The driving forces of collective action among policy actors: Value, power, and social capital

Abstract

This study explores the core factors for the policy actors to select their policy partners in the policy processes, focusing on the mechanism underpinning the communication density between policy actors in the networks. For the purpose, this study identifies three major candidate groups: policy actors’ values, policy actors’ power, and social capital between policy actors. Then, with the relational data collected by the survey on the Korean international migration policy processes, we try to find core factors affecting communication density between policy actors. The results show that the most influential factors are found in the group of social capital while the variables around policy actors’ value systems are shown to be statistically insignificant, and that what is more important is not the trust based on receiver’s social reputation but the instant trust created during the policy process. This research also indicates that formal voting power is one of the significant variables in deciding the communication density between policy actors.