ABSTRACT
The literature on welfare regimes contains a huge bulk of publications, written under EspingAndersen’s giant shadow (1990), with the intention of promoting East Asian welfare studies within a comparative social policy hitherto dominated by the experiences of Western welfare states, to see whether East Asia constitutes a particular category of regime, differing from his other categories of social democratic, conservative corporatist and liberal welfare state. Some detailed case studies opened this development. Ku (1997) located welfare in the context of Taiwanese capitalist development and shows how the capitalist world system, the state, ideology and social forces interweave together to shape the particular regime in Taiwan. Kwon (1999) interprets the institutional characteristics of Korean welfare state in terms of the politics of legitimation. Both authors have revealed particular regime characteristics differing from EspingAndersen’s typology; nevertheless they are both reluctant to conclude that their cases constitute a different regime.
