Distorted policy transfer? South Korea’s adaptation of UK social enterprise policy

ABSTRACT

This study draws upon communicative processes in policy transfer to consider the ways in which policy may be adapted to context or distorted. The theoretical framework is used to investigate exactly what the South Korean government borrowed from UK social enterprise policy. Despite claims that the UK was the source of both the general policy direction and the particular regulatory device, the Korean government did not learn about the specific contexts of the British policy, nor attempt two-way communication with domestic stakeholders. Rather, the UK policy was interpreted in accordance with the Korean government’s own ideas about how to utilize social enterprise. Historical legacies of top-down decision-making played an important role in this process, as did the state’s role as a regulator which mobilizes the private sector to achieve policy goals. The consequences have been negative for those organizations refused social enterprise status under the Ministry of Labor’s strict approval system, as well as for the original target population: the socially disadvantaged and vulnerable. It is suggested that the model advanced may help to illuminate the reasons why some borrowed policies differ considerably from the originals, and the use of policy transfer as a means of legitimization.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy transfer
• legitimization
• social enterprise
• South Korea
• UK

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Chisung Park is Associate Professor in the College of Public Service, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Korea. Since gaining his Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, he has published articles in journals such as the International Journal of Social Welfare, Policy Sciences, and Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. His current work focuses on the effects of social constructions on policies in a range of areas including social enterprise and immigration.

Jooha Lee is Associate Professor in the Department of Public Administration, Dongguk University, Seoul, Korea. He holds a Ph.D. in Social Policy from Oxford University. His main research interests are comparative social policy, welfare politics, governance, and policy implementation. He is co-author of The Korean State and Social Policy (Oxford University Press, 2011). His English publications have also been published in the Journal of Democracy and International Review of Administrative Sciences.

Mark Wilding is Lecturer in Social Policy in the Directorate of Social Sciences, University of Salford, Manchester, UK. He has a Ph.D. in Labour Studies from the University of Manchester. His research interests include policy transfer, comparative policy studies, and social enterprise. His recent work has been published in the Asian Journal of Political Science, Policy Sciences, and Administration & Society.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (NRF-2013S1A3A2055108).