Purpose
This paper aims to present a catalogue of the influential aspects resulting from a bibliometric meta-analysis of political connection literature.

Design/methodology/approach
This study undertakes a bibliometric meta-analysis review of political connections literature, covering 138 research papers from 2000 to 2020 using the visualization of similarities viewer program.

Findings
The authors identify six research groups: the value of political connections; political connections and finance; political connections in banks; political connections and debt; management and political connections; and political connections and governance. This study discusses each stream through a cartographic analysis, including co-authorship, countries and time networks.

Originality/value
This study makes an important and novel contribution to political connection literature. So far, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the only bibliometric study on political connections. This study is the first to use network analysis and community detection to understand social clustering and to identify main research steams in political connection literature.