My Little Crony

Guide

The lines represent:
― government contracts
― political donations
― other connections (e.g. family, job)
Thicker lines indicate larger contracts and donations.

Sources

This network was constructed manually based on extensive investigative journalism by Byline Times, Open Democracy, The Citizens, and many more. Hover/tap to find links to these stories.

Data

You can find all data and code for this visualization at the Github repo. The network is generated from a dataset of nodes and a dataset of connections, using the visNetwork R package.

Update

My Little Crony is no longer being actively maintained
When it launched in November 2020, the network had just 63 nodes with 98 connections between them
Over the course of a year that swelled to 197 nodes with 360 connections, as more and more cases of cronyism were uncovered...
I'm grateful to the many civic-minded people who helped me keep the network up to date by suggesting additions on social media

About Me

Hello! My name is Sophie E. Hill, and I'm a PhD student in the Department of Government at Harvard University.
Check out my website for more interactive network visualizations.

Why did I make My Little Crony?

I was trying to keep up with UK political news while living in the US
I was waiting for the results of the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election to be declared and I needed a distraction...
I wanted to help my fellow citizens make sense of a complex series of political scandals
I thought of a great pun

Media Coverage

My Little Crony was widely shared on social media and was covered by the Metro, City A.M., BBC Radio 4, LBC, and The London Economic.
I wrote op-eds for The Guardian and Byline Times about what I learnt from making it.

My Little Crony was also mentioned several times in the UK Parliament:

By Labour MP Valerie Vaz on 12 November 2020
By Labour MP Valerie Vaz on 19 November 2020
By Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi on 21 June 2021