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.

Science Diplomacy in Ecuador: Political Discourse and Practices Between 2007 and 2017

“…Frequent mentions about the international engagement of Ecuador in science and technology were also consistently present (Aguirre, 2020). Excerpts of a key Participant about the inclusion of STI international engagement in public interventions of President Rafael Correa Delgado:…”

“…This research focused on the aspects related to science, technology and innovation (STI). Since Rafeal Correa's presidential campaign "knowledge revolution" fostering the international engagement of Ecuador STI was embedded in the political discourse (García, 2015;Aguirre, 2020). Emphasis was put on prospects of building a stronger domestic institutional setting and implementing learning processes from better international practices in STI.…”

Política 2.0 en Ecuador. Análisis del discurso y la comunicación política en Facebook

“…Para estudiar la agenda política planteada a través de los posts de Facebook, se utiliza una la metodología usada por el Proyecto de Agendas de Política Ecuatoriana (Aguirre, 2020), proyecto de investigación aplicado a Ecuador. Esta codificación se realiza de acuerdo con el marco de codificación de contenido de políticas creado por Spanish Policy Agendas Project (https://q-dem.com/es/), para la relación lingüística, también basado en el marco de codificación de contenido de políticas originalmente creado por Baumgartner y Jones ( 2010), (https://www.comparativeagendas.net/) para investigar la configuración de la agenda en los EE.UU.…”

Using the Comparative Agendas Project to Understand Policy Priorities in Presidential Agendas in Brazil, Ecuador and Mexico

“…Other studies include analysis of presidential speeches, such as the study by Brasil and Capella (2019); Capella and Brasil (2022) on the variations in the presidency's priorities that can result from partisan and party‐ideological changes. Aguirre (2020) sought to explain why some issues were more important than others and why they varied over time during Correa's presidency. Finally, Silva and Castro (2020) described some characteristics of Colombian politics by exploring the dynamics of presidential attention in Colombia.…”