Welfare and Capitalism in Postwar Japan Party, Bureaucracy, and Business [Paperback]

Estevez-Abe explores the egalitarian capitalism of postwar Japan and the political mechanisms that sustained it.Estevez-Abe traces Japans highly egalitarian form of capitalism to the electoral strategies of its politicians. She analyzes how the current electoral system renders obsolete the old form of welfare capitalism creating a more market-driven society with less equality.Estevez-Abe traces Japans highly egalitarian form of capitalism to the electoral strategies of its politicians. She analyzes how the current electoral system renders obsolete the old form of welfare capitalism creating a more market-driven society with less equality.This book explains how postwar Japan managed to achieve a highly egalitarian form of capitalism despite meager social spending. Estevez-Abe develops an institutional, rational-choice model to solve this puzzle. She shows how Japans electoral system generated incentives that led political actors to protect, if only for their own self-interested reasons, various groups that lost out in market competition. She explains how Japans postwar welfare state relied upon various alternatives to orthodox social spending programs. The initial postwar success of Japans political economy has given way to periods of crisis and reform. This book follows this story up to the present day. Estevez-Abe shows how the current electoral system renders obsolete the old form of social protection. She argues that institutionally Japan now resembles Britain and predicts that Japans welfare system will also come to resemble Britains. Japan thus faces a more market-oriented society and less equality.1. Rashomon: the Japanese welfare state in a comparative perspective; 2. Structural logics of welfare politics; 3. Historical patterns of structural logic in postwar Japan; 4. The rise of the Japanese social protection system in the 1950s; 5. Economic growth and Japan's selective welfare expansion; 6. Institutional complemetarities and the Japanese welfare lc,