Divergent Trajectories: Healthcare Insurance Reforms in East Asia ...

Illan Nam, Colgate University, Feb 2011Draft in progress, please do not quote or citegain by the proposed reform. The design of a program highlights these tradeoffs muchmore emphatically than its overall estimated cost.Power resources theoryThe central dynamic that animates the power resources theory is the conflictbetween workers and capitalists, two principal social groups in a capitalist democracythat have access to different resources. Capitalists wield market-based resources that putthem at considerable advantage against workers. To mitigate their vulnerability to themarket economy, workers need to rely on their strength of numbers and formorganizations that articulate their interests. Importantly, these working class demands aremediated by left parties in the political arena. 26According to power resources theory,variations in the size and shape of welfare regimes are produced by the relativedifferences between resources mobilized by the working class and left parties and thestrength of the organization of the capitalists and right parties (Castles, Esping-Anderson,Korpi, Huber and Stephens).An influential insight underpinning power resources theory is the recognition thatorganized power of the subordinate classes can counterweigh the power of capital; thus,this school emphasizes that relative power organizations are critical to exercising voice inthe political arena. In their absence, workers lack tools to be effective actors and insteadsubside into a passive group that is “acted upon.” However, notwithstanding theresonance of this insight, it is unclear, given the weakness of labor organizations indeveloping democracies, whether placing so much explanatory weight on a relativelyattenuated actor illuminates the outcomes. While labor organizations diminished in26 Evelyn Huber and John D. Stephens, Development and Crisis of the Welfare State: Parties and Policiesin Global Markets (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001)20