Social Experiments and Public Policy

Utilization of Evaluation Results in Policy-Making Aad Administration – A Challenge to Political Science Research

“…A striking example can be found in the concept of and call for "reforms as experiments" as voiced and propagated by Donald Campbell (Campbell, 1969). His concept of experimental policy-making is based on the idea that the decision to adopt a certain policy or measure should finally be taken only after it was exposed to an "experimental real test" and to a rigorous scientific evaluation (for an overview see Hellstern & Wollmann, 1983;Danielson, 2007). The principle , 433-458…”

“…1 Max Weber spoke of the "intellectualist rationalization through science" 2 (Weber, 1922, p. 593) and Harold Lasswell proclaimed "policy sciences" as an all-out effort to mobilize the societal and interdisciplinary knowledge to promote political and social progress (Lasswell, 1951, p. 3; see also Wagner, Wittrock & Wollmann, 1991). The idea of a "(social) scientification" of the political and societal activities has been voiced by Donald Campbell in his call for "reforms as experiments" (Campbell, 1969;see also Hellstern & Wollmann, 1983;Danielson, 2007) which aimed at guiding policy-making by scientifically accompanied and evaluated "social experiments". Moreover, the maxim of "evidence-based policy-making" that was advanced by the New Labour Government in the U.K. in the late 1990s (Cabinet Office, 1999) 3 and has since gained (almost inflationary) international currency is targeted at grounding political decision-making on empirical evidence.…”