Welfare Reforms in Post-Crisis Korea: Dilemmas and Choices

2004 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hye Kyung Lee

This paper explicates the welfare reforms executed in Korea after the abrupt financial meltdown in November 1997, and asks whether the same line of reforms will continue further into the twenty-first century Korea. The DJ government's post-crisis policy choice was to persue an expansion and consolidation of the social welfare system based upon the principle of solidarity. Consequently, the size of social welfare expenditure grew fast between 1996 and 1999. Korean experience of post-crisis years demonstrates the case in which the global integration of economy brought about the fast expansion of social welfare programs. The ultimate question is will this growth continue in the sea of neo-liberal challenges, with the new government's ‘Participatory Welfare’ whose complete design is not made public yet.

Author(s):  
Leonard Rogoff

Educated at the Horace Mann school and Smith College, Weil represented a rising generation of college-educated women who were scientifically trained in new ideologies of social theory and public reform but found themselves unsuited for any particular career. Feeling the conflict of social and family claims, as defined by Jane Addams, Weil prized her autonomy but returned to her native Goldsboro. There she sought to move social welfare programs from their origins in the Social Gospel and religious societies to scientific principles of social reform. She began her social welfare career working with impoverished school children and joined Home Culture Clubs and the local Woman's Clubs.


Author(s):  
George Klosko

With passage of the Social Security Act, in 1935, the American government took on new social welfare functions, which have expanded ever since. As a work of political theory “on the ground,” The Transformation of American Liberalism explores the arguments American political leaders used to justify and defend social welfare programs since the Social Security Act. Students of political theory note the evolution of liberal political theory between its origins and major contemporary theorists who justify the values and social policies of the welfare state. But the transformation of liberalism in American political culture is incomplete. Beginning with Franklin Roosevelt, the arguments of America’s political leaders fall well short of values of equality and human dignity that are often thought to underlie the welfare state. Individualist—“Lockean”—values and beliefs have exerted a continuing hold on America’s leaders, constraining their justificatory arguments. The paradoxical result may be described as continuing attempts to justify new social programs without acknowledging incompatibility between the arguments necessary to do so and individualist assumptions inherent in American political culture. The American welfare state is notably ungenerous in its social welfare programs. To some extent this may be attributed to the shortcomings of public justifications. An important reason for the striking absence of strong and widely recognized arguments for social welfare programs in America’s political culture is that its political leaders did not provide them.


Author(s):  
Martha Branscombe

While the principle of intergovernmental co operation in the field of social welfare was well established prior to World War II, the current widespread activity and proliferation of channels have developed in direct response to the postwar social upheavals and the rising tide of newly in dependent nations. Present intergovernmental co-operation is conducted through a multifarious network of international or gans. There are those linked to the United Nations as well as a more diffuse group of intergovernmental organs with an independent existence. The Economic and Social Council, an organ of the United Nations, which bears the main responsi bility for United Nations social policy is also the co-ordinator of the specialized agencies' social welfare programs. In addi tion to the complex structure of intergovernmental organiza tions, their efforts encompass all facets of the social field. In such an enormous undertaking the major problem is the co ordination of these activities and the channels through which they move.—Ed.


Author(s):  
Cybelle Fox

This book examines the role of race and immigration in the development of the American social welfare system by comparing how blacks, Mexicans, and European immigrants were treated by welfare policies during the Progressive Era and the New Deal. Taking readers from the turn of the twentieth century to the dark days of the Depression, the book finds that, despite rampant nativism, European immigrants received generous access to social welfare programs. The communities in which they lived invested heavily in relief. Social workers protected them from snooping immigration agents, and ensured that noncitizenship and illegal status did not prevent them from receiving the assistance they needed. But that same helping hand was not extended to Mexicans and blacks. The book reveals, for example, how blacks were relegated to racist and degrading public assistance programs, while Mexicans who asked for assistance were deported with the help of the very social workers they turned to for aid. Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence, the book paints a riveting portrait of how race, labor, and politics combined to create three starkly different worlds of relief. It debunks the myth that white America's immigrant ancestors pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, unlike immigrants and minorities today. The book challenges us to reconsider not only the historical record but also the implications of our past on contemporary debates about race, immigration, and the American welfare state.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (34) ◽  
pp. 65-76
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Orłowska ◽  
Jacek Błeszyński

As a continuation of the discussion on the social perception of civilization in the light of people with disabilities using information and (tele)communication technologies, the authors of the article attempt to analyze their use of information and (tele)communication technologies. The problem is discussed with reference to people with disabilities who are provided with social welfare services and those who are not. Also the use of those technologies in households is discussed. The authors used the results of the 2015 research conducted in Poland on 28.9 million adults. The authors believe that the results of the research can serve as a basis for a set of actions amending the social exclusion of people with disabilities in social welfare programs and people with disabilities who do not use social welfare services.


Author(s):  
Roy Germano

Remittances sent by international migrants have become an increasingly important source of social welfare in the developing world. This chapter explores what remittances are, why migrants send them, and how poor families use them. I argue in this chapter that remittances are more than just gifts from one relative to another. They play a larger social welfare role that complements funds that governments spend on social welfare programs. This social welfare function has become particularly important in recent decades as developing countries have prioritized austerity and integrated into volatile global markets. I argue that by filling a welfare gap in an age of austerity, remittances help to reduce the suffering and anger that so often trigger political and social instability during times of economic crisis.


Author(s):  
Kevin Vallier

Americans today don’t trust each other and their institutions as much as they used to. The collapse of social and political trust arguably has fueled our increasingly ferocious ideological conflicts and hardened partisanship. But is the decline in trust inevitable? Are we caught in a downward spiral that must end in war-like politics, institutional decay, and possibly even civil war? This book argues that American political and economic institutions are capable of creating and maintaining trust, even through polarized times. Combining philosophical arguments and empirical data, the author shows that liberal democracy, markets, and social welfare programs all play a vital role in producing social and political trust. Even more, these institutions can promote trust justly, by recognizing and respecting our basic human rights.


The Forum ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-247
Author(s):  
Ryan LaRochelle

AbstractThis article sheds new light on how conservatism has affected American state development by tracing the history of how block-granting transformed from a bipartisan tool to solve problems of public administration in the 1940s into a mechanism to roll back and decentralize the welfare state that had reached its zenith in the 1960s. By the early 1980s, conservative policymakers had coopted the previously bipartisan tool in their efforts to chip away at the increasingly centralized social welfare system that emerged out of the Great Society. In the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan successfully converted numerous categorical grants into a series of block grants, slashing funding for several social safety net programs. Block-granting allows conservative opponents of the postwar welfare state to gradually erode funding and grant more authority to state governments, thus using federalism as a more palatable political weapon to reduce social welfare spending than the full dismantlement of social programs. However, despite a flurry of successes in the early 1980s, block-granting has not proven as successful as conservatives might have hoped, and recent efforts to convert programs such as Medicaid and parts of the Affordable Care Act into block grants have failed. The failure of recent failed block grant efforts highlights the resilience of liberal reforms, even in the face of sustained conservative opposition. However, conservatives still draw upon the tool today in their efforts to erode and retrench social welfare programs. Block-granting has thus transformed from a bipartisan tool to improve bureaucratic effectiveness into a perennial weapon in conservatives’ war on the welfare state.


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