Chapter 40 Policy lessons from development experience since the Second World War This chapter presents the evolution of thought regarding development policy and the evidence that challenged development thinking. The chapter focuses on the interaction between experience with development policy and development thought as a prelude to the more detailed studies of individual aspects of economic policy and experience that follow. The chapter starts with the ideas and thinking that underlay the initial formulation of development policy. The overriding influence of the experience with early development policies is a major factor affecting policies and thinking about development and as such is important in its own right. The experience of developing countries both the success stories (primarily in East Asia) and the stories of those countries whose growth stalled in the 1980s is reviewed in the chapter with respect to the influence of success or failure on policy formulation. The theory and evidence regarding alternative strategies to undertake policy reform are reviewed in the chapter. The coherence of policy and the political economy of economic policy formulation and execution are also addressed in the chapter.