Parties, Legislators, and Social Investment Politics in East Asia

In tackling new social risks such as single parenthood, work-family balance, or precarious employment, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan have increasingly prioritized social investment policies over the past three decades. It is particularly noteworthy that, in all three countries, social investment issues have received equally significant legislative attention from both mainstream left and right-wing parties. Going beyond the conventional understanding of left-right conflicts based on labour-capital cleavage, the latest scholarly attempts add more nuance to welfare politics by considering sub-dimensions of social policies (e.g. policy categories, goals, or target) and related actors’ positions and strategies. Building on this, the paper aims to provide deeper insights into the politics of social investment policies in East Asia by examining qualitative policy differences between mainstream parties and the legislative strategies they employ. Given the right-wing parties’ developmental state legacies and their continued presence, social investment initiatives supported by right-wing parties are more likely to be targeted and economic-goal oriented; in contrast, there is a higher chance that left-wing parties support more universal and social-goal oriented plans. Moreover, considering that social investment bills tend to be popular and salient, there will be high levels of vote-seeking competition between mainstream left/right parties, rendering cross-party cooperation rare. These expectations will be tested based on the whole universe of social investment bills (4700 in total) and related sponsors/co-sponsors between 1990 and 2016 applying logistic regression (on “target” and “primary goal” of each bill) and social network analysis (with co-sponsorship patterns).