Why was National Pension Insurance Fragmented? The Transition of Bureaucratic Politics in the Process of Democratisation in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Wei-ting Chang, 張瑋庭
• Other Authors: Jen-Der Lue
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/16862954456157127346

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 社會福利所 === 98 === The emergence of National Pension Insurance (NPI) in 1993 implies Taiwanese government started to pay more attention to old-age economic security during the process of democratization. From the beginning Ministry of the Interior (MOI) proposed two national pension insurance programs, integrated and fragmented, to Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) in which these two programs were negotiated. However, CEPD also proposed their preferred program and its main principle is ‘fragmentation of administration, integration of benefit’. Finally, after more than ten years discussion and negotiation between political parties and social actors, NPI was introduced in 2007 and began from 2008. In general, it is argued that the issue of national pension insurance became main issue from 1993 resulted from electoral strategies of political parties. Social policy has become a crucial topic in the competition of political parties after democratization and political liberalization. However, the perspective of democratization ignored the structural factors of actors’ preferences and could not explain the difference of social policy structures. On the other hand, some, from the perspective of developmental state, argued that social policy is subordinated to economic goals which are set by state. Hence, bureaucracy in the policy process should be taken into account. Generally speaking bureaucracies are regarded as the main actor in the policy innovation and as the perspective of developmental state argued, sometimes, social policy is institutionalized for economic development. Indeed, social actors become more and more important after democratization, but bureaucracy is still a critical actor in the national pension insurance process. Institutions matter, when we take bureaucracies into account. According to institutionalist, the effect of lock-in has crucial influences on policy development and paths through mechanism of increasing return. Historical legacies not only constrained the possibilities of policy choice, but also shaped the model of interaction between actors. Thus institutions would affect actors, vice versa. However, structural pressures would alter institutional stabilities as well. This master thesis attempts to understand how historical legacies shape the preferences of bureaucracies through interviews, and to discover the preferences and interests of bureaucracies about national pension insurance as well as preferences of political parties to explain why fragmented national pension insurance was introduced rather than integrated one. Finally, it will also account for the differences of preferences between KMT and DPP in National Pension Insurance, and summarize the path dependence and institution change of the NP.