A Study on the Construction of State Sovereign Behavior Labeling System and Network Analysis Methods

“State sovereign behavior” refers to the actions taken by nation-states as the primary actors in international relations. Constructing an accurate labeling system and investigating the relationship and significance of this system is crucial for understanding and predicting state sovereign behavior. However, there is a lack of research on developing a labeling system for state sovereign behavior. This paper proposes a labeling system and network analysis method for state sovereign behavior based on grounded theory, which consists of three steps: obtaining raw data and data preprocessing, information processing and indicator system construction, and network analysis. First, approximately 2.3 million Chinese characters related to state sovereign behavior were crawled from Weibo and preprocessed. Second, using the three-level coding method of grounded theory, a labeling system of “8 dimensions and 24 attributes“ was constructed for state sovereign behavior. Third, the relationships between the labels of state sovereign behavior and their importance were analyzed using network analysis methods, including network centrality and other indicators. Finally, a case study was conducted on country M using the proposed method. The relationships and importance of the 8 dimensions in the state sovereign behavior labeling system in country M were analyzed and explained, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed method. The conclusions of this study provide a theoretical and methodological basis for understanding the deep logic of the state-sovereign behavior labeling system and predicting state-sovereign behavior.