The Divergent Paths of the East Asian Welfare Regimes: The Effects of Production Regimes and Democratization

Abstract

Is there a single East Asian welfare state model? How did economic policies, globalization, democratization, and economic crisis af- fect the welfare regimes of the East Asian societies? Previous studies on welfare states focused on western advanced societies. A few studies on the East Asian welfare states focused on Japan or other East Asian countries up to late 1980s. This paper is an exploratory study to expand the welfare state debates to East Asian societies (Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Philippines) since the late 1980s to 2005. During this period, these societies experienced post-industrialization, globalization, and democratization at a different pace, to a different degree, and, possibly, on different tracks. Based on a preliminary comparative analysis, I discussed that the East Asian wel- fare regimes showed a sign of increasing divergences in multiple dimensions. I argued that, among diverse factors, economic developmental strategies and the level of democratization influenced the path of wel- fare state development in recent periods.