Small Welfare State

Edited by Jae-jin Yang, Department of Public Administration, College of Social Sciences, Yonsei University, South Korea

'The Small Welfare State makes a big contribution. With brilliant chapters from leading scholars in the field, it uncovers a distinctive model of social provision that links together an unusual set of countries. It is especially relevant today as welfare states come under strain in a transformed economic world. Highly recommended.'--Jacob S. Hacker, Yale University, US, Author of The Great Risk Shift and The Divided Welfare State'Since its origin, the discipline of Welfare Studies has been dominated by Eurocentrism. Recent research on Asian welfare systems have shown that concepts and models developed in the European context are not always valid in other contexts. In The Small Welfare State, Jae-jin Yang and his colleagues convincingly show that a change of perspective is required. This is not only a matter of geography or size of the welfare state. The issue at stake is to identify different mechanisms and logic. This book is a must-read for anybody interested in the origin, development and future of welfare systems in the world.'--Sebastien Lechevalier, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, France

• Contents:Preface 1 Introduction: towards a political economy of the smallwelfare state 1Jae-jin Yang2 Narrowly organized labor and the failure ofsolidarity-enhancing welfare in the United States andSouth Korea 30Dennie Oude Nijhuis and Jae-jin Yang3 The business offensive and the limits of employer-providedwelfare in the United States 53Jennifer Klein4 Civic movements and the detour to welfare state buildingin South Korea 78Yeong-Soon Kim5 The effect of electoral rules on the policy preferences andbehavior of politicians in South Korea 99Jae-jin Yang and Yui-Ryong Jung6 The electoral bases of small tax states in Japan, SouthKorea, and the US 114Margarita Estévez-Abe, Jae-jin Yang, and ChristopherFaricy7 Why welfare state building is of secondary importance toleftists in Japan and South Korea 140Soon-Mee Kwon8 The development of functional equivalents to the welfarestate in post-war Japan and South Korea 163Dokyun Kim9 Weak social security but strong employment security inthe Japanese welfare state 190Sung-won Kim10 Path dependence and possibilism: the American, Korean,and Japanese welfare states in comparative perspective 211Stephan HaggardIndex 229