President's speech

Abstract

The level of integration between the political agendas that senior politicians suggest and the allocated budgets to support the policies they prioritize could directly affect a state’s development and serve as an indicator of governance quality. This study analyzes the alignment between presidential agendas in speeches and budget allocations throughout all of South Korea’s historical developmental stages, covering the rapid industrialization period under authoritarian governance in the 1970s until the developed state phase in which various policy demands erupted in the 2020s. The analyzed period is categorized into four phases. In the early phase, centralized development strategies led to rapid economic growth in South Korea. However, as societies advance, the appropriateness of these strategies is under question. The present study employs KeyATM to measure presidential rhetoric in inaugural addresses and budget messages, by extracting keywords based on the standardized Classification of the Functions of Government (COFOG). Then, the two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov is utilized to address the limitations of correlation approaches in the analysis of political speeches and budget data. As a result, the strong alignment observed during the early development stage significantly weakened as South Korea transitioned to a developed country. Additionally, the unique characteristics of each COFOG category and president significantly influence the degree of alignment between the presidential political rhetoric and budget allocations. While emphasizing the pivotal importance of balanced alignment between presidential agendas and budgetary allocations, this study suggests adaptive governance structures with greater sensitivity and responsiveness and provides practical insight for policymakers and senior politicians in a rapidly changing society.