Do the pressures of economic globalization undermine the welfare state? Contrary to the expectations of many analysts, Taiwan and South Korea have embarked on a new trajectory, toward a strengthened welfare state and universal inclusion. In Healthy Democracies, Joseph Wong offers a political explanation for health care reform in these two countries. He focuses specifically on the ways in which democratic change in Taiwan and South Korea altered the incentives and ultimately the decisions of policymakers and social policy activists in contemporary health care debates.

Wong uses extensive field research and interviews to explore both similarities and subtle differences in the processes of political change and health care reform in Taiwan and South Korea. During the period of authoritarian rule, he argues, state leaders in both places could politically afford to pursue selective social policies?reform was piecemeal and health care policy outcomes far from universal. Wong finds that the introduction of democratic reform changed the political logic of social policy reform: vote-seeking politicians needed to promote popular policies, and health care reform advocates, from bureaucrats to grassroots activists, adapted to this new political context. In Wong's view, the politics of democratic transition in Taiwan and South Korea has served as an effective antidote to the presumed economic imperatives of social welfare retrenchment during the process of globalization.

Joseph Wong is Ralph and Roz Halbert Professor of Innovation at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Canada Research Chair in Democratization, Health, and Development in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto.

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Wong offers new perspectives and a well-crafted analysis of welfare politics in Taiwan and Korea and has built a solid foundation for further comparative study with other regions. His book is a must-read for scholars of East Asian political economics.

Political Science Quarterly

Joseph Wong shows how a state-centric approach for the analysis of the emerging welfare states in Taiwan and South Korea is not sufficient in account for how new political and policy goals were generated in the larger context of democratic change.... Healthy Democracies is a most valuable contribution to the growing literature on welfare-state development in general, and on East Asian developments in particular.

Democratization

Healthy Democracies brings a detailed and timely argument to bear against several key orthodoxies of globalization, while at the same time avoiding cultural or social-structural assumptions that serve to occlude rather than explain the complexities and variations of regional development.

Contemporary Sociology

This is an excellent and well-written book. For years to come it is likely to be a standard reference point in debates not only about East Asian welfare capitalism but also about welfare developments in advanced societies throughout the globe.

Political Studies Review