Aspalter asserts that the belief that the development of high standard welfare states is primarily based on the ideology that pro-welfare, mostly leftwing, parties dominate welfare state literature and common thought in the Western world. Instead, in this examination of the welfare states of East Asia, Aspalter and his contributors show that they grew as naturally as they did in most Western countries, but that the reasons for this are other than pro-welfare ideologies. The five welfare states--Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore--are residual welfare states with low levels of w.