Welfare and Capitalism in Postwar Japan

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 Japan s 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 Japan s postwar welfare state relied upon various alternatives to orthodox social spending programs. The initial postwar success of Japan s 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 Japan s welfare system will also come to resemble Britain s. Japan thus faces a more market-oriented society and less equality."