Inaugural recipient in 2020, awarded by the American Political Science Association “to a scholar up to ten years post-PhD whose work has made impactful empirical, theoretical and/or methodological contributions to the study of comparative politics”

The award committee received and considered many nominations but in the end we decided to present the very first Theda Skocpol Emerging Scholar award to Professor Yuen Yuen Ang.

ANG’s scholarship evokes the spirit of Theda Skocpol’s contributions to political science. Like Skocpol, her work pushes us to rethink existing theories, concepts, and categories in comparative politics. Ang has written two books and numerous other publications, and was named a Carnegie Fellow. Her first book, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, was widely recognized for its theoretical and empirical advances, winning the Peter Katzenstein Prize in Political Economy and the Viviana Zelizer Prize in Economic Sociology. It was also named among the “Best Books of 2017” in Foreign Affairs.

The book tackles THE central question of political economy of development: what are the conditions, causes, and processes that can lead countries out of poverty? In recent years, scholars have emphasized the importance of state strength and “getting institutions right.” But ANG goes in a different direction and turns the conventional wisdom that weak institutions hold countries back – upside down. Instead she argues that shows that WEAK institutions actually facilitate growth. This perspective has resonated among experts with deep knowledge of China, has attracted significant attention across disciplines and from the policy community too, and generates far-ranging implications for theories of comparative political science.

Her work represents the best of our field. Congratulations to Prof. Ang!

The Katzenstein Prize, in honor of Peter J. Katzenstein, the Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies at Cornell University, recognizes an outstanding first book in International Relations, Comparative Politics, or Political Economy. 

For How China Escaped the Poverty Trap 

In How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, Yuen Yuen Ang offers a revisionist theoretical framework that grapples with complexities of institutional adaptation alongside detailed analyses of sub-national variation in development outcomes. In contrast to conventional wisdom that good governance is a requisite for ameliorating poverty, she points out how weak institutions can, at times, allow for innovations in the development of markets. Thus Ang’s project contributes to multiple debates, including but not limited to China. Theoretically, her systematic engagement with diverse literatures circumvents disagreement over which came first, democracy or development, to make a field-shifting move to non-linear complex processes. How China Escaped the Poverty Trap goes far beyond saying context matters to show how non-linear processes are simultaneously place-specific in their manifestations (e.g. China) yet general (to a wide range of contexts). In addition, Ang’s research offers an exemplar of how to move beyond methodological nationalism through attention to sub-national variation. Beyond area specialists, anyone concerned with institutions, development, or the role of China in the world, should read this elegantly written book.

Awarded by the American Sociological Association (see list of past awardees)

For How China Escaped the Poverty Trap 

Note: With special thanks to the late Prof. Marc Steinberg, chair of the Zelizer Prize Committee. Although we have never met and will never meet, we share an intellectual connection, and I am forever grateful for his appreciation of this book.

In How China Escaped the Poverty Trap Yuen Yuen Ang offers a bold and innovative framework for understanding economic development, one that challenges current wisdom from modernization and institutionalist perspectives.  The later, she argues, are simply too linear, top-down and errantly predicated on inductive modelling from Western contexts that make little sense for the global south.  She founds her alternative in complexity theory; envisioning economic development as a recursive and dynamic process in which state and markets co-evolve through innovation that cannot be prescribed.  

Ang both theorizes and demonstrates how this process is bootstrapped using weak institutions at all levels of governance.  Developmental paths are formed through what she terms directed improvisation, the process by which the state sets some clear makers for policy makers at lower levels, but otherwise provides incentives and support to use local knowledge and experimentation.  This allows for necessary variation across the economic landscape and in different industries, the capacity for bureaucrats and entrepreneurs to select novel combinations of strategies, and the pursuit of niche economies that provide for virtuous growth cycles with ramifications for the larger economy.  

In a series of richly detailed case studies Ang demonstrates how success was nurtured when goals were initially narrow and institutional transformation broad but gradual, when bureaucrats at all levels were incentivized to become entrepreneurial stakeholders, and when the boogie of corruption is harnessed to build momentum.  

She carefully analyzes these dynamics at the macro-, meso- and micro-levels.  Through these case studies Ang additionally examines how the unleashing first of the coastal economies provided for cascading effects on their inland counterparts.  She is also sensitive to how this co-evolutionary process produces systemic problems with respect to the environment and inequality.  To add depth through comparison she also applies her model to disparate cases such as medieval Europe, the antebellum post-depression United States and Nigeria’s Nollywood film industry.  

How China Escaped the Poverty Trap truly offers game-changing ideas for the analysis and implementation of socio-economic development and should have a major impact across many social sciences.

The Alice Amsden Book Award is given annually for the best book that breaks new ground in the study of economic behavior and/or its policy implications with regard to societal, institutional, historical, philosophical, psychological, and ethical factors. Awarded by Society for Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE). 

For China's Gilded Age

The book investigates the paradox of how China has been able to grow so fast for so long despite the prevalence of widespread corruption. Yuen Yuen Ang challenges the idea of Chinese exceptionalism regarding corruption by offering an insightful historical comparison between contemporary China and the nineteenth century United States during the Gilded Age. She develops an innovative methodology to capture the multidimensional nature of corruption, which extends the contribution of her research well beyond China, helping to disentangle the relationship between corruption and development more broadly. 

She does not only break down different types of corruption in a conceptually nuanced manner but gathers data from an impressively broad range of sources – including opinion surveys, historical documents, interviews, macro-economic statistics – to provide robust evidence for the impact of various forms of corruption on development. The tight organization of a complex argument, the confident treatment of vast amounts of data, and the lucid writing make the book an informative and engaging read. Yuen Yuen Ang’s eclectic intellectual and methodological approach also ensures the book’s appeal to a broad interdisciplinary audience. 

Every two years, SIOE hands out the Douglass North Best Book Award for the best book in institutional and organizational economics published during the previous two years. Awarded by Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics (SIOE)

For China's Gilded Age

Although the competition was fierce, committee members ultimately reached a consensus decision: This year’s winner of the 2022 Douglass North Best Book Prize is The Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Growth and Vast Corruption, by Yuen Yuen Ang. 

As members of SIOE know, the prevailing view of corruption is that it stifles economic growth. Yet counterexamples exist, even if we often think of them as exceptions that prove the rule. For example, the “robber baron” age in 19th-century U.S., or China over the last 40 years. Dr. Ang focuses squarely on trying to unravel the seeming paradox of growth coexisting with corruption. In doing so, she develops provocative new theory to distinguish among different types of corruption, each of which has a distinct impact on economic activity. She combines this with novel exploration of data to derive support for her theoretical arguments. Ultimately, Dr. Ang delivers a compelling explanation for the apparent paradox of China’s high growth and high corruption – based on the specific nature of corruption in current China – and demonstrates that similar conditions existed in the U.S. during its 19th-century “robber baron” period, thus suggesting that such “exceptions” can be explained theoretically. 

This outstanding book has already made substantial waves in academia and in policy circles, and we are confident that it will influence the direction of research on corruption for years to come.

We thank Professor Ang for producing this wonderful, thought-provoking book, and we are delighted for SIOE to honor The Gilded Age with the 2022 North Book Award. And, we encourage all SIOE members to read The Gilded Age and share it with their friends and loved ones!

Honorable Mention, Barrington Moore Best Book in Comparative Historical Sociology Committee, American Sociological Association (2021) 

For China's Gilded Age

Aside from making an important contribution to the analysis of the relationship between corruption and capitalism, we appreciated your innovative conceptualization of corruption, careful attention to matters of measurement and comparative analysis, and combination of clear writing and thoughtful presentation.