elements of the feminist critique of mainstream welfare regime theory is that it privileges class over other structures of inequality. The absence of other dimensions of social relations is significant in comprehending the distributive drivers of welfare states, and crucial to understanding both development and change in social policy. The work of Ginsburg (1992) and Williams (1995) addressed these gaps, but as Williams has since argued (2016), the methodological and theoretical strengths of comparative analysis in foregrounding political forces came at the cost of neglecting much of the critical social policy scholarship around gender and race that had emerged in the 1980s. Thus, notwithstanding the gender critique of welfare regime theory, Williams argues (2016, p. 632) that there has been a lack of ‘any systematic engagement with the multiple social relations of gender and race in themselves or in their relation to class’. Analyses and typologization of ‘migration regimes’ (Castles, 1995; see also Castles and Miller, 1993, 2003) have offered an alternative lens through which the social relations of race and ethnicity can be seen in the comparative operation of citizenship, while Green and Janmaat’s (2011) specification of ‘regimes of social cohesion’ explores comparatively more abstract ideas of societal diversity and commonality. Williams (2015) has elsewhere argued for the need for more ‘conceptual alliances’ in social policy study that connect the political economy both with different ‘organizational settlements’ in welfare provision, and ‘all those social, moral and cultural practices in which the social formation consolidates, fragments and reconstitutes itself – through conceptions of nationhood, citizenship, religion, moral worth, and so on’ (p. 101). This highlights the sociological thinness of regime theory, which also becomes more obvious when its geographical boundaries are stretched.
To return to the geographical concerns, as noted previously, Esping-Andersen’s original work was limited to the study of eighteen OECD countries. Arts and Gelissen’s second review of regime theory (2010) identifies the Mediterranean (or Southern Europe), East Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe as places where alternative or ‘emergent’ welfare regimes may be found. To these regions, Gough and Wood (2004) elaborate regime theory to add countries where, broadly speaking, welfare regimes are absent. This extension of regime theory beyond the original OECD worlds, and particularly to countries where political and industrial structures and policy actors are shaped very differently to advanced economies, presents some important tests for regime theory.
Attention has been drawn by those who examined the issues about gender in regime models to the extent to which there is a Roman Catholic and/or Southern European (see also Ferrara, 1996; Siaroff, 1994) approach to the design of social security – alternatively to be seen either as more ‘protective’ of women outside the labour market or as increasing their ‘dependency’ within the family. Ferrara argues that the income maintenance systems of the Southern European countries are fragmented and ineffective and often characterized by ‘clientelism’, in which political patronage is important. His view is supported by others. It is implicit in the regime categorizations developed by Bonoli (1997), Leibfried (1992) and Trifilletti (1999). Castles (2004, p. 179) adds a ‘Southern European’ category to his four-part identification of ‘families’ of nations, stressing the extent to which the states in this category are what he calls pensioners’ welfare states with high levels of state expenditure on middle-aged and older people and low levels of fertility. Hence there is a quite widely identified different ‘world’ in Mediterranean Southern Europe which includes Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal. But there may be others among the countries where social policy is more ‘emergent’: Turkey and some of the countries of the Balkan peninsula for example.
A similar theme of family ideologies is raised in the literature on the East Asian countries. Here the theoretical question is whether the highly industrialized Eastern economies (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong) can be fitted into Esping-Andersen’s typology, at least as later ‘arrivals’. There does seem to be a case for seeing the first three in that list (Singapore and Hong Kong have been more influenced by British colonial policies) as joining Esping-Andersen’s corporatist-statist conservative group. This is a view that has been given support in Ramesh’s (2004) examination of social policy in the last four of the five nations listed in this paragraph. An alternative is to see them as having features which are more specifically ‘Eastern’, which explain areas of limited development. The main argument along these lines has been the suggestion that ‘Confucian’ family ideologies lead to a greater delegation of welfare responsibilities to the family and extended family (Jones, 1993). The problems with this argument are that (a) in any underdeveloped income maintenance system the family will, faute de mieux, have to take on greater responsibilities, and (b) the use of ‘Confucian’ ideologies as a justification for inaction by the political elite cannot be regarded as evidence that political demands can be dampened down in this way, in the absence of other evidence demonstrating popular acceptance of that ideology.
Kwon (1997) seems to take a relatively agnostic stand on these issues. He does, however, point out another dimension in the policy processes in South Korea and Taiwan: the importance of state-led policies initiated in an era of authoritarian government. The groups who first secured social protection in these societies were the military and civil servants. Support for the military as a precursor to wider income protection measures is not a differentiating feature of East Asian countries, however, as Skocpol (1995) has shown this to have been an important factor in US developments. Measures to extend some insurance-based benefits to industrial workers followed next in South Korea and Taiwan, and securing the support of the emergent industrial ‘working class’ was important for the state-led growth which is regarded as so significant in these societies (Ku, 1997; Kwon, 1999). More universalistic policies only really got on to the political agenda with the emergence of democracy in these countries in the 1980s.
At the same time, Castles and Mitchell’s argument about other ways in which states may promote social welfare may also be relevant for East Asian societies. Over much of the period between the Second World War and the severe financial crisis which shook East Asia in 1997, these societies experienced substantial growth with minimal unemployment. Hence, inasmuch as governments secured social support, they did it through their success in generating rapid income growth for the majority of the people. Data showing relatively low income inequality in South Korea and Taiwan offer additional evidence in support of this proposition (Ramesh, 2004, pp. 21–2).
Holliday has developed an alternative approach to the analysis of the special characteristics of East Asian societies, describing them as belonging to a ‘regime’ type characterized by ‘productivist welfare capitalism’ (Holliday, 2000, 2005), in which the orientation towards growth has been of key importance for social policy development. This point is relevant beyond East Asia given the argument that global economic forces make it increasingly difficult to defend the ‘social democratic’ version of the ‘truce between capital and labour’, or to extend it to later developing welfare systems. In this sense there are grounds for arguing that the ‘liberal’ regimes in Esping-Andersen’s theory are also ‘productivist’. But Holliday (2005, p. 148) suggests that the state has taken a more positive role in East Asian societies: ‘In a productivist state, the perceived necessity of building a society capable of driving forward growth generates some clear tasks for social policy, led by education but also taking in other sectors.’ While Holliday is making some important links here with discussions of these societies as exemplars of state-led growth, it is worth noting that in emphasizing education policy he is citing a policy area not considered by Esping-Andersen in his formulation of regime theory (see Chapter 7 for further discussion on this point).
An important reservation about the suggestions that East Asian societies are following a trajectory not envisaged in Esping-Andersen’s theory, is that it is important in comparative studies not to lose sight of the extent to which policy learning takes place over time and between nations. The newly industrialized Asian economies have had the opportunity to observe the strengths and weaknesses of the policies adopted
