Integrating care into growth regimes: the politics of social reproduction and hybridity in Japan and Korea

초록

This study integrates the care economy as a constitutive dimension of growth regime theory, bridging production-centred and reproduction-centred approaches to comparative political economy. It theorizes three conditional mechanisms linking care and growth and specifies the political and institutional conditions under which these mechanisms generate positive-sum integration or trade-off dynamics. Applying a comparative institutional analysis to Japan and South Korea, the study examines how care-growth linkages operate within hybrid growth regimes that combine a manufacturing-export core with elements of financialization and innovation-driven services. This East Asian hybridity is conceptualized as intra-regime recombination, differing from other mixed types based on territorial dualism or regime transition. Despite recent care expansion, both care economies remain partially familialized and significantly market-based, and the three mechanisms are only incompletely activated. Together, these findings advance a framework for analysing care as a politically conditioned and regime-specific dimension of growth, extending comparative political economy beyond its production-centred foundations.

키워드