Industrialization and Welfare: The Case of the Four Little Tigers

Abstract

Established theories of weyare and industrialization have been abstracted from the historical experience of the Western countries and no attempt has been made to assess their empirical validity with reference to the newly industrializing countries (NICs) of the Third World. Reviewing the industrial development and social services of Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan (the four little tigers) it is argued that social policy development in these countries cannot be attributed to the effects of the conditions of industrialization in which political elites respond proactively to the demands of industrial change. Instead, social policy in the Asian NICs is large& incremental in character and the consequence of a variety of causal events which are not accounted for b y established theories.

Productivist Welfare Capitalism: Social Policy in East Asia

“…The leading survey maintains that 'it is misleading to think in terms of one homogenous, overarching "East Asian welfare model"' (White and Goodman, 1998: 14). Other studies reach much the same conclusion (Midgley, 1986). One found enough difference in social security arrangements in Singapore and South Korea alone to 'challenge the widespread perception that social policies in the four Asian "Tigers" or "Dragons" are broadly similar' (Ramesh, 1995: 229).…”

Concern about the rise of lazy welfare queens? An empirical explanation of the underdevelopment of the redistributive welfare system in South Korea

“…Among many countries, South Korea has attracted particular attention because it has attempted significant reforms to expand its welfare state generosity after the 1997 Asian financial crisis (Lee, 2004;Ramesh, 2003). Comparative social policy analysts have long viewed the South Korean welfare system as a minimalist welfare state-otherwise known as welfare residualism (Gao, Yoo, Yang, & Zhai, 2010), reluctant welfarism (Midgley, 1986), or productivist welfare capitalism in which welfare policies are subordinate to economic growth and efficiency (Holliday, 2000;Kwon & Holliday, 2007). These studies suggest that the South Korean welfare state generosity is minimal in scope and scale.…”

Mobilising the welfare machine: Questioning the resurgent socialist concern in China’s Public Rental Housing Scheme

“…Many scholars have attempted to explain why welfare regimes in East Asian countries fall outside the three categories created by Esping‐Andersen. Responding to Midgley (, p. 225), who ascribed these ‘incremental changes’ in social policy to ‘a variety of casual events’, other scholars have introduced theories, such as Confucianism (Chan, ; Jones, ) and developmentalism (Johnson, ), to unearth structural factors. Unlike the Confucianism thesis that stresses the transfer of responsibility from the state to the family, the developmentalism thesis focuses on the authoritative state, the political stability of which depends on steady economic growth.…”