Welfare Capitalism in Southeast Asia: Social Security, Health and Education Policies. By M. Ramesh with Mukul G. Asher. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. 217p. $65.00. Social Welfare Development in East Asia. By Kwong-leung Tang. New York: Palgrave, 2001. 214p. $65.00 cloth

The debate about the history and future of the welfare state is gradually expanding beyond the advanced industrial countries to encompass the middle-income developing countries and the formerly socialist economies of Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. This debate is particularly interesting in Asia. The newly industrializing countries in that region have had great success in increasing incomes, reducing poverty, and maintaining an equitable distribution of income. At the same time, the countries in the region are highly “globalized”—a factor often associated with increased economic insecurity—and until the 1980s were for the most part ruled by labor-repressive authoritarian regimes. By traditional measures of effort, they also appear to have surprisingly shallow public commitment to social welfare.