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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2020

Timo Fleckenstein  and
Soohyun Christine Lee
Timo Fleckenstein
Affiliation:
Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics, London, England
Soohyun Christine Lee*
Affiliation:
School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds, England
*
*Corresponding author. Email: S.C.Lee@leeds.ac.uk
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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.

Keywords

democratizationpost-industrializationwelfare capitalismdevelopmentalismJapanSouth KoreaTaiwan
Type
Review Article
Information
Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , February 2017 , pp. 36 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

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