Welfare and Capitalism in Postwar Japan: Party, Bureaucracy, and Business (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics)

ISBN: 0521856930

Author: Estevez-Abe, Margarita

Condition: New

This book explains how postwar Japan managed to achieve a highly egalitarian form of capitalism despite meager social spending. Estevez-Abe develops an institutional, rational-choice model to solve this puzzle. She shows how Japans electoral system generated incentives that led political actors to protect, if only for their own self-interested reasons, various groups that lost out in market competition. She explains how Japans postwar welfare state relied upon various alternatives to orthodox social spending programs. The initial postwar success of Japans political economy has given way to periods of crisis and reform. This book follows this story up to the present day. Estevez-Abe shows how the current electoral system renders obsolete the old form of social protection. She argues that institutionally Japan now resembles Britain and predicts that Japans welfare system will also come to resemble Britains. Japan thus faces a more market-oriented society and less equality.