1 Relationally Challenged: Put the Social back into Network Analysis Alexander H. Montgomery Associate Professor of Political Science, Reed College, Portland, OR http://www.reed.edu/~ahm Paper prepared for presentation at the 7th annual Political Networks conference, May 28–31, 2014, McGill University, Montreal QC. Abstract Quantitative social network analysis (QSNA) has become increasingly incorporated into international relations. This incorporation has only been partial, focused primarily on methodology, and separated from its theoretical underpinnings. Consequently, it has variously treated nodes as autonomous, asocial agents; assumed that ties exist from common characteristics or affiliations; and reinvented existing theories while stripping their social context. In this article, I survey the use and abuse of QSNA in international relations scholarship. In doing so, I also assess its potential for reincorporating social relations in both theory and in practice. In theory, QSNA is fully compatible with methodological relationalism, although the need to assume the existence of discrete nodes at some level of analysis makes it a more problematic match for ontological relationalism. In practice, QSNA has often been implemented at odds with relational sensibilities. Networks are being imputed from common characteristics or affiliations (that are assumed to be static and concrete rather than dynamic and contingent) instead of being directly measured; new measures are being created without reference to existing theories or tools; and network characteristics are reduced to units of analysis compatible with methodological individualism, leading to a reduction of a rich, relational analysis to single-variable systemic, simple dyadic, or even monadic analyses. Tools are being applied without regard for the nature of the underlying qualities of the data, leading to shallow analyses that disregard the social nature of the data. Yet some studies are beginning to carefully and slowly adopt the full analytic structure of social network analysis (SNA), including underlying theories. Keywords Quantitative social network analysis, relationalism, ontology, methodology