Item – Theses Canada

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OCLC number
27680543
Author
Shinkawa, Toshimitsu,1956-
Title
The political economy of social welfare in Japan.
Degree
Ph. D. -- University of Toronto, 1990
Publisher
Ottawa : National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1991.
Description
4 microfiches.
Notes
University Microfilms order no. UMI00279991.
Includes bibliographical references.
Abstract
The main object of this dissertation is to examine major political factors which have defined the pattern of social welfare development in Japan and to clarify how these factors structure basic features of Japan's political economy. Surveying the comparative social welfare literature, the author assumes that social policy development is defined by economic growth; the two functions of the state, capital accumulation and social integration; state-society relations; bureaucratic politics; and political leadership. From the end of World War II until the end of the 1960s, Japan's social welfare policies lagged behind the standards of Western countries. This was mainly because, during the period, the Japanese state concentrated on capital accumulation. State policies in favor of capital accumulation were possible since weak and fragmented labor was unable to counterbalance a coalition between the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and capital. However, Japan experienced a surge of social policy in the early 1970s. This took place as state policy, biased towards capital accumulation, gave rise to some negative effects, including environmental pollution, which brought about a crisis of social integration by the late 1960s. Labor took advantage of the crisis of social integration and succeeded in injecting its demands for social welfare into government policy. The era of social welfare in Japan did not last for long. The oil crisis in 1973 and a subsequent economic recession in the mid 1970s changed policy priorities again. Anti-welfare movements were conducted by economic bureaucrats and conservative intellectuals. Eventually, a fiscal crisis brought about by the expanding roles of the state for both accumulation and social integration forced the LDP government to review welfare programs under the guise of administrative reform. A welfare roll back was smoothly conducted in Japan, thanks to a neo-conservative system established among the state, capital, and moderate labor unions. The system emerged in the mid 1970s to deal with economic recession and revive the flexibility of the labor market. It reinforced the dualistic structure of Japan's political economy and permitted a welfare backlash.
ISBN
0315599715
9780315599710