Figure 1 in the appendix of this book offers timelines for each country of ‘critical conjunctures, path-dependent and reactionary sequences, and social outcomes’. South Korea is depicted as having experienced a massive critical conjuncture between 1930 and 1953, leading to a virtuous circle of rapid and equitable economic development with sustained poverty reduction, modified somewhat by political transition (from 1987 to 1992) and the East Asian financial crisis of 1997. The account of Chile starts with a less radical critical conjuncture (1929–41) followed by a reactive sequence of relative stagnation (1941–73) and a second critical conjuncture (1973–84) leading to political transition and more progressive civilian rule, resulting in sustained growth and poverty reduction but with persistently high inequality. Mexico's history is depicted as comprising no fewer than three critical conjunctures (1890–1925, 1930–40 and 1980–94), interspersed with mostly reactive sequences that reinforced sustained inequality and the relatively high rates of poverty that have begun to fall only in the last 20 years.
These historical overviews, and the somewhat tortuous terminology in which they are couched, are backed up by a chapter on each country that describes the historical origins of more recent relations between labour, capital (or what Teichman describes as ‘social forces’) and the state, and resulting distributive outcomes. Two further chapters compare change in each country during the last two decades of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first. While there may not be much that is new in all this to country specialists, the book does thereby provide a wealth of empirical material about each, supported by secondary statistics on key performance indicators and public spending, a detailed bibliography and a comprehensive index.
Linking this scholarly labour is the author's endeavour to generalise about the determinants of national social and economic performance on the basis of comparative historical analysis of just three countries. The selection of Mexico and Chile is justified by the contrasting expectations that they confounded: Mexico failed to live up to those raised both by the ‘Mexican miracle’ of the 1950s and its foray into market liberalisation from the late 1980s; Chile emerged as a leading regional ‘tiger’ after 1980 despite the polarised political turmoil of the preceding decades. By way of contrast, South Korea appears to have been chosen for having largely achieved precisely the sustained and equitable economic growth that the other two could not; its history also highlights the case for an integrated analysis of economic and social indicators of interdependent and cumulative causal processes.
The opening chapter explores alternative explanations of the possible drivers and obstacles to such processes, including colonially induced and cultural path-dependence, land distribution, state capacity, policy choice and the shifting tension between authoritarianism and democracy. All are found wanting on their own, and instead we are offered a theory that emphasises the interplay between strong and weak mobilisation of popular movements, state leadership and the generally reactive interest of economic elites and the middle classes. In an analysis that is similar to but more fluid than that of Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (or Powelson's emphasis on long-term power diffusion), we are treated to narrative accounts that emphasise how economic and political crises and shocks may trigger either progressive state–class realignments or a reactionary backlash. Compared to Mexico and Chile, for example, the key point about South Korea is that after 1953 it was able to construct a unified and unifying developmental state to fill a political vacuum left by the weakening of business and labour interests following colonial occupation, war and radical land distribution.
This contingent view of socio-political economy dynamics provides a flexible and subtle framework for later chapters to compare prospects for constructing more inclusive health, education and welfare services in each country since 1990, by which time South Korea had caught up with the other two in terms of per capita income. During this later period one might have expected growth-induced social polarisation to have eroded South Korea's more equitable income distribution, but this was offset by restraints on big business influence over public policy arising both from democratic transition and from the chaebols’ loss of legitimacy during the East Asian crisis. In addition, a more labour-intensive industrial structure and stronger residual social solidarity (including rural–urban links and weaker class polarisation) helped to limit the pressure on the public sector to deliver better and more inclusive social services. Yet, while these advantages (along with Chile and Mexico's converse difficulties) at times appear overwhelming, the book also acknowledges considerable convergence between the three countries as they struggle to equate rising expectations of social protection with labour market flexibilisation and casualisation born of neoliberal ideological pressures to retain global economic competitiveness.
Ultimately this is not a book that delivers a strong set of generalisations, nor does it offer a robust analytical framework that can readily be applied to other countries. Teichman concludes that the influence of welfare regimes on social outcomes is relatively small, that their efficacy depends on structural factors (including the size, political influence and ideology of elite, popular and state bureaucratic interests), and that serendipity in the alignment of these social forces with each other and global factors matters quite a lot – probably more than policy intentionality. To be thus reminded of the complexity and messiness of history may be neither surprising nor particularly inspiring, but it is no less wise and salutary for that.
