International Circumstances as Factors in Building a Welfare State: Welfare Regimes in Europe, Japan and Korea

The East Asian experiences of welfare-state building have universal implications for the sociology of the welfare state because they clearly indicate the relevance of international circumstances to welfare-state building. The convergence theory of the welfare state lays emphasis on the economic development, demographic structure, and age of the social security system. The path dependency theory regards a country's social structure and history as important. However, both these theories clearly state the importance of the domestic factors as well. On the contrary, the East Asian experiences show that the dates of the takeoff of the welfare state and the international context at that time were decisive for the subsequent development of the welfare state. The European welfare states are considered to be a by-product of "embedded liberalism." The Japanese welfare state, on the other hand, was established in the context of the worldwide stagflation of the 1970s; therefore, Japan experienced the formation and crisis of the welfare state at the same time and this is what characterized its present welfare system. The Korean welfare state emerged in the age of global capitalism and was consequently shaped by the co-occurrence of welfare and workfare. Given the above, it can be said that the international circumstances faced by each welfare state characterized the three worlds of welfare capitalism: Europe, Japan, and Korea.