Directed Improvisation: United States as Demonstration

Term

Directed Improvisation: United States as Demonstration

Idea level

Application: Development

Definition

Directed Improvisation: United States as Demonstration refers to Yuen Yuen Ang’s use of twentieth-century U.S. innovation policy as a comparative reference, showing that directed improvisation is not unique to China. Citing Block and Keller, Ang highlights that American innovation operated through “coordinated decentralization,” illustrating how directed improvisation can take different forms in a market-based democracy as well as in China’s non-democratic context.

Sources

First articulation:

• Ang, Yuen Yuen. “The False Choice Between Neoliberalism and Interventionism.” Project Syndicate (2023), drawing on How China Escaped the Poverty Trap.

Interview and applied reflection:

• Ang, Yuen Yuen. “Open Questions: How China Can Turn Polycrisis into Polytunity.” South China Morning Post interview (28 July 2025).

Cited source for US case:

• Block, F.L., & Keller, M.R. (2011). State of Innovation: The U.S. Government's Role in Technology Development. Routledge.

Genealogy

[Paradigm] AIM (Adaptive, Inclusive, Moral Political Economy)

→ [Pillar] Adaptive Political Economy (APE)

→ [Concept] Influence vs. Control

→ [Model] Directed Improvisation

→ [Application: Innovation] U.S. demonstrates directed improvisation through “coordinated decentralization” innovation

→ [Pillar] Moral

→ [Application] By showing that U.S. and China share fundamental governing logic, overturns binary narrative that U.S. neoliberalism is normal while China is abnormal; levels intellectual playing field.

Quotes

“The US government’s role in supporting innovation, which sociologists Fred Block and Matthew Keller called ‘coordinated decentralization,’ is another example of directed improvisation… But this success is barely known to the public, because, it ‘does not fit with the claims of market fundamentalism.’”

- Ang, “Neoliberalism and Interventionism” (2023), drawing on How China Escaped the Poverty Trap

“The impression that Chinese innovation is all top-down whereas American innovation is all bottom-up is false. In fact, it’s different degrees of ‘directed improvisation’ using different tools.”

“Of course, there are also large differences. The Chinese context is highly state-centric, with the central and local governments playing an outsize role, whereas in the US system, the government sees and calls itself a coordinator.”

- Ang, Interview at SCMP (2025)