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Democratization, post-industrialization, and East Asian welfare capitalism: the politics of welfare state reform in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan

Fleckenstein, Timo ORCID: 0000-0002-0154-7644 and Lee, Soohyun Christine (2017) Democratization, post-industrialization, and East Asian welfare capitalism: the politics of welfare state reform in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy, 33 (1). pp. 36-54. ISSN 2169-9763

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Identification Number: 10.1080/21699763.2017.1288158

Abstract

This review article provides an overview of the scholarship on the establishment and reform of East Asian welfare capitalism. The developmental welfare state theory and the related productivist welfare regime approach have dominated the study of welfare states in the region. This essay, however, shows that a growing body of research challenges the dominant literature. We identify two key driving factors of welfare reform in East Asia, namely democratization and post-industrialization; and discuss how these two drivers have undermined the political and functional underpinnings of the post-war equilibrium of the East Asian welfare/production regime. Its unfolding transformation and the new politics of social policy in the region challenge the notion of “East Asian exceptionalism”, and we suggest that recent welfare reforms call for a better integration of the region into the literature of advanced political economies to allow for cross-fertilization between Eastern and Western literatures.

Item Type: Article
Official URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjcs21/current
Additional Information: © 2017 Informa UK Limited
Divisions: Social Policy
Subjects: D History General and Old World > DS Asia
H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions
H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology
Date Deposited: 27 Feb 2017 17:20
Last Modified: 26 Feb 2024 21:09
URI: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/69574

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