Summary
Contents
Subject index
This book describes the role of social policy in the context of globalization and rapidly changing economies and societies in Asia. It compares the social policy experience of a number of countries with a focus on comparing East Asian (China, Indonesia, Vietnam), and South Asian (India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka) models and experiences.
Over the last decade, particularly since the Asian financial crisis, and globalization, extension of social protection to people affected by crisis has been the main theme in national and international policy alike. In comparing the way social policy has evolved and studying its effects in various countries of Asia, the author provides a wide canvas and succeeds in bringing out similarities as well as differences in the individual experiences, while simultaneously providing explanations. His research brings together three separate streams of study in its scope—politics, sociology and economics—to analyze the ground reality of Asian experiences.
Why Social Policy Matters
Why Social Policy Matters
The role of social policies in the shaping of well-being, combating exclusion, and responding to economic crises is the key theme of this book. The term social policy is used in an ambitious sense, in at least three respects. In the first place, this book considers social policy as an essential complement to economic policies. To define social policy in a “residual” fashion—as the interventions that deal with the unintended consequences of economic trends and policies, a definition that has dominated under structural adjustment and under liberal ideologies—in the perspective of this book misses the critical point of the constitutive role of public policies in shaping market processes as well as well-being.
Second, the perspective is cross-sectoral, arguing that ...
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