Measuring Frames: Discursive Institutions in Polarized Politics A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Ph.D. to the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the Freie Universität Berlin by Oul Han Berlin, 2016 First supervisor: Prof. Dr. Eun-Jeung Lee Second supervisor: Prof. Dr. Sabine Kropp Date of the viva voce/ defense: October 18th 2016 © OUL HAN ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, 2016 Acknowledgements This dissertation and its author have received crucial momentum from various benefactors throughout its development. In the first place, I express my deepest gratitude to Professor Eun-Jeung Lee, who has provided unrelenting guidance and support at all times, and to whom I owe courage for conceiving and completing this dissertation. I also thank Professor Sabine Kropp and Professor Hannes Mosler for their erudite comments, eager availability, true patience, and genuine encouragement. I also thank the faculty, affiliates, and colleagues of the Graduate School of East Asian Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin for their warm presence and collective dynamic, from which I have learned how to receive and give cooperation as a colleague. I have benefited endlessly from their myriad support and will treasure the experience. I thank Professor Gregory Jackson for his formative teaching and his untiring graciousness to engage with my curious questions, and Professor Verena Blechinger-Talcott for her universal feedback and support. This dissertation’s computational methods presented a steep learning curve, which was tangibly accelerated by precious computer science input from Hoon Jung, Norman Hein, JinYeong Bak, Suin Kim, Jaewon Kim, and Christian Blum in chronological order. I also thank Professor Alice Oh and Dr. Kashif Rasul for trust in my social science input and Dr. Camille Roth for computational social science input. These combined influences elevated my perspective and convinced me to work with interdisciplinary and mixed methods. Lastly, I thank my parents and brother for gifting me with inspiration daily, and my friends for helping me in endless ways, which made me a better person. i Abstract Polarization in politics can indicate problems of young democracy, which can be different from known and desirable advantages of polarization and partisanship in old democracies, such as policy competition and voter information. In fact, political differentiation between camps and policies may be low in young democracies due to the low institutional development of political parties. This dissertation contributes to knowledge by demonstrating polarization between political camps by measuring polarized camp frames, instead of scaling policy that can be non-distinct and non-informative for learning polarization. For having all aforementioned traits, I use the South Korean case to show that the phenomenon and effects of polarization can be evaluated via discursive polarization, which can be measured by political framing. The theory of hegemonic discourse explains that South Korean actors compete by distinctly framing their promises towards goals, e.g. welfare or unification. Viewed over long time, such frames are discursive institutions that reproduce existing political frames but can adapt to political situations, such as growing income inequality or North Korean armed provocations. The institutional behavior of these deeply engrained and only incrementally changing frames makes them easily measurable in quality and quantity. To this aim, I apply quantitative text analysis that shows statistical word relationships in large text corpora. I examine the discourses about welfare and unification, ii issues that vary by decreasing versus increasing frequency, and by policy polarization versus convergence. By analyzing over 100.000 relevant articles from 24 years (1990- 2014) in two partisan newspapers via mixed methods, I am able to make sense of framing patterns, e.g. political strategies, and incentives for polarizing, within the political contexts of that time. My findings suggest that polarizing frames end up outweighing idea-conveying and consensus-building frames due to their political utility for seizing power. In other words, polarizing behavior trumps political ideas and policy deliberation that can be outcomes of heightened public attention for an issue. The methodological and empirical insights contribute to existing debates, such as polarization studies, democratization studies, and comparative studies of ideological scaling. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ...............................................................................................................i Abstract ................................................................................................................................ ii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... iv List of Figures .................................................................................................................... vii List of Tables ...................................................................................................................... ix List of Appendices .............................................................................................................. xi Glossary ............................................................................................................................. xii 1. Introduction: Ideas in South Korean politics ................................................................. 1 1.1. The 2012 election campaign discourse and puzzle .................................. 1 1.2. Previous assumptions .............................................................................. 5 1.3. Two camps in South Korea ....................................................................... 7 1.4. The argument .......................................................................................... 11 1.5. Plan of dissertation ................................................................................. 13 2. Epistemologies for studying political ideas in a different culture ................................ 15 2.1. Area studies ............................................................................................ 18 2.2. Political science ...................................................................................... 31 3. Theory and Model: Discursive polarization in South Korea ....................................... 52 3.1. Discursive epistemology ......................................................................... 55 3.2. Mapping South Korean scholarship ........................................................ 57 3.1.1. On polarization ....................................................................................... 63 3.1.2. On political camps .................................................................................. 66 3.3. Hegemonic discourse ............................................................................. 73 3.4. Discursive institutionalism ...................................................................... 78 3.5. Model ontology of frames ....................................................................... 84 iv 4. Theory testing: Measuring frames in South Korea ..................................................... 89 4.1. Method: Topic Modeling .......................................................................... 90 4.1.1. Unsupervised content analysis ............................................................... 92 4.1.2. Measuring frames ................................................................................... 95 4.1.3. Validation ................................................................................................ 97 4.2. Case selection: One short-term and two long-term discourses ............ 101 4.3. Data collection: Two newspapers ......................................................... 105 4.4. Data analysis ........................................................................................ 107 5. Empirical validation and evaluation .......................................................................... 111 5.1. Validation of frames in the unification discourses .................................. 115 5.1.1. State actor frames ................................................................................. 115 5.1.2. Civic-level frames ................................................................................. 120 5.1.3. Highlighting diverse state roles in Chosun Ilbo frames ......................... 127 5.1.4. Collective memory and political triggers in Hankyoreh frames ............. 145 5.1.5. Political ideology: Dealing with modern history .................................... 156 5.2. Validation of frames in the welfare discourses ...................................... 166 5.2.1. Problem spotting frames ....................................................................... 170 5.2.2. Idea frames ........................................................................................... 182 5.2.3. Focus on welfare/social policy and policymaking ................................. 207 5.2.4. Framing of interest groups as actors for social policy ........................... 211 5.2.5. Frames as systems debates ................................................................. 216 5.3. Hypothesis testing: Explaining variations ............................................. 220 5.3.1.