Resemblances that matter: Lessons from the comparison between Southern Europe and East Asia

Abstract

Southern Europe and East Asia are two distinct groups of nations which share a number of striking family resemblances warranting a close investigation. Such resemblances form a relatively coherent set best captured through the concepts of familialism and familial welfare state. A cross-regional comparison of Italy, Japan, Spain and Korea leads to interesting results in both descriptive and explanatory terms, highlighting the role played by culture and religion as well as by the compressed modernization which characterized the four countries during the 20th century. The comparative exercise of this Special Issue offers a significant contribution to the wider field of welfare research. It reshuffles the cards of the traditional ‘world of welfare capitalism’ debate, shows the significance of region-level (as opposed to nation-level) variables and invites a specification of temporal arguments in institutional transformations.

Keywords

Cross-regional comparisons East Asia families of nations family resemblances Southern Europe welfare types

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bonoli

(2007) ‘Time Matters: Postindustrialization, New Social Risks and Welfare State Adaptations in Advanced Industrial Democracies’, Comparative Political Studies 40(5): 495–520.

Castles

F.G.

(ed.) (1993) Families of Nations: Patterns of Public Policy in Western Democracies. London: Dartmouth Publishing Company.

Castles

F.G.

Ferrera

(1996) ‘Home Ownership and the Welfare State: Is Southern Europe Different?’, South European Society and Politics 1(2): 163–85.

Collier

Mahon

J.E.

(1993) ‘Conceptual “Stretching” Revisited: Adapting Categories in Comparative Analysis’, American Political Science Review 87(4): 845–55.

Ferrera

(1996) ‘The Southern Model of Welfare in Social Europe’, Journal of European Social Policy 6(1): 17–37.

Ferrera

(2007) ‘Democratisation and Social Policy in Southern Europe: From Expansion to “Recalibration”’, in Bangura

(ed.) Democracy and Social Policy, pp. 90–113. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Flora

(1986) ‘Introduction’, in Flora

(ed.) Growth to Limits, pp. I–XXV. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter.

Goertz

(2005) Social Science Concepts: A User’s Guide. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Gough

(2013) ‘Social Policy Regimes in the Developing World’, in Kennett

(ed.) A Handbook of Comparative Social Policy, pp. 205–24. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

10.

Hort

Kuhnle

(2000) ‘The Coming of East and South-East Asian Welfare States’, Journal of European Social Policy 10: 162–84.

11.

Howe

(1978) ‘Max Weber’s Elective Affinities’, American Journal of Sociology 84: 366–85.

12.

Kwon

(2007) ‘Transforming the Developmental Welfare States in East Asia’, Department of Economics and Social Affairs Working Papers 40. New York: United Nations.

13.

Peng

Wong

(2010) ‘East Asia’, in Castles

F.G.

Leibfried

Lewis

Obinger

Pierson

(eds) The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State, pp. 656–70. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

14.

Petmesidou

(2013) ‘Southern Europe’, in Greve

(ed.) The Routledge Handbook of the Welfare State, pp. 183–91. London and New York: Routledge.

15.

Pierson

(2004) Politics in Time History, Institutions and Social Analysis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

16.

Reher

(1998) ‘Family Ties in Western Europe: Persistent Contrasts’, Population and Development Review 24(2): 203–34.

17.

Sartori

(1991) ‘Comparing and Miscomparing’, Journal of Theoretical Politics 3(3): 243–57.

18.

Schedler

(2011) ‘Concept formation’, in Badie

Berg-schlosser

Morlino

(eds) International Encyclopedia of Political Science, pp. 370–82. London: Sage.

19.

Smith

K.K.

(2003) ‘Time’s Arrow: Heterochrony and the Evolution of Development’, International Journal of Development Biology 47: 613–21.

20.

Therborn

(1993) ‘Beyond the Lonely Nation-State’, in Castles

F.G.

(ed.) Families of Nations: Patterns of Public Policy in Western Democracies, pp. 329–41. London: Dartmouth Publishing Company.

21.

Todd

(1985) The Explanation of Ideology, Family Structures and Social Systems. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

22.

Weiming

(1996) Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

23.

Xinzhong

(2000) An Introduction to Confucianism. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.