The effect of foreign pressure on liberal policy autonomy: the case of South Korea’s screen quota system

Abstract

This study analyzes the major trade talks on films between South Korea and the US since the mid-1980s. It starts from the puzzle that South Korea could successfully maintain its screen quotas until it decided to cut them by half in 2006. The study argues that South Korean chief negotiators have used the US pressure to cut screen quotas as leverage in bilateral talks. This proves the point that heightened foreign pressure can enhance the policy autonomy of domestic chief negotiators, by consequence if not by design. Amid the US pressures to scrap the screen quotas, inter-ministry frictions arose among the Ministry of Strategy and Finance (formerly the Ministry of Finance and Economy), the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism (formerly the Ministry of Culture and Tourism), and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (formerly the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade). While bureaucrats from the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism have tenaciously adhered to a preservation of the screen quotas, those from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have continuously cast doubt on this protectionist policy. On the other hand, bureaucrats from the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, far from the other two ministries’ consistent preferences, have altered their actual policy preferences with respect to the screen quotas in the same period. A key goal of this study is to test the following statement: the greater the US pressure to cut the screen quotas became, the wider the range of policy autonomy South Korean chief negotiators would exercise.