Who is Competing with Policy Idea?: Tracking Creative Innovation and Change in Korean Government

Abstract

This study analyzes the policy changes that take place even though internal institutions and external environments are stable. It tracks the answer to a couple of questions: Does the content of economic policy direction change every year in a more stable macroeconomic environment? If it changes, how can this be explained by theory? To investigate these changes, Korean annual economic policy direction reports released from the Ministry of the Interior were collected. Through text mining and correspondence analysis, the words in the reports over 16 years (from 2001 to 2016) were examined. The analytical results show that policy elites constantly compete to influence the policy package by putting themselves in the past to maintain and acquire legitimate authority while responding to the government's needs for creative innovation and change.