East Asian approaches of activation: the politics of labor market policies in South Korea and Taiwan

Abstract

This article compares the labor market policies (LMPs) of South Korea and Taiwan to explore the activation approaches in East Asia. These two countries took divergent paths to activation after the 1990s, and their decisive differences lay in the scale of direct job creation program as compared to vocational training and employment services. Diverse socio-economic contexts and democratic landscapes further shaped the activation repertoires available to the governments of both countries. We explain, however, this divergence chiefly through political competition employing not only programmatic but also nonprogrammatic measures, in which incumbent governments provide specific LMP measures in exchange for political support from their constituencies. Additionally, economic crises and political instability molded the diverse evolution of each country’s LMP. This study contributes to the understanding of the changing dynamics of East Asian social policies and highlights the circumstances that lead to policy changes.