RETURNING TO THE WELFARE MODELLING BUSINESS IN EAST ASIA WITH AN EYE TO CARE

TY - CONF

T1 - RETURNING TO THE WELFARE MODELLING BUSINESS IN EAST ASIA WITH AN EYE TO CARE

AU - Abrahamson, Peter

PY - 2016

Y1 - 2016

N2 - This is a follow-up to a paper presented to the East Asian Social Policy Conference in Sheffield in 2009. I proposed, then, that there was a particular East Asian welfare regime characterized by social care to a large extent being left to civil society, hence naming the regime: the informal care regime. Furthermore, I argued that it shared basic features with Latin American welfare regimes. I also suggested that the literature which started out by labelling the regime Confucian to a high degree had left that perspective behind due to severe criticism. But most of all, I pointed to the fact that East Asian welfare regime was a moving target due to the rapid development in the region. Returning to the debate seven years later, and this time including Mainland China, I pose the following questions discussing East Asian welfare regimes in plural: are they productivist and developmental? are they Confucian? Are they small spenders? Have they developed public care policies? I discovered that the proposition that the regimes in the region are Confucian has resurfaced strongly, which I to a large extent attribute particularly to the situation in China due to its active promotion by the CCP and generally to the strengthening of feminist scholarship. Care services both for children in the form of childcare and leave schemes, and for the elderly in the form of Long-term Care Insurance and institutional care have to a large, but insufficient extent, been rolled out in the region. Yet, social spending conventionally measured as share of GDP remains small. All things considered the jury is still out regarding whether East Asian welfare regimes are (still) productivist and developmental. Political science studies tend to conclude that the region has left the old legacies behind and are now welfare states comparable to European states including them either in the conservative type (e.g. Japan), the liberal type (e.g. Korea) or even as a tendency in the Nordic type (e.g. China), while studies focusing on outcomes or causal links tend to suggest that legacies prevail, but there is (nearly) consensus that Confucianism exercises great influence in the whole region.

AB - This is a follow-up to a paper presented to the East Asian Social Policy Conference in Sheffield in 2009. I proposed, then, that there was a particular East Asian welfare regime characterized by social care to a large extent being left to civil society, hence naming the regime: the informal care regime. Furthermore, I argued that it shared basic features with Latin American welfare regimes. I also suggested that the literature which started out by labelling the regime Confucian to a high degree had left that perspective behind due to severe criticism. But most of all, I pointed to the fact that East Asian welfare regime was a moving target due to the rapid development in the region. Returning to the debate seven years later, and this time including Mainland China, I pose the following questions discussing East Asian welfare regimes in plural: are they productivist and developmental? are they Confucian? Are they small spenders? Have they developed public care policies? I discovered that the proposition that the regimes in the region are Confucian has resurfaced strongly, which I to a large extent attribute particularly to the situation in China due to its active promotion by the CCP and generally to the strengthening of feminist scholarship. Care services both for children in the form of childcare and leave schemes, and for the elderly in the form of Long-term Care Insurance and institutional care have to a large, but insufficient extent, been rolled out in the region. Yet, social spending conventionally measured as share of GDP remains small. All things considered the jury is still out regarding whether East Asian welfare regimes are (still) productivist and developmental. Political science studies tend to conclude that the region has left the old legacies behind and are now welfare states comparable to European states including them either in the conservative type (e.g. Japan), the liberal type (e.g. Korea) or even as a tendency in the Nordic type (e.g. China), while studies focusing on outcomes or causal links tend to suggest that legacies prevail, but there is (nearly) consensus that Confucianism exercises great influence in the whole region.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - East Asian welfare regime, social policy, child and elderly care, parental leave, family policy

M3 - Paper

T2 - Paper prepared for presentation to the 12th ALIN [Asia Legal Information Network] Expert Forum on Social Welfare Laws and Economic Growth in Asian Countries on Thursday, April 28th, 2016, Hotel President, Seoul, organized by the Korea Legislation Research Institute, Sejong City, Republic of Korea.

Y2 - 28 April 2016 through 28 April 2016

ER -