This study analyzes South Korea’s defense policy-making process with a focus on the force structure policy to draw policy implications by presenting the participation types and roles of the policy entrepreneurs who lead the process.
In this study, t...
This study analyzes South Korea’s defense policy-making process with a focus on the force structure policy to draw policy implications by presenting the participation types and roles of the policy entrepreneurs who lead the process.
In this study, the defense policy-making processes implemented by four former administrations—Roh Moo-hyun, Lee Myung-bak, Park Geun-hye, and Moon Jae-in—are examined on the legal basis of the National Defense Reform Act, which was first enacted during the Roh Moo-hyun government.
The time span of the study covers four governments from the Roh Moo-hyun to the Moon Jae-in administrations and their policy agendas, such as establishing presidential campaign pledges regarding defense and selecting national tasks for the presidential transition committee formed after the presidential election. It also covers the establishment of the National Security Strategy led by the Cheongwadae and the Defense Reform Plan led by the Ministry of National Defense after a new government took office.
This study sets three research objectives. First, it applies Allison's rational actor model to analyze the correlation between policymaking actors and shared policy goals according to the basic constructs of the model. Based on the analysis of the defense policy-making process of previous governments, the president, as the leader, exercised personnel power to form an administration with their supporters and turn their policy preferences into defense policy. The Cheongwadae and Ministry of National Defense acted as a single policy-making body to set policy goals based on changes in the defense environment. Through the sharing and diffusion of these policy goals, the president's preferred force structure policy alternatives were reflected consistently in defense policy, demonstrating a high degree of correlation. The second objective of this study is to identify the policy entrepreneurs who play the most significant role in the defense policy-making process and to analyze the types of participation using BIG KINDS, a news big data analysis service operated by the Korea Press Foundation. According to the analysis of the participation of the four former presidents, who are the policy entrepreneurs of the defense policy-making process, the liberal presidents Roh Moo-hyun and Moon Jae-in are classified as "creative policy entrepreneurs" because they pursued radical changes in the force structure policy based on their high policy knowledge and expertise. The conservative presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye are similar in that they pursued gradual supplementation and development of the force structure policy, but Lee is classified as a “restorative policy entrepreneur” since he pursued the force structure policy from the perspective of streamlining defense management. He could lead confidently based on his high policy knowledge and expertise in the field of management. On the other hand, Park is classified as a “conservative policy entrepreneur” because she pursued the force structure policy using supporters from the military and bureaucracy to compensate for her lack of policy expertise.
The last study objective is to analyze the role of presidents as policy entrepreneurs in the defense policy-making process. Previous presidents took the initiative in raising policy issues with the force structure policy in light of the changing defense environment South Korea faced at the time. They played an active policy broker role by fully taking advantage of their supporters to form networks and making efforts to gain public support for controversial choices so that their preferred force structure policy alternatives could become defense policy.
This study offers three contributions. First, for the first time in this field, this study analyzes the defense policy-making process of previous governments from the beginning of policy agenda setting, such as making presidential campaign promises and the selection of national tasks by the presidential transition committee, to policy-making activities, such as the establishment of the National Security Strategy led by the Cheongwadae and the establishment of the Defense Reform Plan led by the Ministry of National Defense, after the inauguration of a new government. Second, it examines the policy entrepreneurs of previous governments and empirically analyzes them using the BIG KINDS news analysis service, which is widely used as a scientific statistical technique based on big data. Last, this study objectively analyzes policy entrepreneurs by actively utilizing various primary data such as speeches and autobiographies of former presidents.