Huck-ju Kwon

Globalization, Unemployment and Policy Responses in Korea: Repositioning the State?

This article firstly examines the labour market reforms and consequent rise of unemployment in Korea after the economic crisis of 1997–8. Secondly it analyses policy responses from the Korean government to deal with the massive rise in unemployment: the Employment Insurance Programme, Public Work Projects and the Employment Services. The question this article seeks to answer is whether the role of the state within the welfare system was strengthened in the area of unemployment. This provides an interesting test case for the debate on the globalization hypothesis which suggests that the role of the state will decrease. Using eight models of state intervention, this article argues that the role of the state in Korea has been strengthened. The state came to take increasing responsibility for the financing of unemployment programmes. The article concludes that although globalization acts as a downward pressure on expenditure in some countries, it has exerted an upward pressure in the case of Korea.

Mixed Governance and Welfare in South Korea

Abstract:This article sets out to tackle three main questions: 1) How did South Korea lift itself out of utter destruction and destitution to affluence?; 2) How could a ruthlessly authoritarian regime be transformed with relative ease into a stable democratic polity?; and 3) What institutions and governance enabled the authoritarian and democratic governments of South Korea to reduce poverty and inequality?

Review Article: Social Policy and Development in Global Context

A. Hall and J. Midgely (2004), Social Policy for Development , Sage, London, 288 pages. I. Gough and G. Wood (2004), Insecurity and Welfare Regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America , Cambrdige University Press, Cambridge, 363 pages. E. Rieger and S. Leibfried (2003), Limits to Globalization , Blackwell, Oxford, 402 pages.

Shaping the national social protection strategy in Cambodia: Global influence and national ownership

In the wake of the global economic crisis in 2008, the Cambodian government responded actively to the impact of the crisis by initiating various policy measures for social protection. Most importantly, it launched a National Social Protection Strategy (NSPS) in 2011 with a major focus on social assistance targeted at the poor, children and the disabled. How did this social protection policy come about? Was it driven by international influence or is it an outcome of national policy ownership? In order to answer these questions, this article analyses the interactions among global and national actors in the policy dynamics of Cambodia’s NSPS; it is intended to disentangle the complex politics of global social policy at the national level.

The Korean government and public policies in a development nexus

Introduction: The Role of Government in Koreas Economic and Social Transition.- Part I Government and Coordination for Development.- Institutional Presidency and National Development.- Managing Economic Policy and Coordination: A Saga of the Economic Planning Board.- Bureaucratic Power and Government Competitiveness.- Part II Public Policies for Development.- Governing the Developmental Welfare State: From Regulation to Provision.- Trade Policy for Development: Paradigm Shift from Mercantilism to Liberalism.- Educational Policy, Development of Education, and Economic Growth in Korea.

From the Developmental to the Universal Welfare State: Lost in Transition?

For the last six decades, Korea has been able to establish a comprehensive welfare system from a minimal number of programs together with economic development and democratic consolidation. While such achievements are commendable, Korea is now faced with difficult challenges to consolidate its position and move to the next level of development. A demographic shift due to longevity and low fertility created new demand for social services while a large proportion of the population is still outside of the core programs of social policy. This chapter examines social policy responses to those challenges in the context of the transition from the developmental welfare state to the univeral welfare state.

Implications of the Sustainable Development Goals for global social policy

In October 2016, the heads of the governments of more than 190 countries endorsed the new global development agenda at the United Nations General Assembly, the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development, and subsequently decided a new set of goals, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It was a historic moment in which the world embarked on a new global development initiative following the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which ended in 2015 with mixed results. The SDGs aim to bring about positive changes for sustainable development at the global and national levels, especially by incorporating environmental sustainability and social development into an overarching framework of global goals. Before the final submission to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, the UN task force went through a widespread and open consultation process on the draft proposal for the SDGs. The UN spent more than 3 years in consultation, listening to various ideas and suggestions from national governments, civil society groups and other stakeholders. The open global consultation toward the final agreement was a clear difference in the formulating of the SDGs from the technocratic process of preparing the MDGs more than 15 years ago (Saith, 2006). The SDGs comprise 17 goals and 169 targets, and there will be many more indicators which will enable various policy stakeholders to monitor the progress of implementation. The SDGs include goals concerning global climate change and urban development as well as goals on social development, such as poverty eradication and social justice. According to the UN report entitled ‘The Road to Dignity by 2030’, the SDGs are based on six principles: people, dignity, prosperity, justice, partnership and planet (United Nations, 2014). Indeed, the SDGs are broad and comprehensive in terms of scope and targets compared to the MDGs. There are a broad range of goals, but social development goals, such as poverty, health, and gender equality, are among the particularly prominent features of the SDGs. Decent work and migration as well as social justice and equality

Global social policy as public policy: Implementation matters!

Sony Pellissery is Associate Professor at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. He teaches research methods and public policy analysis, and has a long-term research interest in examining how social networks influence policy processes. His recent monograph, titled The Politics of Social Protection in Rural India (2009), is a path-breaking treatise on the limits of the state to reach the vulnerable sections which depend on societal forces to meet their social security requirements.

Business Regulations and Foreign Direct Investment in Sub-Saharan Africa: Implications for Regulatory Reform

This paper uses annual changes in distance-to-frontier scores for a set of the World Bank’s Doing Business indicators to examine the effect of business regulation variables on foreign direct investment inflows (FDI) in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) over the period from 2005 to 2014. With random time effect estimates, for a panel of 44 SSA countries, the study finds that when account is taken of factors including population size, revenue level, natural resources, inflation, and governance effectiveness, FDI is significantly responsive to changes in starting a business, trading across borders, and protecting investor components of the World Bank’s Doing Business. With these findings, this paper recommends regulatory reform for a better business environment for sustainable FDI flow to the SSA region.

Bring back institution capability in fragile situations: Implications for global social policy:

In October 2015, world leaders gathered at the United Nations (UN) general assembly and agreed on the 2030 Agenda, a global public policy plan, to be implemented over the next 15 years. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which the UN put forward following the 2030 Agenda replaced the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as the global framework for social and economic development, as well as protection for global environmental sustainability. In order to achieve these goals under the framework SDGs, it will be necessary to learn lessons from the experiences of the MDGs (Fox and Stoett, 2016; UN, 2015). One of the most important lessons elicited from the implementation of the MDGs is that political conflicts and unjust social structures, which often underlie such conflicts, are great obstacles to development (Gisselquist, 2014; Kwon and Kim, 2014). While most countries made progress in terms of social and economic development through the implementation of the MDGs, those countries in fragile situations, where government institutions and development capabilities are very weak or destroyed, failed to achieve meaningful progress. At the global level, the number of extremely poor people declined by more than half from 1.9 billion in 1990 to 836 million in 2015, but those people living in extreme poverty are concentrated in conflict-affected and fragile situations: to be precise 43% of 836 million people living in extreme poverty lived in fragile situations in 2015 (United Nations Development Program, 2016). Governments in these regions often failed or were unwilling to deliver public services to their citizens to support their basic livelihoods due to weak public institutions. Worse still, over the last few years, the world has witnessed a sharp increase in political conflicts and violence across the developing regions, and the number of conflict-affected people has been on the rise since 2015. Between 2012 and 2014, the number of the people displaced from their home due to