Neo-liberalism, which became a dominant ideology in policy-making in many countries from the early 1980's, is now blamed for worsening inequality and the 2008 world financial crisis. As the recovery process is moving very slowly due to lingering uncertainties from the Euro crisis, going back to the European model of a welfare state is not a feasible policy direction for most countries. Thus, now is the time to seek a new paradigm for a sustainable capitalism and welfare state, Dr. Sang-Mok Suh argues. He proposes 'welfarenomics,' implying a better balance between economics and welfare.

Welfarenomics means promoting a sustainable calitalism through modifying the neo-classical market economy model in three ways: (1) strengthening the role of government in the areas of formulating & implementing national strategy; (2) increasing social values of business activities through developing new CSV (Creating Shared Value) activities; and (3) creating a habitat for co-development through activating civil society. Welfarenomics also implies promoting a sustainable welfare state through modifying the European welfare state model in three ways: (1) building a foundation for 'workfare' through developing customized job programs for welfare beneficiaries; (2) utilizing various welfare programs as means for social innovation; and (3) improving the effectiveness of welfare programs through applying various management concepts to the field of social welfare.

The presentation will cite some of the recent experiences in Korea, but the concept of welfarenomics can be applied to any country in need of achieving both economic growth and social equity.

For the past four decades, Dr. Sang-Mok Suh has been a policy-making expert in both economics and social welfare. After receiving his PhD in economics from Stanford University in 1973, Professor Suh worked at the World Bank for five years and at the Korea Development Institute (KDI), a top South Korean think tank, for ten years as a researcher. His doctoral dissertation was on the relationship between economic growth and income distribution. In 1986, he led the research team at KDI for formulating the National Pension Scheme for Korea. He was vice president of KDI, 1984–1988. As a Korea National Assembly member, 1988–2000, Dr. Suh played the key role of coordinating economic and welfare policies between the ruling party, on the one hand, and the government and opposition parties, on the other. While he was Minister of Social Welfare, 1993–1995, Dr. Suh formulated a comprehensive welfare strategy for Korea for the first time and initiated the Osong Bio Industrial Complex.

Lina Khatib is the co-founding Head of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. She joined Stanford University in 2010 from the University of London where she was an Associate Professor. Her research is firmly interdisciplinary and focuses on the intersections of politics, media, and social factors in relation to the politics of the Middle East. She is also a consultant on Middle East politics and media and has published widely on topics such as new media and Islamism, US public diplomacy towards the Middle East, and political media and conflict in the Arab world, as well as on the political dynamics in Lebanon and Iran. She has an active interest in the link between track two dialogue and democratization policy. She is also a Research Associate at SOAS, University of London, and, from 2010-2012, was a Research Fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School.

Amr Adly has a Ph.D. from the European University Institute-Florence, Department of political and social sciences (Date of completion: September 2010). His thesis topic was "The political economy of trade and industrialization in the post-liberalization period: Cases of Turkey and Egypt". The thesis was published by Routledge in December 2012 under the title of State Reform and Development in the Middle East: The Cases of Turkey and Egypt.

He has several other academic publications that have appeared in the Journal of Business and Politics, Turkish Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies, in addition to articles in several other periodicals and newspapers in English and Arabic.

Before joining Stanford, he worked as a senior researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, heading the unit of social and economic rights, and at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a diplomat.

At Stanford, he is leading a research project on reforming the regulatory environment governing entrepreneurship after the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia, which will result in policy papers as well as conferences in the two countries.

Adel Iskandar is a scholar of media and international communication. He is the author and coauthor of several works including Al-Jazerra: The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism (co-authored with Mohammed el-Naway, Basic Books, 2003). Iskandar's work deals with the intersections of media (pring, electronic, and digital) culture, identity, and politics, and he has lectured extensively on these topics at universateries worldwide. His latest publications include two coedited volumes titled Edward SAid: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation (co-edited with Hakem Rustom, University of California Press, 2010) and Mediating the Arab Uprisings (Tadween, 2013). His just published title the uthored anthology Egypt In Flux: Essay on an unfinished Revolution (OUP/AUC Press, 2013. Iskandar is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University.

Hesham Sallam is a doctoral candidate in government at Georgetown University and co-editor of Jadaliyya ezine. He is former program specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace. His research focuses on Islamist movements and the politics of economic reform in the Arab World. Sallam’s research has previously received the support of the Social Science Research Council and the U.S. Institute of Peace. Past institutional affiliations include Middle East Institute, Asharq Al-Awsat, and the World Security Institute. He is editor of Egypt's Parliamentary Elections 2011-2012: A Critical Guide to a Changing Political Arena (Tadween Publishing, 2013).

Copies of Professor Gumbrecht's latest book After 1945, Latency as Origin of the Present, will be available for purchase at this event by the Stanford University Press.

Co-sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center and the Division of Literatures, Cultures and Languages.

The video of this event may be viewed below: