Politics of Social Policy-Making in South Korea and Japan

Until recently, welfare politics in Korea and Japan tended to be dominated by conservative forces "from above." This paper investigates the formation and domination of such forces from above, with a focus on the interaction between institutional arrangements and strategic maneuvering by political actors which, I argue, constitutes the politics of (social) policy-making. The notion of the politics of social policy-making aims to provide a more politically and institutionally sensitive framework than the pluralist analysis of policy-making. Korea and Japan share some crucial institutional legacies of the "developemental state" and "group-coordinated market economies." At the same time, attention should also be paid to different institutional configurations, such as a strong presidential system and first-past-the-post voting in Korea and a parliamentary system and single non-transferable vote in Japan. The main research question is, what are the similarities and differences in the politics of social policy-making between these two countries