Do Women’s Organizations’ Activities Affect Welfare Budgets?: Empirical Analysis Using Protest Event Data from Local Governments

Abstract

This paper uses panel data from local governments in Korea to examine the impact of the activities of women’s organizations on the welfare budgets of local governments. Previous studies have argued that the participation of women’s organizations and other women actors in the political process leads to welfare expansion. In this context, it has been pointed out that women’s organizations, as outsiders, have played an important role in shaping public opinion in favor of welfare expansion, while at the same time acting as policy entrepreneurs, sometimes in cooperation with labor organizations and left-wing parties, in leading welfare policy. On the other hand, previous studies have rarely conducted empirical analyses using data on the relationship between women’s organizations and welfare policy, and there has been a gap between theory and evidence. Therefore, this paper analyses the determinants of the welfare budgets of local governments in Korea and examines how the activities of women’s organizations affect welfare budgets. To do so, this paper constructed unique data on the activities of women’s organizations in different regions of Korea by classifying newspaper articles in Korean using protest event analysis with the introduction of machine learning. Using the difference-in-differences (DID) method, this paper found that the presence or absence of women’s organization protest does not afect a local government’s welfare budget, but only when either only progressive women’s organizations protest or only protests with signals about women and welfare are observed. 2-3 years later, welfare budgets per capita in the population were found to increase.