Conclusion: Social Welfare Policies in Southeast Asia and the Economic Crisis

Abstract

The central objectives of this book have been to identify the nature of social policies in Southeast Asia, delineate the patterns of similarities and differences and then explain the patterns. While the book was in preparation, the economic crisis broke out in the region which thrust social policies to the front of the public policy debate and underscored the importance of the subject in a way which would have been inconceivable until mid-1997. Although little concrete has happened in policy terms to change the nature of the existing programmes, the crisis has highlighted their lacunae and precipitated thinking on many of the problems identified in the preceding chapters.