Aspalter asserts that the belief that the development of high standard welfare states is primarily based on the ideology that pro-welfare, mostly leftwing, parties dominate welfare state literature and common thought in the Western world. Instead, in this examination of the welfare states of East Asia, Aspalter and his contributors show that they grew as naturally as they did in most Western countries, but that the reasons for this are other than pro-welfare ideologies. The five welfare states—Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore—are residual welfare states with low levels of welfare benefits and provision when compared to extended welfare states in Western Europe. While East Asian welfare states have experienced a hefty increase in welfare provision that has been regulated or provided by the state since the early 1970s, all five were set up and expanded by conservative governments with clear anti-welfare ideologies. The case studies provided by Aspalter and his contributors suggest that welfare state development in East Asia is caused to a large extent by social protests in general, and, for welfare in particular, by competition in democratic elections, and by the changing role of women. Social and demographic factors, such as the rise of the age structure of the population, do not cause welfare state expansion in the first place. They cause street protests, and street protests convince all kinds of governments—if they rule out the use of force—to implement social welfare. Moreover, politicians, who are afraid to lose elections, also take up welfare issues, which they would not do without electoral competition between candidates and parties. As Aspalter makes clear, governments do not have to wait until major protests occur or until they have lost an election in order to promote social welfare. The anticipation of such an event is sufficient. This book provides new insights on the development of welfare systems that will be of particular interest to scholars, students, and other researchers involved with social welfare, East Asian studies, and comparative politics.

This book identifies the main causes of welfare state system extension, as well as the differences in welfare state system design and their consequences for human behavior and the future financial stability of the systems in place in different parts of Asia. Providing ten in-depth country case studies from across the region, including India, Thailand, China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and South Korea, as well as Russia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the book focuses on the situation of welfare state system development and its financing in some of the largest countries on earth. It addresses previously neglected areas for investigation, such as the causal reasons for welfare state system extension (not only in Asia, but in general), the types of social security systems and their incentive systems in place and the way they chiefly determine behavior—and thus determine the resulting social security needs. This book will be of interest to all scholars and students of social policy, public policy, political science, sociology, finance and economics, development studies and Asian studies more broadly.

This book examines the quality of democracies in Asia and determines why current democracies—especially during the so-called “new normal” era following the 2008 financial crisis—have become less stable and less resilient to increasing authoritarianism. Based on the assumption that the concept of democracy consists of three elements—procedure (participation, competition, and distribution of power); effectiveness (representation, accountability, and responsiveness); and performance (social welfare, inequality, and trust)—the contributors to this book determine which elements are responsible for diverging trajectories within the Asian democratic recession. Examining South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Myanmar, and China, the authors employ different research methods—quantitative, comparative, or individual case studies—to explore the conditions under which democratic rules and norms erode over time, and which type of governance is preferred by citizens in this region as an ideal type. The book puts forward the argument that a procedure-oriented concept of democracy is not sufficient for understanding the source of democratic recession and develops a new concept of “new democracy” based on procedure, effectiveness, and performance. It also demonstrates to what extent the experience changes and how the countries respond to these changes. A novel contribution on the state of democracy in Asia written by experts from the region, this book will be of interest to academics in the field of political science, especially comparative politics and international relations, regional study of East and Southeast Asia, sociology, public policy, economics, and social science methods. Also, this book will appeal to think tanks and policy-oriented researchers.

This text puts the spotlight on the Chinese and Sout-East Asian welfare systems, providing and up-to-date assessment of their character and development. In particular it examines the underlying assumptions of these systems and how the processes of globalisation are impacting on them.

Owing to rapid economic development and the onset of population ageing, social work has become a major means of delivering social services and relieving and preventing social problems at an individual, family, and community level in East Asia. In addition to this, the number of activities undertaken by social welfare NGOs has risen a great deal throughout East Asia, resulting in a greater demand for professional social workers. With governments across the region having discovered the beneficial effects of professional social work for both social integration and social harmony, there is now greater support for the development of this academic discipline and profession. This groundbreaking volume explores the current state of development of social work provision across the region. It is the first book of its kind to investigate current and future trends, as well as the challenges and pitfalls of social work - one of the fastest-growing professions in East Asia.

Social Policy has been a key dimension of dynamic economic growth in East Asia's 'little tigers' and is also a prominent strand of their responses to the financial crisis of the late 1990s. This systematic comparative analysis of social policy in the region focuses on the key sectors of education, health, housing and social security. It sets these sectoral analyses in wider contexts of debates about developmental states, the East Asian welfare model and globalization.

Developing countries may not have full-fledged welfare states like those we find in Europe, but certainly they have welfare state systems. For comparative social policy research the term "welfare state systems" has many advantages, as there are numerous different types/models of welfare state systems around the world. This path-breaking book, edited by Christian Aspalter, brings together leading experts to discuss social policy in 25 countries/regions around the world. From the most advanced welfare state systems in Scandinavia and Western Central Europe to the developing powers of Brazil, China, India, Russia, Mexico and Indonesia, each country-specific chapter provides a historical overview, discusses major characteristics of the welfare state system, analyzes country-specific problems, as well as critical current and future trends for further discussions, while also providing one additional major focal point/issue for greater in-depth analysis. This book breaks new ground in ideal-typical welfare regime theory, identifying now in total 10 worlds of welfare capitalism. It provides broad perspectives on critical challenges which welfare state systems in the developing and developed world alike must address now and in the future. It will be of great interest to all scholars and students of social policy, social development, development and health economists, public policy, health policy, sociology, social work and social policy makers and administrators. This book is a reference book for researchers and social policy administrators; it can also serve as a textbook for courses on comparative social policy, international social policy and international social development.

In recent years, government and policymakers around the world have shifted their attention away from money-oriented, supply-side economics to institutional economics and people-oriented social and economic development. Issues such as poverty reduction, win-win solutions and strategies in social policy and their implementation, universalization, and a variety of new large-scale conditional cash transfers programs have become ever-present in the global discussion about development and social policy. This book provides win-win strategies for social policies on the ground, as developed and put forward by the normative theoretical paradigm of Developmental Social Policy (DSP). Taking the state-of-the-art general development theory as a starting point of reference and discussion, it goes on to discuss in detail the key win-win strategies that form the basis and core of the DSP paradigm. It examines key related issues such as the performance of provident fund systems, the performance of conditional cash transfer systems (especially their elements that are based on asset- and means-testing), universalism and extension in social security provision in the context of especially developing countries, and "non-economically targeted" social welfare benefits and services. Providing fully-fledged theoretical guidance paired with key social policy strategies and solutions, it will be highly valuable for students and scholars of social policy, development studies, and Asia Pacific studies.

This is the first book to compare the distinctive welfare states of Latin America, East Asia, and Eastern Europe. Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman trace the historical origins of social policy in these regions to crucial political changes in the mid-twentieth century, and show how the legacies of these early choices are influencing welfare reform following democratization and globalization. After World War II, communist regimes in Eastern Europe adopted wide-ranging socialist entitlements while conservative dictatorships in East Asia sharply limited social security but invested in education. In Latin America, where welfare systems were instituted earlier, unequal social-security systems favored formal sector workers and the middle class. Haggard and Kaufman compare the different welfare paths of the countries in these regions following democratization and the move toward more open economies. Although these transformations generated pressure to reform existing welfare systems, economic performance and welfare legacies exerted a more profound influence. The authors show how exclusionary welfare systems and economic crisis in Latin America created incentives to adopt liberal social-policy reforms, while social entitlements from the communist era limited the scope of liberal reforms in the new democracies of Eastern Europe. In East Asia, high growth and permissive fiscal conditions provided opportunities to broaden social entitlements in the new democracies. This book highlights the importance of placing the contemporary effects of democratization and globalization into a broader historical context.

In this singular collection, indigenous experts describe the social welfare systems of fifteen East Asian and Pacific Island nations and locales. Vastly understudied, these lands offer key insight into the successes and failures of Western and native approaches to social work, suggesting new directions for practice and research in both local and global contexts. Combining international experiences and professional knowledge, contributors illuminate the role of history and culture in shaping the social welfare systems of Cambodia, China, Hong Kong (SAR, China), Indonesia, Malaysia, the Micronesian region (including the Federated States of Micronesia, Guam [Unincorporated Territory, U.S.A.], Marshall Islands, Northern Mariana Islands [Commonwealth, U.S.A.], and Palau), Samoa and American Samoa (Unincorporated Territory, U.S.A.), South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. The contributors link the values and issues that concern populaces most to the development of social work practice, policy, and research. Sharlene B. C. L. Furuto then conducts a comparative analysis of the essays including their data and social service programs, highlighting the similarities and differences between the evolution of social welfare in these nations and locales. She contrasts their indigenous approaches, the responses of governments and NGOs to social issues, the availability of social work education, as well as API models, paradigms, and templates, and the overall status of the social work profession. Furuto also adds a chapter comparing the distinct social welfare systems of Samoa and American Samoa. The only volume to focus exclusively on social welfare in East Asia and the Pacific, this anthology holds immense value for practitioners and researchers eager for global perspectives.