Do varieties of welfare capitalism exist in the developing world? This analysis challenges scholars of comparative political economy and international political economy who treat the political economies of less developed countries (LDCs) as more or less identical to one another or, at the other extreme, as nations marked by tremendous diversity. This paper is one of the first attempts to highlight systematic differences among the political economies of the developing world, particularly with respect to their distribution regimes. Using cluster analysis, the results illustrate that welfare efforts in LDCs are either directed towards promoting market development (a productive welfare state), protecting select individuals from the market (a protective welfare state), or both (a dual welfare state). The discovery of distinct patterns of welfare regimes in LDCs presents hitherto unknown implications for the influence of domestic politics and policies in late twentieth-century globalization.

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Welfare States in Developing Countries: Unique or Universal?

Casual work and poverty in Third World cities

The “economic miracle” of South Korea has been well documented by many scholars, but most studies have focused on the cooperative relations between the state and entrepreneurial elites, with little attention being given to the accomplishments and contribution of Korean labor to industrial development. To date there has been no comprehensive sociological study as to how workers in South Korea were “ideologically” mobilized and motivated to commit their labor power to the process of industrialization. In an attempt to redress this imbalance, this article offers an analysis of the role of Confucianism and nationalism in the state-sponsored ideology of work in South Korea during its economic boom of the 1960s and 1970s. It is argued here that both the workers' voluntary participation in industrial work and the harmony in the workplace, which were two of the most essential factors in the nation's remarkable economic success during the 1960s and 1970s, were intimately linked to a new ideology of work a...

Nationalism, Confucianism, work ethic and industrialization in South Korea

Center for Demography and Ecology

Perhaps the most commonly held assumption in the field of development is that middle classes are the bounty of economic modernization and growth. As countries gradually transcend their agrarian past and become urbanized and industrialized, so the logic goes, middle classes emerge and gain in number, complexity, cultural influence, social prominence, and political authority. Yet this is only half the story. Middle classes shape industrial and economic development, they are not merely its product; the particular ways in which middle classes shape themselves - and the ways historical conditions shape them - influence development trajectories in multiple ways. This is the story of South Korea's and Taiwan's economic successes and Argentina's and Mexico's relative 'failures' through an examination of their rural middle classes and disciplinary capacities. Can disciplining continue in a context where globalization squeezes middle classes and frees capitalists from the state and social contracts in which they have been embedded?

Discipline and Development: Middle Classes and Prosperity in East Asia and Latin America

Proletarianization in the industrializing economies of East Asia differs significantly from theoretical models derivedfrom early industrialization in the West or semiperipheral development in Latin America or Africa. Contrary to the prediction of the semiproletarianization thesis, dependent capitalist development in South Korea has been accompanied by a swifter, more abrupt, and more intense proletarianization than occurred in 19th and 20th century Europe. The compressed process involves a simultaneous increase in blue-collar and white-collar workers and a rapid feminization of white-collar occupations. Korean workers have not made strong collective responses to proletarianization, largely because of repressive state control of the labor movement and the absence of a strong artisan cultural tradition. But rapid proletarianization has facilitated development of the working-class movement. The specific pattern of Korean industrial transformation and workers' reactions to it have been shaped more strongly by the developmental role of the state than the autonomous activities of capital. Proletarianization is a pivotal process of capitalist development. In terms of its impact on society, proletarianization may be "the single most far-reaching social change that has occurred in the Western world over the past few hundred years and that is going on in the world as a whole today" (Tilly 1981, p. 179). The growth of wage work has a profound impact on all arenas of social life - it transforms the ways people work and relate to one another; it alters the structure of family and community; and it spawns new political demands and collective actions. If large-scale proletarianization was yesterday's experience in Europe, it is today's occurrence in the industrializing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Nowhere today do we observe more dramatic proletarianization than in the newly industrialized countries in East Asia, including South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. The massive industrial transformation that occurred in Europe and America two centuries ago is now occurring in these countries, but in a dif

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2095863.pdf

Hagan Koo

Papers

From farm to factory: proletarianization in korea*