, network analysis Data: 650K Twitter interactions, 1,933 elites
Figure: Network visualization of Turkish and American foreign policy elites, colored by community. The network splits along national lines rather than institutional ones.