Politics of Retirement Benefit Program in the 1980s in Taiwan: lnterplay of State Factors and Class Factors

Politics of Retirement Benefit Program in the 1980s in Taiwan: lnterplay of State Factors and Class Factors

This paper examines an interplay between state and class factors in the development trajectories of welfare policymaking in the 1980s in Taiwan. The Taiwanese government began several income security programs for retired workers in 1951, and made a nation-wide retirement benefit program as a core part of the Labor Standard Law in 1984. Such a policymaking process entailed political conflicts between political entities, and the final shape of the program was detennined by the capacity of the state in responding to the pressures for policy change. While the retirement benefit program in 1984 was a case of preemptive policy development with little pressure from the workers, the movement for its revision in the mid-1980s was another case of changing power balance of classes, which created a political space for the workers' movement for the prevention of its revision,