Wong Healthy Democracies

Welfare Politics in Taiwan and South Korea
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5017-1148-0
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 222 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Do the pressures of economic globalization undermine the welfare state? Contrary to the expectations of many analysts, Taiwan and South Korea have embarked on a new trajectory, toward a strengthened welfare state and universal inclusion. In Healthy Democracies, Joseph Wong offers a political explanation for health care reform in these two countries. He focuses specifically on the ways in which democratic change in Taiwan and South Korea altered the incentives and ultimately the decisions of policymakers and social policy activists in contemporary health care debates.Wong uses extensive field research and interviews to explore both similarities and subtle differences in the processes of political change and health care reform in Taiwan and South Korea. During the period of authoritarian rule, he argues, state leaders in both places could politically afford to pursue selective social policies—reform was piecemeal and health care policy outcomes far from universal. Wong finds that the introduction of democratic reform changed the political logic of social policy reform: vote-seeking politicians needed to promote popular policies, and health care reform advocates, from bureaucrats to grassroots activists, adapted to this new political context. In Wong's view, the politics of democratic transition in Taiwan and South Korea has served as an effective antidote to the presumed economic imperatives of social welfare retrenchment during the process of globalization.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wong, Joseph

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Arbeit/Sozialpädagogik Soziale Dienste, Soziale Organisationen
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Sozialpolitik

Über Autor(innen)

WongJoseph:
Joseph Wong is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Political Science and Director of the Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Betting on Biotech: Innovation and the Limits of Asia's Developmental State and Healthy Democracies: Welfare Politics in Taiwan and South Korea, both from Cornell, and coeditor of Political Transitions in Dominant Party Systems: Learning to Lose.