Case study: what did Rafael Correa say? Comparing political attention across 10 years of the Ecuadorian president’s discourses

Abstract The “citizen revolution” was a political project executed mainly between 2007 and 2016 by the former president of the Republic of Ecuador, Rafael Correa Delgado, under the paradigm of 21st century socialism. The main characteristic of this project was to introduce a new political agenda to the country that was differentiated from past agendas, by focusing on issues such as the recognition of new rights, improvements to education, instituting a new economic model, and strengthening government and sovereignty, among others. Under this context, this work aims to analyze the political attention of the ex-president, explaining why some issues are more important than others, and why they varied over time. Based on a conceptual framework that takes ideas from the agenda-setting theory, the areas on which the political agenda concentrates are measured by the Shannon entropy index, and its various changes are explained as the results of preferences, institutional factors, and external events. The analysis is based on extensive database analyses of 10 years (covering Rafael Correa’s presidency) of government speeches, which are coded according to the methodology of the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP). To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first work to apply the CAP methodology in Ecuador.

摘要：“公民革命（Citizen Revolution）”是厄瓜多尔前总统拉斐尔·科雷亚·德尔加多（Rafael Correa Delgado）在21世纪社会主义（21st century socialism）范式下，于2007年至2016年间主导推行的一项政治纲领。该纲领的核心特征在于为厄瓜多尔引入一套区别于过往的全新政治议程，聚焦新权利确认、教育提质、新型经济模式构建以及强化政府治理与国家主权等议题。在此背景下，本研究旨在分析这位前总统的政治议题关注度，阐释为何部分议题相较于其他议题更受重视，以及这些议题的优先级为何随时间发生变化。本研究基于源自议程设置理论（agenda-setting theory）的概念框架，采用香农熵指数（Shannon entropy index）对政治议程的聚焦领域进行量化，并将议程的各类变化归因于偏好因素、制度因素与外部事件的共同作用。本分析基于对拉斐尔·科雷亚总统任期内10年间的政府演讲文本开展的大规模数据库分析，所有文本均按照比较议程项目（Comparative Agendas Project，CAP）的方法论进行编码。据我们所知，本研究是首个在厄瓜多尔应用比较议程项目方法论的学术成果。