A double-edged sword: The conditional properties of elite network ties in the financial sector

Abstract

Existing scholarship suggests a deep relationship between elite connections and policy making in the financial sector. But are elite ties between private industry and government a resource for private industry, or a liability? We find that they can be either, depending on the circumstances. We analyze the associations of elite ties within numerous policy-making processes in the financial sector by measuring the network closeness between firms and government regulators. We then relate these measures of network closeness to a range of actual regulatory outcomes, from highly politicized bank bailouts to meetings with regulators both in crisis environments and in more detailed technocratic policy-making. Our findings point to the importance of institutional context in differentiating the role that elite ties might play in different circumstances. Within financial regulatory policy-making, while social ties between firms and regulators matter, they matter in different ways within different institutional contexts.