Adaptive Political Economy: Toward a New Paradigm
by Yuen Yuen Ang
Abstract
The conventional paradigm in political economy routinely
treats living, complex, adaptive social systems as machine-like objects. This
has driven political economists to over-simplify big, complex social processes
using mechanical models, or to ignore them altogether. In development, this has
led to theoretical dead ends, trivial agendas, or failed public policies. I
propose an alternative paradigm: adaptive political economy. It recognizes that
social systems are complex, not complicated; complexity can be ordered, not
messy; and social scientists should be developing the concepts, methods, and
theories to illuminate the order of complexity, rather than over-simplifying
it. I illustrate one application of adaptive political economy by mapping the
coevolution of economic and institutional change. This approach yields fresh,
important conclusions that mechanical, linear models of development have
missed, including that market-building institutions look and function
differently from market-sustaining ones.