Diverging Paths? A Comparative Look at Childcare Policies in <scp>J</scp>apan, <scp>S</scp>outh <scp>K</scp>orea and <scp>T</scp>aiwan

An, Mi Young; Peng, Ito

doi:10.1111/spol.12128

Cited by 44 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Whilst the argument of a functional "imperative" against the background of increasing female employment participation and collapsing Confucian families might be attractive, it is puzzling that we find policy developments in Taiwan lagging behind policy innovations in Japan and especially Korea (An & Peng, 2016). Since Taiwan has experienced the most dramatic decline in fertility (not only across the region but also across the developed world), one might have expected, from a purely functionalist point of view, more ambitious policies to support families.…”

Section: Post-industrialization Democratization and The Rise Of Fammentioning

confidence: 80%

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

Fleckenstein

Lee

2017

J. int. comp. soc. policy

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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.Keywords: Democratization, Post-Industrialization, Welfare Capitalism, Developmentalism, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan.East Asian welfare states have experienced comprehensive reforms in the last two decades.Following the regional "pioneer" of Japan, the neighbouring South Korea and Taiwan have introduced unemployment protection schemes, and have universalized health-care provision and old-age security. Also observed has been increased state intervention in child and longterm care in the region, including Japan. Welfare state expansion in the three countries, with the rise of social citizenship, challenges perceived wisdom in the literature. According to de-3 velopmental welfare state theory, and the related productivist welfare regime approach, social policy (driven by technocrats) is strictly subordinated to the primary policy goal of economic development, and therefore social welfare provision is confined to "productive" parts of the population (in particular, regular workers in key industries). However, recent policy expansion benefited presumably "non-productive" parts of the population as well (such as the unemployed, women, children, and the elderly), whilst the deregulation of employment protection undermined the developmentalist "welfare-through-work" system. This article reviews the literature on the establishment and reform of East Asian welfare capitalism. In so doing, we focus on the research examining the political and socio-economic drivers of the unfolding transformation of East Asian welfare capitalism; with a focus on Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. We show how democratization (that is, the end of authoritarianism in Korea and Taiwan, and the end of one-party dominance in Japan) and post-industrialization (that is, both labour market and family changes, such as the rise in female employment and the decline of traditional families) have undermined the post-war equilibrium of the East Asian welfare/production regime. Democratization has allowed the rise of political parties and societal actors in social policy-maki...

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Section: Post-industrialization Democratization and The Rise Of Fammentioning

confidence: 80%

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

Fleckenstein

Lee

2017

J. int. comp. soc. policy

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“…In this view, QCA and regression analysis could be best applied next to one another QCA has been successfully applied in gender analysis of macro phenomena, small or medium-N studies and cross-sectional analysis. Few studies have instead tried to incorporate time (An & Peng 2015;Szelewa & Polakowski 2008), or to explain the influence of sociopolitical actors on policy change (Engeli 2012), and none has used large-N or individual-level…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This method has been used in cross-national analysis of childcare policies. An and Peng (2015) and Szelewa and Polakowski (2008) refer to the concept of defamilialization in their typology, while Ciccia and Verloo (2012) (Ciccia & Bleijenbergh 2014), but this is still used to measure cross-national differences and identify particular aspects of improvement, as well as to inform policy and normative debates.…”

Section: Fuzzy Sets As a Tool For Concept Clarification And Typology mentioning

confidence: 99%

Qualitative Comparative Analysis as a Tool for Concept Clarification, Typology Building, and Contextualized Comparisons in Gender and Feminist Research

Ciccia

2016

Pol & Gen

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Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is a method for the systematic analysis of cases. A holistic view of cases and an approach to causality emphasizing complexity are some of its core features. Over the last decades, QCA has found application in many fields of the social sciences. In spite of this, its use in feminist research has been slower, and only recently QCA has been applied to topics related to social care, the political representation of women, and reproductive politics. In spite of the comparative turn in feminist studies, researchers still privilege qualitative methods, in particular case studies, and are often skeptical of quantitative techniques (Spierings 2012). These studies show that the meaning and measurement of many gender concepts differ across countries and that the factors leading to feminist success and failure are context specific. However, case study analyses struggle to systematically account for the ways in which these forces operate in different locations.

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“…In particular, varying approaches to care and migration policy reflect different cultural understandings about responsibility for care, which are embedded in historical structures and ideas about the most appropriate forms of care for young children (Williams ; Bettio and Plantenga ; Kremer ; Pfau‐Effinger ; Mahon et al . ; An and Peng ). Welfare regime theory and related care literatures provide a rich foundation for examining and comparing the restructuring of care responsibilities across countries, and over time.…”

Section: In‐home Childcare In International and Comparative Contextmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…The provision of public funding to private forms of care (especially care provided in the home), blurs the line between public and private care. As An and Peng point out, childcare can be publicly provided and financed; privately provided and financed; or privately provided and publicly financed (An and Peng ). While ‘there is confusion about how and where the boundary between care in the public sphere and care in the so‐called private sphere should be drawn’ (Land : 25), informal care can still be a positive choice for many parents (Land and Himmelweit ; Rutter and Evans ; Skinner and Finch ; Vincent and Ball ), and therefore should be given more attention in ECEC policy analysis.…”

Section: In‐home Childcare In International and Comparative Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Return of the Nanny: Public Policy towards In‐home Childcare in the UK, Canada and Australia

Adamson

Brennan

2016

Soc Policy Adm

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Research on early childhood education and care (ECEC) policy focuses overwhelmingly on formal, centre‐based provision and, to a lesser extent, on family day care (or childminding) provided in the homes of registered carers. Comparatively little research addresses the policy treatment of care provided in the child's home by nannies and au pairs. This article examines the position of in‐home childcare in Australia, the UK and Canada, and the varied nature and extent of public funding and regulation. Introducing a new dimension into comparative studies of ECEC, it also explores how shifts in migration policy in each country have intersected with ECEC funding and regulation to reshape the recruitment and employment of in‐home child carers. Australia, the UK and Canada are all liberal, market‐oriented countries, but there is considerable diversity in the way governments support and regulate in‐home childcare, their rationales for so doing, and in the connections between childcare and migration. We argue that connecting the analysis of in‐home childcare to migration policies raises new questions about the classification and comparison of ECEC policies.

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Diverging Paths? A Comparative Look at Childcare Policies in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan

Cited by 44 publications

References 27 publications

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

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

Qualitative Comparative Analysis as a Tool for Concept Clarification, Typology Building, and Contextualized Comparisons in Gender and Feminist Research

Return of the Nanny: Public Policy towards In‐home Childcare in the UK, Canada and Australia

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