The Common Role Structure Improved Blockmodeling Methods Applied to Two Communities' Elites

Abstract

The claim by Breiger and Pattison (1978) that the joint homomorphic reduction indicates the role structure common to two populations is shown to be incorrect. The actual common role structure is defined and then calculated for the elites of two communities. A new measure of the similarity of two role structures is also provided. The results show that, in contradiction to Breiger and Pattison's claims, the two community elite role structures do not share relative strength of ties and are, in fact, very different from one another.