The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of recent transformations in East Asian welfare regimes, applying a ‘real-typical’ perspective, based on the ‘productivist welfare capitalism’ thesis of Ian Holliday (2000). Unlike Western welfare-state regimes in which the politics of austerity has dominated, the politics of welfare expansion has been noticeable in East Asian welfare regimes. This paper will analyse whether these changes have fundamentally dismantled the productivist feature where social policy is subordinate to economic objectives. While the trajectories are different depending on different political institutional contexts, this study shows that there are two strong signs that these states are moving out of their productivist nature and also that they are in the process of establishing their own welfare states. Japan seems to still be a productivist welfare-state regime struggling to accommodate rapid socio-economic changes, whereas Korea is a welfare state regime with strong liberal characteristics via modern welfare politics. Since the needs for social policy expansion in China correspond to economic and political needs, the productivist feature has been significantly weakened. However, this study argues that these transitory welfare regimes are in critical stages of formulating their new welfare regimes and that welfare politics based on contingent events could affect the future trajectories of these regimes.
South Korea has been experiencing unprecedented socio-economic transformations in which an ageing population is widely regarded as a key challenge. As an unlikely consensus on state intervention in care has emerged since early 2000, South Korea has achieved rapid development of welfare state programmes. The introduction of long-term care insurance (LTCI) in 2008 is one of the important steps. However, it is still highly debatable whether the Korean welfare state has departed from its path of both developmentalism and Confucianism. This paper aims to analyse the nature of LTCI in South Korea and to examine whether its introduction could mean a divergence from these two important policy legacies. This research has reached an ambiguous conclusion. The regulatory role of the government and concerns about the costs of LTCI are regarded as a developmentalist legacy, whereas Confucian legacies seem to be withering away since LTCI shifts care responsibility from the family to the state. However, the study found that the state has difficulty in regulating the market and costs, and deeply embedded familialism seems difficult to overcome.
The South Korean National Pension scheme was instituted in 1988 and now covers all private-sector employees and the self-employed. Since the financial crisis of 1997, however, it has become controversial and is under considerable pressure, not least because of the perceived financial implications of the country's rapidly ageing population. Predictions of financial shortfalls or ‘unsustainability’ have prompted calls for severe ‘downsizing’ of the scheme. The debate on the reform of the scheme has been dominated by the need to respond to demographic change in ways that assist the national economy, invariably by reducing social expenditure. The debate, however, has given little attention to the social or welfare functions of the pension scheme, though the material insecurity of older people has been exacerbated by major changes in the labour market and the family. This paper details recent socio-demographic changes in Korea and discusses their implications for old-age security and pension reform. It argues that public-pension schemes should be developed to strengthen social protection against the insecurities of old-age, that intra-generational redistribution should be at the core of the reformed arrangements, and that the introduction of a comprehensive non-contributory pension scheme should be seriously considered.
In this era of austerity, while there are significant fiscal pressures on social protection programs particularly on cash benefits, there is increasing rhetoric concerning the 'social investment turn.' Yet, some scholars question whether social investment policies are actually expanding. The evidence is not sufficiently apparent, and others question whether social protection policies have actually crowded out social investment policies. So far, few systematic studies have examined this issue. This research aims to explore the effect of traditional social protection on social investment policies in 18 OECD countries from 1980 to 2010. To investigate the predictive and causal relationships between the two types of policies, we will use the Granger panel analysis. Then, we will adopt the Beck & Katz panel model to analyze the crowding-out effect that social protection policies have on social investment. We argue that social protection has not crowded out social investment policies in general but, rather, that the positive link between them is increasingly weaker in recent years. In the end, we discuss the theoretical and policy implications of our findings.
This Special Issue takes on a new cross-regional comparison between Southern Europe and East Asia in an attempt to identify 'new politics' of welfare state adjustments. Departing from the previous literature that overemphasized regional peculiarities of East Asian and Southern European welfare states, our Special Issue highlights family resemblances-among Italy, Japan, Korea and Spain. We argue that these four welfare states-often labelled as 'familialist'-share key common characteristics, which in turn experienced very similar policy problems in recent years. Interestingly, despite their initial similarities, these four countries have been trying to cope with new policy problems in different ways. In this process, some are clearly becoming less familialist. The main aim of this introductory article is to demonstrate the theoretical advantages based on the new cross-regional comparison. This article proceeds in three steps. First, it establishes the usefulness of the concept of family resemblances in our cross-regional comparison. Second, it presents a brief historical account of recent policy differences across the four countries going beyond familialism and shows that the existing theories fail to account for the new divergences. Third, it provides the overview of the Special Issue by explaining the research puzzles each paper tackles. We argue that these four welfare states, which are moving beyond familialism to varying degrees, represent heuristically helpful cases to explore the effects of both domestic and international political factors.
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has created tremendous hazards to people worldwide. Incidence, hospitalization, and mortality rates have varied by individual and regional socioeconomic indicators. However, little is known about the indirect social and economic losses following the COVID-19 pandemic and to what extent they have disproportionately affected different groups of people. Building on the traditional conceptualizations of “old” and “new social risks,” this article tracks and analyzes the emerging “COVID social risks” in five critical areas: physical health, employment and income, skills and knowledge, care, and social relationships. The article empirically examines to what extent the manifestations of “COVID social risks” describe the makings of a new class divide in South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Finally, this article discusses whether “COVID social risks” present a temporary or lasting phenomenon and to what extent interactions with processes of digitization and de-globalization are likely to produce similar problem pressures for East Asian governments amid future crises. East Asian governments should facilitate individuals’ ability to absorb “COVID social risks” and institutionalize a new welfare policy settlement that emphasizes complementarities between the social protection, social investment, and social innovation policy paradigms.
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