Many case studies have been actively conducted focusing on the roles and interactions of primary actors in relation to the recent policy process. Although these studies are based on various theories and methodologies, the most actively applied theorie ...
Many case studies have been actively conducted focusing on the roles and interactions of primary actors in relation to the recent policy process. Although these studies are based on various theories and methodologies, the most actively applied theories in recent years are the advocacy coalition framework and the policy network model. However, it has been pointed out that this model is limited to methodologically and overly qualitative analysis.
This study analyzes how policies are changed according to policy makers' ideas and belief systems based on the time of major policy changes, and how the policy subsystem is structured to lead policy change through interaction and coordination between policy actors, and the changes in the interactions and interactions between policy actors that led to policy changes. As an analytical method for this, we used a combination of traditional policy change methodology and social network analysis method based on the policy advocacy coalition framework. Through these attempts, we aimed methodological diversity and expanded explanatory power of policy change theory. In particular, the methodological combination was made through the content analysis of newspaper articles including opinions on policy issues of policy actors, and the structure of the network between actors was analyzed and analyzed. This analysis can be useful in explaining the change of the belief system between the advocacy coalitions in the advocacy coalition framework or explaining the change of the interagency relationship structure in the policy network model.
The main characteristics of this study are as follows: First, it is analyzed whether change of important policy environment causes change of policy advocacy coalition or policy network through change of belief system. Second, it attempts to conduct a comparative study on major policy cases including environmental policy, public conflict, or education policy. Third, we investigated the actors who lead the production, maintenance and transformation of major policy ideas, and compared the impact of policy changes such as regime change on policy elites.
This study was conducted in two stages. In the first step, the advocacy coalition framework was used to explain the policy decision process for each policy case at the qualitative level. Particularly, in the first stage, we explained the change of the policy advocacy coalition centered on the change of the belief system of the major actors. First of all, it is noted that regime change affects the belief system of major actors and causes change of policy advocacy coalition. In addition, we examined whether changes in other major policy environments lead to changes in belief systems by policy cases. As in the case studies of other policy processes, this study also focuses on the role and status of key actors in the advocacy coalition, but more focuses on the role of policy elites.
In the second stage, we analyzed social network analysis through 'NetMiner' for in-depth research cases, and analyzed more precisely the timing change of policy network and the dynamic formation process of policy subsystem. Especially, social network analysis was basically based on the contents analysis of newspaper articles. The analysis of the homogeneity and the disparity of the policy opinions of the main actors in the newspaper articles quantitatively analyzed the advocacy coalition structure and belief system between the actors. In particular, because the content analysis of newspaper articles is useful as an indicator of the belief system of each advocacy coalition discussed in the advocacy coalition framework, changes in the advocacy coalition framework can be represented more rigorously over time. In addition, there is a limit to analyzing the direct interaction behavior between actors in relation to the policy network model, but it is expected to expand the explanatory power of the policy network model indirectly by grasping the relationship structure between actors.
The purpose of this study is to extend the explanatory power of the causal structure of policy change by applying the social network analysis, which is a quantitative analysis, to the policy change theory which was the center of the existing qualitative analysis. Therefore, the results of this study can be widely used to improve the diversity of the methodology in analyzing the policy change process which has been devoted to the existing qualitative analysis.