Political Leadership during a Policy Shift: The Effort to Revise the Sejong City Plan

To promote a controversial policy, a leader must find factors that are favorable to change, and neutralize (or minimize) the opposition to it. In advocating the revised Sejong City plan, the government, including the president, the prime minister, and an advisory panel, encountered deep-rooted opposition— initially from a minority within the ruling party, and then from residents of Chung-cheong Province and the opposition parties. The prime minister’s abrupt approach, without prior consultation with ruling party members, and his desperate yet hasty attempt to expand a policy coalition, was not able to reconcile the differences in this case. Incentives for opposing groups were not well established. The ruling party’s defeat in local elections made it even more difficult to move forward with the revised plan. Cognition theory, in particular a simplified version of Howard Gardner’s concept of seven levers for changing minds, provides a useful analytical tool for understanding this case.