Polycrisis vs. Polytunity: Global Echoes of a New Paradigm

Global voices echo Yuen Yuen Ang’s reframing of polycrisis as polytunity—from Latin America and Asia to Europe and beyond.

When SNF Agora faculty Yuen Yuen Ang first encountered the buzzword “polycrisis”–a term used to describe the convergence of threats facing humanity—she reacted with a mixture of frustration and bafflement.  

Frustration, because the term amounted to little more than fear-naming. As Adam Tooze, who popularized it at the World Economic Forum admitted: “Here is your fear, here is something that fundamentally distresses you. That is what it might be called.”  

Bafflement, because despite offering neither a diagnosis of root causes nor new paths forward, polycrisis nevertheless took off worldwide.  

So why has “polycrisis” gone viral? Because it is a descriptor that the establishment can embrace without challenging itself. It claims to be global when the voices, experiences, and priorities it reflects are overwhelmingly Eurocentric. This runs counter to the values of global democracy.  

In response, Ang coined the term “polytunity” in 2024 as a counternarrative–reframing disruption not as paralysis but as a generational opportunity for deep transformation. She first introduced it publicly at the UNDP Global Leadership Retreat, speaking on a keynote panel, “Development in a Time of Disruption,” alongside Achim Steiner, then UNDP’s Chief Administrator. More recently, in 2025, she advanced the polytunity agenda at the World Economic Forum’s “Future of Growth Initiative,” addressing policy, business, and civic leaders.   

Defining polytunity in The Ideas Letter (September 2025), Ang writes: 

If polycrisis names the breakdown of the old order, polytunity names the opening it creates. 

If polycrisis is Eurocentric, polytunity strives to be truly global. It exposes the false globalism of dominant frameworks and centers the marginalized majority.

If polycrisis is therapy through fear-naming, polytunity is a call to action. 

In the following table, she contrasts polycrisis and polytunity from five dimensions: emphasis, perspective, diagnosis, effect, and positionality.  

Source: Adapted from “Polytunity: The Future of Development” (Ang 2025)

Polytunity is not just a slogan, vague optimism, or “crisis-in-opportunity” vibes. It is a call to construct new research agendas and policy approaches, grounded in Ang’s decades-long, award-winning work on AIM (Adaptive, Inclusive, Moral) Political Economy.  

• Adaptive means replacing machine-thinking with systems-thinking, seeing societies not as toasters with buttons, but as living forests of trees. 

• Inclusive means rejecting the idea that all societies must mold themselves to a single template.  

• Moral means acknowledging how power asymmetries shape the production of knowledge. 

In her earlier books, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap (2016) and China’s Gilded Age (2020), Ang applied AIM in the context of post-1980s China. She also extended the analysis to late medieval Europe, 19th-20th century America, and post-1990s Nigeria, showing that across diverse settings, development processes are coevolutionary rather than linear (Adaptive), and they begin with “using what you have,” not imitation of Western templates (Inclusive and Moral).  

Ang’s “call of polytunity” has drawn echoes from across the world. Below are some highlights.  

Dominican Republic: Former Vice President Margarita Cedeño dedicated an entire op-ed in Listín Diario (2024) in response to polytunity and AIM. She introduced Ang’s paradigm to Latin American readers through the Spanish title “Poliunidad,” noting (translated into English):  

“Ang’s starting point is clear: the way we think about and implement development is anchored in a mechanical, industrial-colonial paradigm inherited from the 18th to 20th centuries… In contrast, Ang proposes what she calls an Adaptive, Inclusive, and Moral (AIM) political economy…  

The concept of polycrisis remains an elitist and pessimistic diagnosis… For Ang, this is a bias that limits global political imagination. Overcoming it requires not just new ideas, but new voices leading the debate. 

Ultimately, moving from polycrisis to polyunity is not just a semantic exercise. It is an invitation to change the paradigm from which we interpret reality and design the future.” 

India: On his Substack Bhumics, Rajesh Kasturirangan connected Ang’s thinking to the unorthodox economist Albert Hirschman:

“Ang’s critique of development economics is devastating… Against this, Ang proposes studying development as coevolutionary rather than linear… It begins with ‘using what you have’—repurposing weak, wrong, or unorthodox means to build new markets… This is where Albert O. Hirschman becomes newly relevant.” 

Hong Kong: In a feature interview, the South China Morning Post linked polytunity to Ang’s earlier work on China’s “directed improvisation” style of development. 

Canada: The futures-thinking newsletter Sentiers drew parallels between polytunity and “jugaad innovation,” a practice of unconventional, frugal innovation emerging from India. 

United Kingdom: The Development Studies Association hosted Ang’s keynote, “From Polycrisis to Polytunity,” in June 2025. Professor Aurélie Charles at the University of Bath remarked: “Inspiring and profound keynote on the need to move from a Eurocentric view of polycrisis to a unified global view of polytunity.” 

For updates, follow Ang’s new Substack Polytunity, where she will share her writing as well as new thinking and action from global changemakers.