Rural Pension Politics in Taiwan: The Institutional Explanation and Implications for East Asian Agricultural Welfare Development

Abstract

In East Asia, until recently, pension demands emerging from the rural sector have been neglected by many governments. In order to further the nascent scholarship in this field, this paper selects Taiwan’s case for analysis. More specifically, after conducting an historical institutional study of policy evolution over the last two decades it is found that in spite of depeasantization the interplay between rural income deficiencies, electoral interests and the feedback impacts of introduced programs has led to rural pension expansion. However, clientelistic pension politics is now being challenged by the government chiefly because it is uneconomical and has constituted the major obstruction to more programmatic reform acts being contemplated by state pension bureaucrats. Finally, regarding further policy debates on this sector-specific welfare provision Taiwan’s case raises a series of theoretical implications concerning East Asian agricultural welfare during the post-agricultural era.