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

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Illan Nam, Colgate University, Feb 2011Draft in progress, please do not quote or citegain by the proposed reform.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
Illan Nam, Colgate University, Feb 2011Draft in progress, please do not quote or citemembership and organizational breadth in the advanced industrial democracies during thepast two decades, they experienced even more attenuation in developing democracies(Murillo 2001, Deyo 1989). As Table 1 below demonstrates, the number of workersbelonging to unions in these regions is low relative to the levels evidenced in WesternEurope. Moreover, although union membership did rise slightly in some of thesecountries in the years leading up to democratic transition, it declined subsequently duringthe 1990s, reflecting the growth in the informal economy and employers’ increasedreliance on temporary contract labor. Additionally, labor organizations do not exerciseencompassing breadth in these countries. Collective bargaining, for instance, takes placeprimarily at the enterprise level. Unions often belong to competing labor confederations,so that it is difficult to find centralized labor organizations that can credibly represent theunified interests of labor (Yang 2005, María Lorena Cook 1998, V. María Murillo 2001,Volker 1996).Table 1: Comparison of Union DensityCountry Union density (%) Year Country Union density (%) YearArgentina 24 1997 Belgium 52 2000Bolivia 18 1997 Denmark 76 2000Brazil 32 1997 Finland 76 2000Chile 16 1997 France 10 2000Colombia 11 1997 German 31 2000Ecuador 10 1997 Ireland 51 2000Mexico 30.5 1997 Italy 40 2000Peru 8 1997 Netherlands 25 2000Uruguay 11.5 1997 Norway 56 2000Venezuela 14 1997 Portugal 33 2000S. Korea 11.6 2001 Spain 17 2000Taiwan 31.5 1998 Sweden 84 2000Thailand 5 2000 Switzerland 25 2000Indonesia 5 1998 U.K. 42 2000Philippines 4.2 2000 Canada 36 2000Singapore 20 1997 U.S. 16 200021
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