Experimental climate governance as organized irresponsibility? A case for revamping governing (also) through government

Abstract

Experiments in socio-ecological change—real-world laboratories, testbeds, niche experiments, grassroots innovations—are commonly framed as a particularly promising way to respond to pressing challenges such as climate change. In contrast to top-down, expert- and techno-scientific innovation-driven, one-size-fits-all environmental interventions, experimental governance promises to work in the concrete rather than the abstract; to resonate with citizens instead of alienating them, and to give ample space to learning by surprise at a distance from regulatory controls. Without questioning the virtues of experimental governance tout court, this article challenges boosterish accounts of it by arguing and illustrating that “going experimental” may also run a risk. The palpable risk here is fostering a (local) government’s “liberation from responsibility” for tackling the climate crisis by instead encouraging a wide array of local, experimental interventions at a distance to accounting for how particular interventions relate to larger political goals—arguably a form of “organized irresponsibility.” Three common implications of the “rise of experimentation” in governing climate change contribute to this risk: the sidelining of public authority as a specific and key agent of change; the discrediting of top-down governance as undemocratic, if not authoritarian; and the sidestepping of societal change through collectively-binding political decisions. By combining empirical and theoretical insights, this article makes the case for revamping “governing (also) through government.” It does so by offering ways of rethinking public authority, top-down governance, and change by political decision without reasserting what experimentation seeks to transcend: state- and expert-centric, undemocratic, and sovereigntist forms of governing.