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

Is there a single East Asian welfare state model? How did economic policies, globalization, democratization, and economic crisis affect the welfare regimes of the East Asian societies? Such factors have been examined within the context of western advanced societies. Also, the studies on the East Asian cases tend to remain in the 20th century. This paper sought to expand the welfare state debates using a comparative dataset of the representative 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 with different degree, pace, and tracks. Unlike the western societies, they experienced such changes in a short time-span. Thus, the eight East Asian societies present unique opportunities to examine the recent debates on welfare state programs not only for the region, but welfare regimes in general. With a comparative analysis of the trends of various factors, the paper concluded that the East Asian welfare regimes diverged into two types. Also, it argued that such divergence can be explained by the institutional legacy based on the developmental state programs (or, production regimes) and the degree of democratization. Also, economic globalization and economic crisis in late 1990s did not directly affect long-term trends of social welfare. They influenced the current welfare regimes only in conjunction with the level of democratization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]