Changing Welfare Regime and New Roles of Social Enterprise in East Asia: Conceptualization, Theories, and Analytical Framework

This paper aims at mapping out the diversities of the social economy sector within commonalities in the historical development pattern and explaining who are major actors among the state, market, and civil society in... [ view full abstract ]

This paper aims at mapping out the diversities of the social economy sector within commonalities in the historical development pattern and explaining who are major actors among the state, market, and civil society in initiating developing the social economy sector, and why and how they have done such ways. Thus it will explore some common trends in the restructuring welfare state and promoting the role of the social economy, on the one hand, and interesting distinctive and innovative solutions as well as dilemmas depending upon each country’s institutional legacies and the political economy in the historical process of development, on the other hand. For this, first, some conceptual and theoretical issues about the relationships between the welfare state, welfare mix, and the third sector will be elaborated and an appropriate analytical framework for finding distinctiveness of the East Asian context will be developed. By doing so, this paper aims to contribute to providing the contextualized understanding of the current changing welfare regimes and the rise of various forms of social enterprise in East Asian countries.