Democratization, Political Parties and Korean Welfare Politics: Korean Family Policy Reforms in Comparative Perspective

Lee, Soohyun Christine

doi:10.1017/gov.2016.44

Cited by 13 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Bae () argues that Japan's lack of both a strong executive and regime change explains why the emerging norm of abolishing the death penalty took hold in Korea but not in Japan. However, the DPJ's Upper House victory in 2007 initiated in Japan a rare period of real party competition, which is usually fiercer in Korea and makes governments more responsive (Lee ). Administrative reforms in 2001 had also bolstered Japan's historically weak premier, granting him the authority to establish policy coordination teams in the Cabinet Office (Shinoda ).…”

Section: A Paired Comparisonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cause Lawyering and Movement Tactics: Disability Rights Movements in South Korea and Japan

Arrington

Moon

2020

Law & Policy

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We investigate cause lawyers’ roles in movements for the domestic adoption of international human rights norms. Social movements scholarship often assumes that lawyers will divert activism toward institutional tactics, while the sociolegal studies literature emphasizes that lawyers are active in diverse ways across venues. A paired comparison of antidiscrimination movements in South Korea and Japan reveals how critical junctures in regime history shape the tactical repertoires that cause lawyers bring to their interactions with movement actors, and thus also movement tactics. This research advances scholarship on professionals in social movements, cause lawyers as norm entrepreneurs, and legal mobilization in East Asia.

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Section: A Paired Comparisonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cause Lawyering and Movement Tactics: Disability Rights Movements in South Korea and Japan

Arrington

Moon

2020

Law & Policy

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“…Conservative gender roles and the gendered division of paid and unpaid work went hand in hand with the developmental welfare strategy of the East Asian states. In order to maximise investment in economic development, it was critical for women to perform the role of unpaid caregivers (Lee, 2018). Accordingly, public policies promoting work/family reconciliation were rudimentary at best in the region (Sung & Pascall, 2014).…”

Section: The Politics Of Investing In Familiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For the first time, childcare support was made available for middle-income families, in addition to ambitious pledges to increase public provision of childcare. Parental leave became much more generous in terms of both benefit level and duration, although the benefit level remained modest by international standards (An & Peng, 2016;Lee, 2018).…”

Section: The Politics Of Investing In Familiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The flat-rate leave benefit turned into an earnings-related one with an income replacement rate of 40%, effectively doubling the maximum amount of benefit. In addition to progressive employment-oriented family policy measures, by which the conservatives demonstrated sustained effort to modernise the party and increase electoral appeal among young voters, they also introduced a home-care allowance, a general family support policy, to maintain appeal to their traditional support base (Lee, 2018). As the two main parties began to compete over young voters on family policy, and successfully presented family policy as pro-natal policies to address the lowfertility 'crisis', family policy received broad political support.…”

Section: The Politics Of Investing In Familiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Roads and Barriers towards Social Investments: Comparing Labour Market and Family Policy Reforms in Europe and East Asia

Fleckenstein

Lee

2019

Policy and Society

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Across the OECD world, social investment policies are on the rise, which Hemerijck describes as a 'quiet paradigm revolution'. Whilst Nordic countries are typically considered the pioneers in social investment policies, we observe that latecomer countries of not only Europe but also East Asia have made considerable efforts to catch-up with Northern European frontrunners. The rise of social investment policies, especially the expansion of family policy presents an important dimension of the recent transformation of advanced welfare capitalism, which despite the prominence of retrenchment cannot be reduced to welfare state regress. However, we observe great cross-national variation in the speed and scope of family policy expansion. Unlike family policy, labour market policy did not experience a similar social investment turn, but is instead rather characterised by retrenchment with declining efforts to improve the employability of the unemployed and labour market outsiders. In this article, we examine the 'uneven' social investment turn in advanced welfare capitalism and argue that family and labour market policies, and their very different outcomes, are underpinned by very different political dynamics, rather than by 'a politics of social investment'. Not only comparing family and labour market policy but also comparing across countries within each policy domain, we analyse the roads and barriers towards greater social investments.

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“…At one end of the spectrum, we find the Korean Saenuri Party, which moved considerably away from its previous position in order to gain an electoral advantage. The policy U-turn of the conservatives triggered the left party to promise even more generous and universalist family policy expansion in order to outbid its conservative competitor (S. C. Lee, 2017). As its Korean counterpart, the Japanese LDP underwent a modernization and expansion of its family policy platform after losing its dominance in the legislature (Boling, 2015;Estévez-Abe & Kim, 2014).…”

Section: Post-industrialization Democratization and The Rise Of Fammentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Fleckenstein

Lee

2017

J. int. comp. soc. policy

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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: Democratization, Post-Industrialization, Welfare Capitalism, Developmentalism, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan.East Asian welfare states have experienced comprehensive reforms in the last two decades.Following the regional "pioneer" of Japan, the neighbouring South Korea and Taiwan have introduced unemployment protection schemes, and have universalized health-care provision and old-age security. Also observed has been increased state intervention in child and longterm care in the region, including Japan. Welfare state expansion in the three countries, with the rise of social citizenship, challenges perceived wisdom in the literature. According to de-3 velopmental welfare state theory, and the related productivist welfare regime approach, social policy (driven by technocrats) is strictly subordinated to the primary policy goal of economic development, and therefore social welfare provision is confined to "productive" parts of the population (in particular, regular workers in key industries). However, recent policy expansion benefited presumably "non-productive" parts of the population as well (such as the unemployed, women, children, and the elderly), whilst the deregulation of employment protection undermined the developmentalist "welfare-through-work" system. This article reviews the literature on the establishment and reform of East Asian welfare capitalism. In so doing, we focus on the research examining the political and socio-economic drivers of the unfolding transformation of East Asian welfare capitalism; with a focus on Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. We show how democratization (that is, the end of authoritarianism in Korea and Taiwan, and the end of one-party dominance in Japan) and post-industrialization (that is, both labour market and family changes, such as the rise in female employment and the decline of traditional families) have undermined the post-war equilibrium of the East Asian welfare/production regime. Democratization has allowed the rise of political parties and societal actors in social policy-maki...

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Democratization, Political Parties and Korean Welfare Politics: Korean Family Policy Reforms in Comparative Perspective

Cited by 13 publications

References 43 publications

Cause Lawyering and Movement Tactics: Disability Rights Movements in South Korea and Japan

Cause Lawyering and Movement Tactics: Disability Rights Movements in South Korea and Japan

Roads and Barriers towards Social Investments: Comparing Labour Market and Family Policy Reforms in Europe and East Asia

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

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