ABSTRACT There is a tendency to consider covert networks as separate from overt networks. Drawing on data from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we demonstrate that this is not the case and identify how covert and overt networks are mutually constitutive. While most studies of African brokers have relied on network metaphors like ‘Big Men’ and ‘social membranes’, we consider the embeddedness of ‘covert’ networks in ‘overt’ networks explicitly. We perform two analyses on a large original dataset encompassing 396 partially overlapping ego-nets obtained from a hybrid link-tracing design. An ego-net analysis reveals a large degree of homophily and a deep embeddedness of the different networks. A multilevel exponential random graph model fitted to the reconstructed network of a 110-node subset shows that demobilised combatants are the actors likely to broker between armed groups, state forces, and civilian blocs, suggesting their capacity to broker peace or foment war.

中文翻译：

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在冲突区域中的（不是这样）公开和（不是这样）隐蔽网络之间进行代理

摘要倾向于将隐蔽网络与隐蔽网络分开。利用来自刚果民主共和国的数据，我们证明情况并非如此，并确定秘密和公开网络是如何构成的。尽管大多数对非洲经纪人的研究都依赖于“大人物”和“社会膜”之类的网络隐喻，但我们明确考虑了“隐蔽”网络在“公开”网络中的嵌入性。我们对包含从混合链接跟踪设计获得的396个部分重叠的自我网络的大型原始数据集进行了两项分析。自我网络分析揭示了不同网络之间的高度同质性和深层嵌入性。