Abstract Corporate networks studies have been restricted mainly to the private or business sectors. Network analyses involving both corporations and state or government agencies have been extremely rare. In this paper, the intercorporate network of interlocking directorates in the Netherlands, based on 86 large corporations and financial institutions, is studied in terms of a bipartite corporate—governmental network which arises from the interlocking memberships linking these corporations with major committees, agencies and similar centers of decision in the public sector or central state mechanisms in the Netherlands. The corporations, representing 27 industrial sectors, have been related to government and state agencies in 28 policy sectors. In this exploratory analysis the two heavy industries, metal/shipbuilding and chemicals/oil stand out clearly. With respect to the 17 central firms the results demonstrate consistent correspondence between their central position in the Dutch corporate network and the degree of their interlocks with policy sectors in the state. The results also show that the interlocks are overwhelmingly linked with the two policy sectors “economic affairs” and “education and sciences”. Hence a more detailed analysis of the interlocks with these two policy sectors is reported.
[1]
Meindert Fennema,et al.
Analysing interlocking directorates: Theory and methods☆
,
1978
.
[2]
Frans Stokman,et al.
Graven naar macht
,
1973
.
[3]
Gerrit Jan Zijlstra,et al.
Networks in public policy: Nuclear energy in the Netherlands
,
1978
.
[4]
R. Miliband,et al.
The state in capitalist society
,
1969
.
[5]
James O’Connor,et al.
The fiscal crisis of the state
,
1973
.
[6]
C. Offe,et al.
Strukturprobleme des kapitalistischen Staates
,
1976
.