Solidarity Coalitions: Nongovernmental Organizations, Bureaucrats, and Labor in Health Reforms

Abstract

The question at the heart of this book centers upon the timing and content of sweeping health insurance reforms legislated in South Korea and Thailand in the early 2000s. The reforms represented the fruits of long-standing battles to attain greater equity in the health care system that had been waged for years among conservative and progressive factions of health bureaucrats. To explain how the reforms were achieved, this chapter privileges the concept of “solidarity coalitions,” informal alliances of state and societal actors that included labor organizations, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and/or a group of health bureaucrats, which played critical roles in formulating and advancing the reforms in the two countries. These groups shared an ideological commitment to socioeconomic justice and solidarity and championed universal and equal health care as a right of citizenship. Although individually, each group’s resources were inadequate to bringing about transformative policy changes on its own, by joining hands and pooling their skills and assets, they collectively commanded a powerful set of complementary political tools that enabled their efficacy as reform advocates.