Policy Innovation across Korean Local Governments after Democratization: Community Safety Committee and Municipal Police System

Abstract

This study explores those factors that induce policy innovation among Korean local governments after democratization. While centralism in South Korea prevailed over community democracy after democratization in 1987, since the first local elections in 1995, Korean local governments have experienced a smooth democratic transition and the consolidation of democracy. We attempt to introduce a synthetic application of fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) and event history analysis (EHA) to the actual process for policy decision in policy innovation of police system in Korean local government. This paper collects massive descriptive data derived from police related ordinance diffusion across Korean local governments 2002 to 2012 in order to identify various causal conditions of policy innovation and illustrate synthesis of qualitative and quantitative findings. Our empirical results show that top-down policymaking in the central government still influences the adoption of innovation by Korean local governments and that the emergence of innovation in local governments involving policy competition and bandwagon effects has a significant impact on neighboring local governments.