Power politics: researching the informal social networks in health policy analysis.

How are the policy actors interconnected with each other, and how might their decisions be influenced by others? These questions were of particular interest during our participation in the process for approval of the innovative Punjab Integrated Primary Health Care Model Program (PIPHCMP) in Pakistan, and again as we began our policy analysis of this program. The importance of informal social networks is under-researched in health policy literature. In this paper, by using the \'the process for approval of the PIPHCMP\' as a case study; we employ tools from social network studies and analyze the influence of informal social networks on decision-making processes.