Experimentalism

Abstract: In this Article, Professors Dorf and Sabel identify a new form of government, democratic experimentalism, in which power is decentralized to enable citizens and other actors to utilize their local knowledge to fit solutions to their individual circumstances, but in which regional and national coordinating bodies require actors to share their knowledge with others facing similar problems. This information pooling, informed by the example of novel kinds of coordination within and among private firms, both increases the efficiency of public administration by encouraging mutual learning among its parts and heightens its accountability through participation of citizens in the decisions that affect them.In democratic experimentalism, subnational units of government are broadly free to set goals and to choose the means to attain them. Regulatory agencies set and ensure compliance with national objectives by means of bestpractice performance standards based on information that regulated entities provide in return for the freedom to experiment with solutions they prefer. The authors argue that this type of self-government is currently emerging in settings as diverse as the regulation of nuclear power plants, community policing, procurement of sophisticated military hardware, environmental regulation, and child-protective services.The Article claims further that a shift towards democratic experimentalism holds out the promise of reducing the distance between, on the one hand, the Madisonian ideal of a limited government assured by a complex division of powers and, on the other hand, the governmental reality characteristic of the New Deal synthesis, in which an all-powerful Congress delegates much of its authority to expert agencies that are checked by the courts when they infringe individual rights, but are otherwise assumed to act in the public interest. Professors Dorf and Sabel argue that the combination of decentralization and mutual monitoring intrinsic to democratic experimentalism better protects the constitutional ideal than do doctrines offederalism and the separation of powers, so at odds with current circumstances, that courts recognize the futility of applying them consistently in practice by limiting themselves to fitful declarations of their validity in principle.

Abstract: In this Article, Professors Dorf and Sabel identify a new form of government, democratic experimentalism, in which power is decentralized to enable citizens and other actors to utilize their local knowledge to fit solutions to their individual circumstances, but in which regional and national coordinating bodies require actors to share their knowledge with others facing similar problems. This information pooling, informed by the example of novel kinds of coordination within and among private firms, both increases the efficiency of public administration by encouraging mutual learning among its parts and heightens its accountability through participation of citizens in the decisions that affect them.In democratic experimentalism, subnational units of government are broadly free to set goals and to choose the means to attain them. Regulatory agencies set and ensure compliance with national objectives by means of bestpractice performance standards based on information that regulated entities provide in return for the freedom to experiment with solutions they prefer. The authors argue that this type of self-government is currently emerging in settings as diverse as the regulation of nuclear power plants, community policing, procurement of sophisticated military hardware, environmental regulation, and child-protective services.The Article claims further that a shift towards democratic experimentalism holds out the promise of reducing the distance between, on the one hand, the Madisonian ideal of a limited government assured by a complex division of powers and, on the other hand, the governmental reality characteristic of the New Deal synthesis, in which an all-powerful Congress delegates much of its authority to expert agencies that are checked by the courts when they infringe individual rights, but are otherwise assumed to act in the public interest. Professors Dorf and Sabel argue that the combination of decentralization and mutual monitoring intrinsic to democratic experimentalism better protects the constitutional ideal than do doctrines offederalism and the separation of powers, so at odds with current circumstances, that courts recognize the futility of applying them consistently in practice by limiting themselves to fitful declarations of their validity in principle.

Abstract: THE CONCEPT OF THE AVANT-GARDE Prologue Terminological ups-and-downs The two avant-gardes A novel concept, a novel fact THE CONCEPT OF A MOVEMENT Schools and movements The dialectic of movements Activism Antagonism ROMANTICISM AND THE AVANT-GARDE Popularity and unpopularity Romanticism as a precedent Down-with-the-past Anticipations AGONISM AND FUTURISM Nihilism Agonism Futurism Decadence FASHION, TASTE, AND THE PUBLIC Fashion, avant-garde, and stereotype Intelligentsia and elite The intellectual elite The avant-garde and politics THE STATE OF ALIENATION Art and society Psychological and social alienation Econoimic and cultural alienation Stylistic and aesthetic alienation TECHNOLOGY AND THE AVANT-GARDE Experimentalism Scientificism Humorism Nominalistic proof AVANT-GARDE CRITICISM Prerequisites The problem of obscurity Judgment and prejudgment Criticism, right and left AESTHETICS AND POETICS Dehumanization Cerebralism and voluntarism Metaphysics of the metaphor The mystique of purity HISTORY AND THEORY Historical parallels Modernity and modernism The overcoming of the avant-garde Epilogue Bibliography Index

Abstract: The past two decades have seen a wealth of papers on policy diffusion and policy transfer. In the first half, this paper reviews some of the trends in the literature by looking backwards to the political science diffusion literature, and forwards to the expanding multi-disciplinary social science literatures on policy ‘learning’, ‘mobilities’ and ‘translation’ which qualify many of the rationalist assumptions of the early diffusion/transfer literatures. These studies stress the complexity of context that modifies exports of policy and the need for interpretation or experimentalism in the assemblage of policy. The second half of the paper focuses on role of international organisations and non-state actors in transnational transfer in the spread of norms, standard setting and development of professional communities or networks that promote harmonisation and policy coordination. The ‘soft’ transfer of ideas and information via networks whether they be personal, professional or electronic is rapid and frequen...