What needs to be (un)ambiguous to construct a coalition for policy change? Evidence from South Korea’s “childcare publicness” reforms

Abstract

Ideas meaning different things to different people have increasingly been studied as possessing a broad appeal, but it remains unclear how specifically policy entrepreneurs can utilize ambiguity to construct a coalition for policy change. Conceptually, this article unravels the different levels of ideas according to generality, based on which it identifies two ambiguity-building strategies: making problem definitions ambiguous to rally heterogeneous actors with different problem-solving interests or defining the problem clearly, while deliberately leaving the solution ambiguous to accommodate various policy proposals from diverse actors. Empirically, it compares and contrasts two South Korean governments where the ambiguous idea of childcare publicness was utilized differently. The crux of this research focuses on how these two different ambiguity-building strategies can affect the coalition’s size and cohesion, and thereby shape the policymaking process. In doing so, this article provides a richer understanding of ideational ambiguity as a non-monolithic property.