Changing Welfare Regimes in East and Southeast Asia: Crisis, Change and Challenge

The Asia‐Pacific region is a latecomer to the development of the welfare state. However, in some countries, governments have implemented ambitious programmes to extend social security systems and to enlarge the institutional structure of their welfare states. Comparative study of the welfare systems in East and Southeast Asia is, however, underdeveloped and there still is a relative lack of accurate knowledge about welfare systems in the region. Since the Asian financial crisis, more attention has been paid to the social policies of the countries. This paper examines features of welfare regimes in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand, and undertakes a systematic review of the development, levels and patterns of welfare regimes in the region. Two core questions are answered: can the existing welfare systems help mitigate the social impact of the financial and economic crisis? What are the needs, challenges and developmental perspectives that inform the future of welfare regimes in this region?     

阳光下的阴影:现代旅游的一种价值隐喻——东南亚旅游发展的思考与案例

作为世界上最大的产业,现代旅游在世界政治经济、区域战略和社会方式等方面起到了越来越重要的作用。本文从当代世界旅游的发展情况,旅游在政治经济舞台上所所扮演的角色,旅游的可持续性发展以及在旅游东南亚国家所产生的作用和变化等方面进行阐释和分析;以旅游在东盟国家的一些情况描述和案例分析,以强调现代旅游给这一地区所带来的机遇及挑战。     

“9·11”以来南海通道的安全形势及其影响

"9·11"以来南海通道的安全形势不容乐观,海上袭击比以往更有组织性和协调性,东南亚水域的海盗、有组织犯罪和潜在的海上恐怖主义三股势力存在着合流的可能,南海周边地区存在的武装分离主义运动与恐怖组织的联系越来越密切。美、日、印等区外大国纷纷藉此插足南海,东南亚国家在南海及其周边水域的海上安全合作方面对中国存在着矛盾的心理。     

一个“中等强国”的战略空间拓展——“印-太战略弧”视阈下的澳大利亚安全重构

澳大利亚在安全领域提出的"印-太战略弧"一词是对美国"重返亚太"战略的呼应,透露出澳大利亚未来安全战略的视野指向。澳大利亚在参与"印-太战略弧"地区的国际博弈中,面临着在中美之间、既有强国与新兴大国之间、太平洋次区域组织与泛太平洋组织之间的"选边困境",其战略空间也受到来自这三方面的共同挤压。澳大利亚未来安全战略空间的拓展总体表现出"三向性"特征,努力寻求安全战略转型中的战略增长点,为中国把握太平洋安全形势的发展方向、投放力量和谋篇布局提供了有益启示。     

Designing a social security pension system

Abstract   This paper looks at potential models of social security pension systems. It refers often to the systems that exist in the United States and Canada (the latter more particularly) to outline the issues involved in attempting to design a "good" social security pension system. Of course, one of the issues is the definition of "good". This paper will use criteria such as poverty alleviation, retirement income adequacy, benefit/contribution sustainability, income equality and wealth distribution. In the course of the discussion, the reader will be exposed to many issues that need to be addressed in the establishment of any social security pension system in the world. This may prove to be helpful in countries where new systems are established (and even for evolving systems). It is also hoped that future students of social security will find this paper helpful in that it is meant to lay out some basic principles consistent with good social security pension design.     

Social Security in Australia and New Zealand: Means-tested or Just Mean?

The social security systems of Australia and New Zealand have traditionally rejected social insurance in favour of a means-tested categorical safety net approach that provides considerable scope for targeting. The experience of both countries provides many examples of how targeting can be used to constrain social security spending, and these have attracted interest in other countries keen to contain the growth in their social security budgets. However, although there are many similarities between the two systems, there are also many differences and these have become greater as targeting has gathered momentum over the last two decades. This paper analyses how targeting has been used in each country as a way of illustrating the different approaches adopted. Attention is focused on how the retirement income systems of the two countries illustrate an increasing policy divergence, with the planned Australian transition to a "multi-pillar" approach in contrast to the constant (and continuing) reform of New Zealand superannuation. Household data on the pattern of receipt of transfer incomes and their impact on the distribution of income are then used to explore the impact of targeting since the early 1980s. This analysis suggests that, in practice, targeting has had a far smaller impact on income inequality in both countries than is often claimed.     

The use of replacement rates in international comparisons of benefit systems

Comparative studies of social security systems have increasingly turned towards the use of replacement rates as measures of the level of benefits in different countries and therefore of the degree of social protection afforded by different welfare systems. The rationale for this is that replacement rates provide consistent measures of the relative generosity of payments and therefore indicate the "quality" of social security systems. This article reviews the use of replacement rates in comparisons of the generosity of retirement pensions and argues that they are not necessarily reliable as such measures. This reflects a number of factors, including incomplete measurement of benefit packages and differences in what must be bought out of disposable incomes. Most importantly, the article suggests that the levels of earnings in different countries are not independent of the processes of redistribution. In particular, countries which rely on social security contributions from employers appear to provide more generous benefits than those which rely on income taxes or employee contributions. This is a consequence of the fact that employer contributions do not figure specifically in the calculation of replacement rates. The relative generosity of benefit systems is overstated in countries which rely on employer social security contributions to fund benefits. The article concludes that a range of complementary indicators of social security systems should be used in future analysis of these issues.     

Race as social science hegemony: a note on Southeast Asian populations

Emergence of Southeast Asian populations in Western societies corresponds to hegemony. As per hegemony, race is assumed the universal, governing category of human populations. It is on the basis of this hegemonic conceptual view that the construct of race is challenged by the emergence of alternative human population phenomena. For social scientists who will engage in research specific to Southeast Asian populations, race must be reduced in proportion to its significance in their lives. The utilization of non-racial constructs includes the need to acknowledge culture. The outcome will contribute to the evolution of social science despite the prevalence of race constructs as hegemony vis-à-vis Southeast Asian populations.     

Gender and Social Security Reform in Africa

As a result of pressures from structural adjustment policies, persistent poverty and slow economic growth in most African countries, there is widespread reform of formal social security systems in the region. The designs for reform have ignored gender concerns and non-formal social security systems, yet it is widely known that women and men have different experiences in the labour market and that non-formal systems are currently the main source of social security for most women and men, especially in rural communities. The paper points out the efficiency and equity costs of ignoring gender and non-formal social security systems and proposes action for policymakers.     

Categorical Benefits in Welfare States: Findings from Great Britain and Israel

This paper examines the role of categorical benefits; i.e. non-means-tested and non-contributory cash benefits, in Great Britain and Israel. After introducing a more rigorous definition of the term and differentiating between various types of categorical benefits, it looks at the role and recent development of these benefits in the two countries. It finds that they play a growing and significant role in the social security systems of Great Britain and Israel. An examination of the decision-making process surrounding the adoption of these benefit programmes indicates why this is so. On the basis of these findings, initial conclusions relating to changes in the nature of social security are presented.     

Reforming formal social security systems in India and Sri Lanka

This paper analyses the formal social security systems of India and Sri Lanka. While many of the social, demographic, and economic indicators differ markedly between the countries, the structure of the social security systems, challenges, and reform directions are quite similar. Thus, the provident fund organizations in both countries need to modernize and benchmark their governance, operations, and investment policies. The dualism in their systems, which has resulted in relatively generous non–contributory pensions being provided to civil servants, also needs to be addressed. This dualism and the fiscal unsustainability of current civil service pension arrangements lend urgency to reforms in this area in the two countries. The prospects for voluntary tax–advantaged private sector schemes are encouraging, particularly in India. The conditions for reforms are more favourable now owing to hopeful signs of an end to longstanding conflict in Sri Lanka, and decade–long experience with financial sector reforms in India.     

试析战后东南亚华侨社会变迁中的冷战因素

20世纪40年代末,随着中国革命走向胜利,冷战迅速向东南亚地区蔓延。遍布于东南亚的华侨开始进入西方战略家的视野,他们担心这些人会在中国共产党向南扩张时充当第五纵队。以美国为首的西方国家随即行动起来,通过各种方式切断华侨与祖国的联系。二战后,摆脱殖民统治的东南亚国家为了发展民族经济,巩固政治地位,普遍采取限制和排斥华侨的政策,表现出极强的民族利己主义。在这一过程中,冷战因素扮演着某种催化剂的作用,并在需要时成为方便的借口。国民党残余力量在逃到台湾后,也趁冷战的形势,以反共为名拉拢和控制东南亚华侨。在此种复杂局势下,大多数东南亚华侨出于生存的需要,最终选择归化于居住国,从而完成华侨史上最深刻、最激烈的变革。     

Housing policy and asset building: exploring the role of home ownership in East Asian social policy

Western societies promote home ownership in the belief that it provides a means to build up individual welfare and security, potentially offsetting the inadequacy of social security to meet needs in retirement. Some East Asian economies have long focused on advancing ‘asset building’ through housing policy. These efforts have two purposes: to use housing investment to drive economic development and to build family assets throughout life as a component of income protection for old age. These purposes work well in some countries but not as well in others. In policy terms, the common element among them is that governments promote home ownership as a component of social policy or as a complement to mainstream welfare. This article examines how home ownership fares as a form of asset-based welfare in selected East Asian countries (Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan) and considers the implications for understanding the role of institutions in development.     

Bringing Indonesia into the global welfare regime debate: A literature review and future research agenda

Studies on welfare state regimes have been dominated by consideration of rich OECD/European and increasingly East Asian countries/territories, leaving South Asian cases such as Indonesia underexplored. The few existing studies that have explicitly tried to conceptualize the Indonesian welfare regime have resulted in little consensus. To address the resulting lack of clarity, this article reviews scholarly articles relevant to bringing Indonesia into the global welfare regime debate, specifically encapsulating how the country has been classified compared with its East Asia counterparts. Accordingly, we find that existing studies have mainly concentrated on the Indonesian health care and social protection expansion, which has led authors to conclude that this evolution demonstrates Indonesia's transition away from welfare productivism. By contrast, we argue that Indonesia's productivist characteristics have largely prevailed while informal networks, clientelism, strong families, and the limited effectiveness of the civil society movement created a specific social politics in Indonesia. We thus conclude that the causal mechanisms typically attributed to welfare development in more developed welfare geographies, including East Asia, cannot fully explain the evident institutional formation in the Indonesian case. The future research agenda for studying the welfare regimes in Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries is discussed.     

Low Public Expenditures on Social Welfare: Do East Asian Countries have a Secret?

This paper explores the sources of low public expenditures on social welfare in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Six factors are analysed based on aggregate data: the public/private mix of welfare programmes, the age structure, the maturity of old-age pension schemes, the population coverage of social security, the relative generosity of social security and the role of enterprises and families as alternative providers of welfare. The evidence allows putting some conventional statements about the virtues of East Asian welfare states into questions. Public expenditures on welfare are bound to rise a lot in Japan, Korea and Taiwan, while the level of protection in Hong Kong and Singapore is well below the standards of Western countries.     

民进党当局的“台独外交”与东南亚

民进党当局出于地缘战略的考虑,在东南亚重点推行“台独外交”。一些东南亚国家由于历史、地理、经济、文化等诸多因素的考虑,采取的是一种在大陆和台湾之间搞平衡的实用主义政策,因而在台湾问题上不断突破对中国的承诺,使双边关系受到影响。东南亚国家应与中国联手遏制“台独”,这不仅有利于地区的和平、稳定与繁荣,也符合东南亚各国的根本利益。     

The role of tax-financed social security

This article provides a reassessment of the role of tax-financed social security. It outlines the relevant trends in developed and developing countries and discusses qualitative changes in the role and approach to tax-financed social security. It then assesses emergent forms of tax-financed social security in developing countries. It considers in particular their focus, scope, design and dynamics. It concludes that emergent tax-financed social security in developing countries holds the promise to make an impact on global poverty and vulnerability, and the main challenge is to ensure this contributes to the development of comprehensive social security systems.     

The welfare state in liquidation?

This paper is about the most recent reforms of cash benefit systems and the sociopolitical debate in eight European countries. The welfare state and the social security system rank high on the political agenda. After many years of economic crisis, with increasingly widespread unemployment and changed family patterns, the welfare system that developed in most western European countries since the end of the Second World War is the focus of attention. In a world of increasing international trade, with competition from countries — in eastern Europe and Asia as well as the United States — which have not developed such comprehensive systems of social security, one of the main issues in the debate is whether western Europe can afford to maintain welfare at the existing level, or whether it is necessary to make fundamental changes. But the discussion also centres on what can be called the welfare state's own internal problems.     

The Future of Retirement Protection in Southeast Asia

This paper analyses the formal retirement protection systems in five economically successful, rapidly industrializing, and globalized economies of Southeast Asia: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. It finds that while there are major differences in the formal retirement protection systems of the five countries in terms of coverage; contribution rates; scope and nature of preretirement schemes; investment patterns, practices and performance; replacement rates; administrative and compliance efficiency; and regulatory structures, the main common feature (with the exception of the Philippines) is aversion to social insurance and predominant reliance on individual provision through publicly mandated and managed provident funds. While these systems do minimize the fiscal burden on the State and thereby help maintain international competitiveness, they provide socially inadequate levels of retirement protection and are weak in ensuring efficiency of the saving-investment process. Moreover, several design and institutional features prevent full realization of many of the advantages of the provident funds found in these countries. They may, therefore, benefit by following the worldwide pension reform debate more closely, particularly concerning design and institutional and regulatory structures for mandatory defined-contribution schemes.