The views expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views of the SNF Agora Institute or Johns Hopkins University.
Author: Yuen Yuen Ang
Adaptive Political Economy (APE) is a paradigm proposed by Yuen Yuen Ang for studying political economies as complex adaptive systems, rather than as mechanical objects, and for developing concepts and methods that illuminate complex social features such as adaptation, coevolution, and uncertainty, rather than simplifying them away. Ang draws an ontological distinction between complex (systems like trees) and complicated (machines like toasters). She explains its implications for how social scientists study human agency (influence vs. control), indeterminacy (uncertainty vs. risks), and structures (institutions vs. meta-institutions).
Excerpting from How China Escaped the Poverty Trap (2016), this World Politics article (2024) highlights one application of APE: Coevolutionary Development, demonstrated in China and Nigeria.
APE is one pillar of Ang’s larger paradigm: AIM—Adaptive, Inclusive, Moral Political Economy.
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