{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,19]],"date-time":"2026-08-19T18:25:05Z","timestamp":1787163905592,"version":"build-2736575974"},"reference-count":24,"publisher":"Public Library of Science (PLoS)","issue":"8","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,19]],"date-time":"2026-08-19T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1787097600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001871","name":"Funda\u00e7\u00e3o para a Ci\u00eancia e a Tecnologia","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["2024\/07601\/IACDC"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2024\/07601\/IACDC"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001871","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001871","name":"Funda\u00e7\u00e3o para a Ci\u00eancia e a Tecnologia","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["UIDB\/04152\/2020"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["UIDB\/04152\/2020"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001871","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001871","name":"Funda\u00e7\u00e3o para a Ci\u00eancia e a Tecnologia","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["UIDB\/04152\/2020"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["UIDB\/04152\/2020"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001871","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001871","name":"Funda\u00e7\u00e3o para a Ci\u00eancia e a Tecnologia","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["2024\/07378\/IACDC"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2024\/07378\/IACDC"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001871","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["www.plosone.org"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["PLoS One"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Political mobility in executive appointments is often explained through party affiliation and career trajectories, yet relational embeddedness across institutional arenas may also characterise those who reach ministerial office. We examine, retrospectively and in an exploratory manner, whether the social networks formed by co-participation in Portuguese governmental and parliamentary venues are associated with ministerial appointments. Using web-scraped data on the composition of the Constitutional Governments and the Portuguese Parliament between 2015 and 2024, complemented with the Registers of Interests of government and parliament officials, we construct an individual-venue bipartite network and its projection onto individuals. We estimate the cumulative network of Governments XXI-XXII and, within each policy-domain, retrospectively screen potential candidates for the XXIII Government by ranking actors in the top five positions of at least one centrality measure (betweenness, reach, closeness, weighted closeness, or eigenvector), computed on portfolio-specific subgraphs and restricted to nodes reachable from the Prime Minister. With the identification of 9 out of 16 in-network ministerial appointments, this procedure outperforms both a random selection baseline (mean recall 0.6%) and a career-ladder heuristic based on prior secretarial experience in the same domain (recall 12.5%), consistent with network centrality being informative about the appointment process in stable, well-populated policy-domains. We assess whether Ministers exhibit systematically higher institutional reach than non-ministerial actors using bipartite degree centrality, visualised via a log-scaled KDE, and validated with non-parametric tests (10,000-iteration permutation tests and Mann-Whitney U tests). We decompose connectivity by venue type (e.g., Government, Parliament, Political Party) using a categorical profile comparison and cosine similarity. Ministers display higher bipartite degree centrality than non-ministerial actors (mean 0.0200 vs. 0.0105; difference 0.0096; permutation p-value\u2009=\u20090.021; Mann-Whitney p-value\u2009&lt;\u20090.001). Categorical profiles diverge substantially (cosine similarity 0.494), with significant gaps concentrated in Government and Parliament venues, while Parliamentary Bodies show no meaningful difference (p-value\u2009=\u20090.919). Venue-specific projected network analysis further reveals that the minister-non-minister centrality gap is largest within the political party network, where ministers score nearly double on eigenvector centrality (+96.0%; permutation p-value\u2009=\u20090.003), pointing to elite positioning within partisan structures.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pone.0355224","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,19]],"date-time":"2026-08-19T17:33:59Z","timestamp":1787160839000},"page":"e0355224","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone.corrections_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Social networks as pathways of political mobility in Portuguese governments"],"prefix":"10.1371","volume":"21","author":[{"given":"Rafael","family":"Borges","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0007-6444-956X","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Carolina","family":"Shaul","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0561-9641","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Fl\u00e1vio L.","family":"Pinheiro","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Bruno","family":"Dam\u00e1sio","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"340","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,19]]},"reference":[{"issue":"20","key":"pone.0355224.ref001","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"7057","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.0500191102","article-title":"A network analysis of committees in the U.S. House of Representatives","volume":"102","author":"MA Porter","year":"2005","journal-title":"Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A"},{"issue":"2","key":"pone.0355224.ref002","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"263","DOI":"10.47743\/saeb-2023-0019","article-title":"Interconnections between Minister Cabinets in Greece. A Bicentennial Study with Implications on Economy","volume":"70","author":"D Kydros","year":"2023","journal-title":"Sci Ann Econ Bus"},{"issue":"8","key":"pone.0355224.ref003","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"187","DOI":"10.15195\/v7.a8","article-title":"The U.S. Occupational Structure: A Social Network Approach","volume":"7","author":"A Villarreal","year":"2020","journal-title":"Sociological Science"},{"key":"pone.0355224.ref004","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"157","DOI":"10.1177\/1056492608316918","article-title":"Revolving Doors?A Network Analysis of Corporate Officers and U.S. Government Officials. Journal of Management Inquiry","volume":"17","author":"D Etzion","year":"2008","journal-title":"J Manage Inquiry"},{"key":"pone.0355224.ref005","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"206","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-032-16723-1_18","article-title":"Mapping Mobility Networks Between Government Roles in Portugal.","volume-title":"Complex Networks & Their Applications XIV","author":"C Shaul","year":"2026"},{"key":"pone.0355224.ref006","volume-title":"The Changing Role of Ministers in the Legislative Agenda in","author":"L Renno","year":"2015"},{"issue":"1","key":"pone.0355224.ref007","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.1007\/s13278-016-0348-7","article-title":"Empirical analysis of the Portuguese governments social network","volume":"6","author":"N Moniz","year":"2016","journal-title":"Soc Netw Anal Min"},{"key":"pone.0355224.ref008","unstructured":"Constitui\u00e7\u00e3o da Rep\u00fablica Portuguesa. S\u00e9tima revis\u00e3o Constitucional (Artigos 182\u20136). 2005."},{"issue":"2","key":"pone.0355224.ref009","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"378","DOI":"10.1111\/padm.12309","article-title":"Political advisers in Portugal: Partisanship and loyalty in policy processes","volume":"95","author":"P Silva","year":"2017","journal-title":"Public Administration"},{"issue":"2","key":"pone.0355224.ref010","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"5","DOI":"10.1080\/13608740708539625","article-title":"Portuguese Ministers, 1851\u20131999: Social Background and Paths to Power","volume":"7","author":"PTD Almeida","year":"2002","journal-title":"South European Society and Politics"},{"key":"pone.0355224.ref011","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"215","DOI":"10.1016\/j.socnet.2025.07.003","article-title":"In the network of the conclave: Social connections and the making of a pope","volume":"83","author":"G Soda","year":"2025","journal-title":"Social Networks"},{"key":"pone.0355224.ref012","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"199","DOI":"10.1093\/oso\/9780198888734.003.0010","article-title":"The Portuguese Party System","volume-title":"Political Parties and the Crisis of Democracy","author":"MC Lobo","year":"2024"},{"issue":"8","key":"pone.0355224.ref013","article-title":"Binary codes capable of correcting deletions, insertions, and reversals","volume":"10","author":"VI Levenshtein","year":"1966","journal-title":"Soviet Physics Doklady"},{"key":"pone.0355224.ref014","unstructured":"Winkler W. String Comparator Metrics and Enhanced Decision Rules in the Fellegi-Sunter Model of Record Linkage. Proceedings of the Section on Survey Research Methods. 1990."},{"key":"pone.0355224.ref015","unstructured":"Lei n.\u00ba 52\/2019, de 31 de julho \u2013 Regime do exerc\u00edcio de fun\u00e7\u00f5es por titulares de cargos pol\u00edticos e altos cargos p\u00fablicos (Artigos 13, 15 e 17). 2019. https:\/\/www.pgdlisboa.pt\/leis\/lei_mostra_articulado.php?nid=3192&tabela=leis"},{"key":"pone.0355224.ref016","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Lo A, Olivella S, Imai K. A statistical model of bipartite networks: Application to cosponsorship in the United States Senate. Polit Anal. 2025;1\u201320.","DOI":"10.1017\/pan.2025.10021"},{"issue":"3","key":"pone.0355224.ref017","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"215","DOI":"10.1016\/0378-8733(78)90021-7","article-title":"Centrality in social networks conceptual clarification","volume":"1","author":"LC Freeman","year":"1978","journal-title":"Social Networks"},{"issue":"11","key":"pone.0355224.ref018","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3747","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.0400087101","article-title":"The architecture of complex weighted networks","volume":"101","author":"A Barrat","year":"2004","journal-title":"Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A"},{"issue":"4","key":"pone.0355224.ref019","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"581","DOI":"10.1007\/BF02289527","article-title":"The centrality of a graph","volume":"31","author":"G Sabidussi","year":"1966","journal-title":"Psychometrika"},{"issue":"1","key":"pone.0355224.ref020","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"113","DOI":"10.1080\/0022250X.1972.9989806","article-title":"Factoring and weighting approaches to status scores and clique identification","volume":"2","author":"P Bonacich","year":"1972","journal-title":"The Journal of Mathematical Sociology"},{"key":"pone.0355224.ref021","volume-title":"Network Science","author":"A Barabasi","year":"2016"},{"issue":"3","key":"pone.0355224.ref022","first-page":"221","article-title":"Analyzing Social Networks","volume":"39","author":"SP Borgatti","year":"2013","journal-title":"J Math Sociol"},{"issue":"1","key":"pone.0355224.ref023","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"13","DOI":"10.20982\/tqmp.04.1.p013","article-title":"The Mann-Whitney U: A test for assessing whether two independent samples come from the same distribution","volume":"4","author":"N Nachar","year":"2008","journal-title":"Tutor Quant Methods Psychol"},{"key":"pone.0355224.ref024","first-page":"111","volume-title":"The Primacy of Experts?: Non-partisan Ministers in Portuguese Democracy","author":"A Pinto","year":"2018"}],"container-title":["PLOS One"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/dx.plos.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone.0355224","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,19]],"date-time":"2026-08-19T17:34:04Z","timestamp":1787160844000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/dx.plos.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone.0355224"}},"subtitle":[],"editor":[{"given":"Tatchalerm","family":"Sudhipongpracha","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"editor"}]}],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,19]]},"references-count":24,"journal-issue":{"issue":"8","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,19]]}},"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone.0355224","relation":{},"ISSN":["1932-6203"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1932-6203","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,19]]}}}