The ability of governments to raise revenue to finance spending varies greatly across the industrialized democracies. Despite the prediction of the globalization thesis, variation in budget deficits and public debt has actually increased. While a developed literature has attempted to explain fiscal performance, there has been little attention to the role of that the welfare state might have.  Meanwhile, the welfare state literature has focused on welfare spending with less attention to how such spending is financed.  This presentation shows that the two are linked.  Governments can use taxes not only as a source of revenue but also as a means to achieve redistributive goals directly by targeting tax relief to specific groups.  Using quantitative data and a case study of Japan and Sweden, this study shows how governments combine welfare and tax policies, i.e., the “tax-welfare mix,” shapes their long-term extractive capacity.

Gene Park is an assistant professor in the department of political science at Loyola Marymount University (LMU).  Prior to arriving at LMU, he taught at Baruch College, City University of New York. Previously, Dr. Park was Shorenstein Fellow at Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and a visiting scholar at the Japanese Ministry of Finance’s Policy Research Institute.  He specializes in comparative political economy and has an area interest in Japan.  His research focuses on the politics of public spending and taxation.  He is the author of Spending without Taxation: FILP and the Politics of Public Finance in Japan (Stanford University Press, 2011). He is currently working on a comparative study of fiscal consolidation and a comparative study of state extractive capacity.

Professor Hidehiko Ichimura of the University of Tokyo will share recent results from his research on the health of older adults and the retirement process in Japan. His research draws upon a unique data source, the Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement (JSTAR). This rich dataset provides information on how middle-aged and elderly Japanese live in terms of economic, social, and health outcomes, and how these interact with their family status. The JSTAR project aims to provide longitudinal data enabling detailed policy-relevant comparisons to other industrialized countries (e.g. the Survey on Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe, the U.S. Health and Retirement Study, the English Longitudinal Study on Aging, and similar surveys now launched in Korea, China, and India).

Professor Ichimura received his BA in economics from Osaka University in 1981 and his PhD in economics for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988. He has taught at the University of Minnesota, the University of Pittsburgh, and University College London. He is currently a professor in the Graduate School of Public Policy and Graduate School of Economics at the University of Tokyo. 

Why does ethnic violence in multi-ethnic states revolve around one identity rather than another? Why, for example, do some conflicts revolve around religion whereas others revolve around language? This is an important question for understanding ethnic bloodshed in a variety of plural states in Europe, Africa, Asia, and elsewhere.

Ajay Verghese has examined these questions through an investigation of India, one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world. Using a mixed-methods research design that combines a quantitative analysis of 589 Indian districts with 15 months of archival work and elite interviews conducted in six case studies, he argues that the legacies of British colonial rule are the major determinant of contemporary patterns of ethnic conflict. 

Verghese finds that areas in India formerly under the control of British administrators experience more contemporary caste and tribal violence, but areas which remained under the control of autonomous native kings experience more religious conflict. Bifurcated colonial rule in India embedded master narratives of conflict in specific regions, reinforced them through local institutions, and ultimately engendered commonsensical understandings of how ethnic conflict is legitimately organized.

Colonialism in India became a model for later British expansion into parts of Africa and Southeast Asia, and this project therefore has major implications for understanding the historical roots of ethnic conflict in a number of multi-ethnic states around the world.

This is the first in a series of lectures by post-doctoral fellows at Shorenstein APARC presenting research on contemporary Asia.

Professor Hidehiko Ichimura of the University of Tokyo will share recent results from his research on the health of older adults and the retirement process in Japan. His research draws upon a unique data source, the Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement (JSTAR). This rich dataset provides information on how middle-aged and elderly Japanese live in terms of economic, social, and health outcomes, and how these interact with their family status. The JSTAR project aims to provide longitudinal data enabling detailed policy-relevant comparisons to other industrialized countries (e.g. the Survey on Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe, the US Health and Retirement Study, the English Longitudinal Study on Aging, and similar surveys now launched in Korea, China, and India).

Professor Ichimura received his BA in economics from Osaka University in 1981 and his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1988. He has taught at the University of Minnesota, the University of Pittsburgh, and University College London. He is now Professor in the Graduate School of Public Policy and Graduate School of Economics at the University of Tokyo.