Development and Democratization Perspectives in Transition of Social Welfare Policy

Abstract

Some East Asian Industrialized Countries have had achieved high economic performance while maintaining authoritarian regime. In such countries, social welfare policies have been targeted to a few social groups which contributed to economic development. However, in the 1980 s, need-oriented social welfare policies began to be implemented in Taiwan and Korea because of the democratization in both countries. This trends show that democratic policy making process is indispensable to economic development compatible with universal delivery of social services. Therefore, we can see characteristics of social welfare from development-oriented/need-oriented perspective based on policy values and authoritarianism/democracy perspective based on political regimes in East Asian Industrialized Countries. I studied transition model of social welfare policy in East Asian Industrialized Countries from these two perspectives in this article.