Fairy Tales of Western Development [Political Economy]
Term
Fairy Tales of Western Development (Political Economy)
Idea level
Others: Decolonizing critique
Definition
Fairy Tales of Western Development, a decolonizing critique advanced by Yuen Yuen Ang, challenges idealized, selective narratives that attribute Western prosperity and state-building to economic and political liberalism. Drawing on historical evidence, Ang shows that Western development also rested on non-democratic and extractive practices—such as colonial expropriation, taxless finance, and access-money corruption—challenging the idea that non-Western societies like China are deviations from virtuous Western norms.
Sources
First formal articulation:
Ang, Y.Y. Fairy Tales of Western Development: The Non-Democratic Origins of Fiscal Capacity in Britain, the US, and China. Chapter in Political Economy Rebooted (2026); posted on SSRN (2025). Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5661111.
Earlier articulations:
Ang, Y.Y. “The 2024 Nobel Laureates [AJR] Are Not Only Wrong About China, But Also About the West.” The Ideas Letter, October 31, 2024.
Ang, Y.Y. China’s Gilded Age (2020).
Ang, Y.Y. How China Escaped the Poverty Trap (2016). Chapter 7.
Genealogy
[Paradigm] AIM (Adaptive, Inclusive, Moral Political Economy)
→ [Pillar] Moral—interrogating normative bias, power, and positionality in dominant political-economic narratives
→ [Concept] Fairy Tales of Western Development: Critique canonical theories that attribute Western development to good governance while downplaying dark histories and historical contingency.
→ [Application: Fiscal Capacity] Revised historical narratives about fiscal capacity building in 17-18th century Britain and 19th-century America, with parallels in post-1990s China (Ang 2026, 2016).
→ [Application: Development] Challenged AJR’s claim that “inclusive, non-extractive” institutions made European settler colonies wealthy; highlight instead colonial extraction (Ang 2024).
→ [Application: Corruption] Challenged belief that prosperous economies like America are free of corruption, whereas China is an abnormality (Ang 2020).
Quotes
“It would be too simplistic to equate democracy with good institutions and to draw a linear causal arrow from democracy itself to capitalist success… American history presents a story about a collective of politicians and people who learn to make democracy work, not a statement that democracy always and by itself works.”
– Ang, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap (2016), p. 232
“Upon closer examination, the econometric and historical evidence for AJR’s claim that inclusive, non-extractive institutions caused Western prosperity is actually shaky, if not cherry-picked… Insisting that an obvious competing explanation—extraction—isn’t important ‘for our story’ doesn’t make it go away.”
– Ang, The 2024 Nobel Laureates (2024)
“Victors do not merely write history; they also write political-economy theories and then translate them into global development agendas and field experiments that claim universality and scientific rigor.”
“With that history in mind, why has it been so difficult for developing countries to replicate Europe’s supposed path of “democracy → social contract → fiscal capacity”? The short answer: that was not the path Europe actually took… Partial fairy tales about former empires cannot produce meaningful policy lessons for postcolonial nations.”
“By exposing the partial ‘fairy tales’ that have long anchored Western narratives of state-building and development, this article demonstrates how to decolonize political economy in practice.”
- Ang, Fairy Tales of Western Development (2026)
Concept Constellation
Across Ang’s work, Fairy Tales of Western Development consistently co-appears with the following concepts and analytic themes: