Nets of Human Relations
The following interactive net is a sort of exercise I elaborated taking into consideration my own academic relations. I did not include all my contacts, but the idea is that the more I include people, the more I have personal relations. Manipulate the graph clicking and dragging the dots to build yourself a net of combinations you want to.
Nets of Public Contracts
The following graph shows two networks. They represent public and private sectors as conceptualised by Max Weber referred to the indistinct form of government between public and private relations. He named that blurred threshold as patrimonialism in which the commandments are also born with the power of a leader whose decision-making process is personalistic and very close to autocratic/oligarchic political regimes.
If we assume the notion of public and private as correct, we can design a net in which public companies are managed differently when compared to private sector The interactive graph below represents the private sector as a net surrounding and orbiting public power/companies as the theory affirms.
The two flow charts below schematise the Weberian concept of patrimonialism putting private/public companies as object of a hierarchical structural with a strong central power.
Source: Ministerio de Hacienda
Nets for Transparency Concept
Nets for transparency is a concept divided into two segments. One of them indicates the human relations. We have central and peripheral nodes in the interactive graphs as it is usually seen in real life. The section Nets of Human Relations refers to some of the possibilities with hypothetical and real lists of human connections we created. The other segment Nets of Public Contracts is about the public contracts between public and private sectors. We use the example of Spain and its lower levels in public administrations, but it could be applied to any other country. The rationale is simple. If private sector is behind the money of tax payers, it makes sense not only stuyding the networks from one of the sides only, that is to say, we should combine the information about people and contracts in order to have a more accurate diagnosis of urban life.
As I mentioned in the first section Nets of Human Relations, the more the number of people in human relations the more the impersonal aspect. I used public information on contracts without naming them just to test the hypothesis. If we are correct, we should have two entirely separte nets as seen in Nets of Public Contracts and not the network of my academic personal relations.
Nets in a Interactive Mode
We checked the official webpage for public contracts in Spain looking for data on contracts. It is basically the identification of which public entity is contracted and which company earns the contract. There is also another aspect of public contract relations. Inside the public administration, there are different levels and competences. I am not talking about only municipal, community, state and regional levels. I include other levels in the municipal sphere to make my argument more evident. It is important to mention municipal companies they have legal power to hire companies/individuals and sign contracts for specific demands with different suppliers.
Barcelona/ Level 1/ Top First 20th Contracts
Barcelona/ Level 2/ Top First 40th Contracts
Barcelona/ Level 3/ Top First 60th Contracts
Barcelona/ Level 4/ Top First 80th Contracts
Barcelona/ Level 5/ Top First 100th Contracts
Nets in a Static Mode
The following figures reproduce six nets. Each of them is a photo taken from the previous interactive nets about the public contracts seen, respectively, in the section Barcelona and the yellow one from the section Nets of Public Contracts. The figures corroborate the idea of more intersections with more contracts and the presence of the private sector as part of the public administration. A very interesting observation opposing the Weberian notion of patrimonialism.
Figure 1: Six Static Figures of Public Contracts
Objective
The main goal of the present exercise is to create a visual and interactive map in order to communicate easily with people. Social demands from collective actions, for example, may also have a clearer picture of public contracts and use the data to complement their agendas. Small companies and entrepreneurs are other groups of interest that may be interested in our visual maps.