On the Road to a Taiwanese Welfare State: Political Parties Capitalizing on the Issue of Social Welfare

This study focuses on one important driving force behind the development of a Taiwanese welfare state, i.e. party competition. The study takes the example of the issue of social welfare for the elderly in the 1997 and 1998 local and national elections. After discussing the major schools of thought in welfare state theory the author demonstrates the role of the issue of social welfare in electoral politics by taking the case studies of the 1997 county commissioner and city mayor elections, the 1998 Taipei and Kaohsiung city mayor elections, and the 1998 parliamentary elections. He argues that not the urgent need of social welfare but the need of politicians to capitalize on welfare issues in times of high electoral competition represents the real cause responsible for the gradual extension of social welfare systems. In conclusion, he rejects the validity of functionalist theories which argue that social problems per se lead to improvements in social politics, and proves the validity of policy-centered theories in explaining the formation, extension, retrenchment, and consolidation of welfare states.