Networks of civil society organizations are a feature of the Eastern Partnership and the Union for the Mediterranean, the two strategies of the European Union (EU) for relations with the countries of the Neighborhood. We examine these structures as instances of interorganizational networks. We employ social network analysis and multiple regression to test empirically a number of hypotheses about these networks. Our results show that the networks are highly centralized around EU institutions, but we also find that gradually relations among all participants become more horizontal and cooperative, that EU institutions become less dominant over time, and that organizations from neighboring countries gain centrality. We also find that interorganizational cooperation is stronger in the southern than in the eastern Neighborhood.

Using social network analysis and logistic regression, we analyse how inter-organizational networks facilitate co-operation and the transfer of best practice from EU-based organizations to organizations in the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) countries. More specifically, we examine networks of employer and employee organizations that participate in the Civil Society Forum of the Eastern Partnership and in TRESMED, a Mediterranean project. We find that networks are successful at disseminating principles and good practices of economic and social partnership, but also that dissemination proceeds slowly. In addition, we detect more co-operation among employer than among employee organizations, which reflects collective action difficulties facing organized labour more generally. Last, we find that inter-organizational co-operation is more intense in the Southern than in the Eastern neighbourhood, which is explained by contextual differences as well as by the EU's longer-term engagement with the Mediterranean than with the countries on its Eastern frontier.

Why do certain European Union (EU) institutions look so much like institutions in its member states? The article asserts the reason for this similarity is that these structures have been 'copied' from the member states to the EU and provides a historical institutionalist explanation for this process of institutional transfer. The theory of isomorphism provides the analytical foundation for understanding institutional imitation in the EU, while the European ombudsman (EO) and the European Court of Auditors (ECAs) serve as the empirical case studies on which the theory is tested. The article finds that previously existing institutional arrangements matter not only by molding actor preferences in relation to an upcoming institutional transfer, but also by restricting their options and behavior. Specifically, the founding of the EO and the ECAs was the result of pressures exercised by the European Parliament, a supranational body, and the governments of the EU member states. In order to achieve the transfer, those actors had to navigate established institutional practices, primarily the ones associated with the negotiation of new treaties, which are necessary for the addition of new institutions to the EU institutional edifice.

External policy networks resolve two collective action problems in EU external relations: engaging nonstate actors from the EU and its partner countries in transnational policymaking and converting this engagement to feedback for policymakers. We use formal network analysis to understand the relationship between network structure and collective action by transnational nonstate actors. Our empirical focus is on the Transatlantic Business Council and the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue networks, which engage business and consumer advocacy organizations in transatlantic economic policymaking. We find that both are highly centralized around EU and US government institutions, with relatively low, but rising, levels of interaction among nonstate organizations. This structure helps increase engagement by giving organizations opportunities to interact with government institutions, learn from their peers, and, for some, to exercise power. It also helps EU and US institutions harness policy feedback, especially from nonstate actors that have frequent interactions with their peers.