Inference for Balance in Dynamic Signed Networks

Abstract

Signed networks consist of both positive and negative relations, and structural balance theory provides an important conceptural framework for understanding their global tension structure. While existing statistical methods mainly focus on assessing empirical evidence of balance in a single observed network, many real-world signed relations evolve over time. This paper develops nonparametric inference for the population degree of structural balance at specified time points in dynamic signed networks, where the target time may or may not coincide with an observed snapshot. We consider a dynamic signed graphon model in which both edge formation and sign generation are governed by smoothly time-varying graphon functions. To exploit temporal smoothness, we construct a kernel-smoothed estimator that borrows information from snapshots near the target time point. Our theoretical analysis establishes a studentized inference procedure and a higher-order distributional approximation based on Edgeworth expansion, showing that temporal smoothing improves inference in sparse networks by reducing variance of observation noise, up to smoothing bias and time-discretization errors. We demonstrate the finite-sample performance and practical usefulness of the proposed method through extensive simulation studies and an application to a dynamic international relation network in political science.