When Solidarity Works: Labor-Civic Networks and Welfare States in the Market Reform Era

by Cheol-Sung Lee

Overview

Why do some labor movements successfully defend the welfare state even under the pressures of neo-liberal market reform? Why do some unions (and their allied parties and civic associations) succeed in building more universal and comprehensive social policy regimes, while others fail to do so? In this innovative work, Cheol-Sung Lee explores these conundrums through a comparative historical analysis of four countries: Argentina, Brazil, South Korea and Taiwan. He introduces the notion of 'embedded cohesiveness' in order to develop an explanatory model in which labor-civic solidarity and union-political party alliance jointly account for outcomes of welfare state retrenchment as well as welfare state expansion. Lee's exploration of the critical roles of civil society and social movement processes in shaping democratic governance and public policies make this ideal for academic researchers and graduate students in comparative politics, political sociology and network analysis.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107174047
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/18/2016
Series:	Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences , #41
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Cheol-Sung Lee is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. His research interests lie in comparative welfare states and politics of inequality, and specifically upon the evolution and transformation of modern welfare states. His work has been published in the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Sociological Theory, World Politics, and Comparative Political Studies.

Table of Contents

List of figures; List of tables; Preface; Abbreviations; Part I: 1. Introduction; 2. Revisiting the theories of welfare states in developing countries; 3. Theoretical discussion: the structures of associational networks and labor politics; Part II: 4. The origin of top-down solidarity in South Korea; 5. Embeddedness, cohesiveness, and the politics of social policy expansion in South Korea: universal vs. selective reforms; 6. The survival and decline of embeddedness under retrenchment drives: the politics of retrenchment under market reforms: Part III: 7. Comparative case studies I: market-orientated reforms of welfare states and union responses in Argentina and Brazil; 8. Comparative case studies II: market-orientated reforms of welfare states and union responses in South Korea and Taiwan; 9. Comparative case studies III: associational networks and welfare states in Argentina, Brazil, South Korea and Taiwan; 10. Conclusion; Appendix A. Interviewee profiles; Appendix B. Measurement of associational networks; Appendix C. Game theoretical models; Appendix D. Supplementary analyses: the structure of South Korean civic networks in the 2000s; Appendix E. Generalization: findings from the cross-national quantitative analyses; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

'One of the book’s strengths is its direct engagement with and combination of literatures on both social movements and welfare state development. The former offers an understanding of the importance of organizational structure in enacting social change, and the latter contributes a comparative framework for understanding variation in welfare state regimes.' Mikaela Smith, Mobilization

From the Publisher