Network diagrams can represent almost any structure of relations as a set of nodes and ties (also called vertices and edges). We have used a straightforward approach to create network models for three modern American presidencies. Social ties are the sum of two individuals’ interpersonal interactions; the more they interact, the stronger their relationship.

To study those interactions, we use the labor spent by publishers in compiling an index of the pages in which an actor plays a significant role. In this way, we aim to avoid false positives—when an actor is merely mentioned in passing but has no relevance to an interaction—and false negatives—when an interaction takes place but the actor’s name does not appear, such as when they are referred to by pronouns or titles (e.g. “the president”). We represent each indexed actor or theme as a node. If two actors appear on the same page, we infer that there existed a tie between them, either in the mind of the author or in reality or both.

The sum of these co-occurrences is the strength of the tie linking two individuals. One limitation of this approach is that we ignore the reality that ties are neither symmetrical nor neutral: an official might care a great more deal about the president than the president cares about him. We should also keep in mind that the interactions we analyze are not the only ones to have occurred, just the ones that took place during events that, according to the chronicler, “mattered.”

As a simple example of this approach, we drew a network map of Trump’s first year in office by graphing the ties between the 25 individuals (represented here as squares) and the 25 themes (shown as circles) most frequently mentioned in the index of Wolff’s book.

The graph encapsulates Wolff’s narrative, and perhaps also his sources. Trump himself, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, his daughter Ivanka, and his chief strategist Steve Bannon are the most mentioned actors. By comparison, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus is barely visible. Russia is by far the dominant theme. The result is far from an objective documentary of White House intrigue. Rather, it is the formal reconstitution of Wolff’s narrative reconstruction of a group’s subjective interpretation of events and their internal dynamics.

We compared the structure of politics in the first years of the presidencies of Trump, Clinton, and Nixon, as recorded by their respective chroniclers. A few commonalities emerged: All three presidents were more connected than their officials, and each appointed a core group composed of campaign operatives and Washington insiders. But there were also a few key differences. Many commentators have drawn parallels between Trump and Nixon, perhaps reflecting liberal hopes that Trump may ultimately share Nixon’s fate. In terms of the network structure of their administrations, however, Clinton seems a better match.