Purpose/Research Question: This study aims to quantitatively and schematically confirm the stability of the policy due to institutional restrictions and determine how the variability of the policy itself dissolves through the deconstruction and analysis of policy documents. This is based on the premise that both the institution and the policy are projected in the policy document, and these characteristics will be described later. In short, this study aims to explore the possibility of a harmonious and integrated interpretation of institutional research and policy changes by objectively describing how institutions and policies are linked and constrained.
Key Literature Reviews: Whether policy change results from political negotiations or limited choices, a debate has continued since the 1970s regarding the importance of the processes leading to these decisions, decision-making structures, social norms, ideas, and interpretations. March and Olsen [1,2] criticized pluralism, behaviorism, and rational choice in their approach to policy-making through micro-exchange relationships between individuals or interest groups. Policies are appropriately selected for social norms and conventions when there are institutional constraints in the context of formal and informal rules. Hall [3], Thelen, and Steinmo [4] asserted the rules, compliance procedures, and practices to structure relationships between policy actors in the political and economic sectors, such as institutions. The institutions influence the interests and preferences of policy actors and play a role in structuring the power relationships. Specifically, because the institutions constrain the policy-making process and political decisions, the policy is an output under institutional constraints and a path-dependent adjustment to past choices [5,6,7,8,9,10].
Design/Methodology/Approach: To demonstrate the policy changes under institutional constraints through the Zipf distribution [11] of policy documents, this study deconstructed and analyzed the 25-year economic policy direction report from 1993 to 2017.The economic policy direction announced by the government at the beginning of each year is a combination of policies and economic policy goals to be pursued during the year and which present major policy tasks. The dual structure of the Zipf distribution reflects the historical context, and the institutional situation creates policy stability and variability simultaneously. High-frequency words, subject to strong institutional constraints, are used repeatedly and in conjunction to form the basic trajectory and framework of policy documents and lead to path-dependent stability. Rare-frequency words, which are discretionary choices by policy actors who are under loose constraints, create policy variability, but such changes will be limited and temporary. Moreover, a long-term change occurs due to word substitution in the overlapping region where rare and high-frequency words intersect, but the scope of the change is narrow and gentle.
Findings/Results: In the analytical results, the economic policy direction showed a variability that changes more than a certain level each time, but it represented a modest change in the long run. The dual structure of the word frequency of the Zipf distribution is intended to have both the variability and stability of policy changes. The rare-frequency words used in the economic policy direction produced temporary and local changes in the short term, allowing the economic policy direction to adapt flexibly to the policy environment and the political situation. Rare-frequency words, under loose constraints, are easily adopted by policy actors without causing major backlash because they do not directly impede social perceptions and dominant interests in the economic policy direction.
Research limitations/Implications: First, there should be a shared consensus among researchers as to whether policy changes can be understood through word changes i
Key words: Policy change, institutional research, stability, variability, text analysis, Zipf distribution, economic policy, duality.
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