Shifting dynamics of the welfare politics in Taiwan: from income maintenance to labour protection

Abstract

Welfare expansion in Taiwan during the 1990s was driven by the democratization that focused on provision of social insurance to the marginalized population groups. Since the late 1990s, however, the dynamics of welfare reform has gradually shifted to tackling new social risks emerging from economic globalization and labour market changes. This article analyzes these structural changes and the relevant institutional features of labour market policies. It shows the intensive engagement of the Taiwanese welfare state with labour protection in the domains of unemployment assistance, employment activation, and collective bargaining. Furthermore, the rise of atypical work has equally caused wide concern regarding its low wage income and insufficient social protection, triggering debates about what policy measures can effectively tackle the problem of working poor. The changing nature of welfare politics in Taiwan requires the scholarship of the East Asian welfare state to rethink, both theoretically and empirically, the adequacy of the ‘developmental’ thesis that is used to characterize social policy development in this region.