What do voters think about policy experimentation?

Abstract: Among social scientists there is broad agreement that policy experimentation can help governments to make better policy decisions. By introducing a new policy first on a small scale for a random selection of the target population, a lot can be learned about the effectiveness of the policy and possible side-effects. However, policy experimentation is often met with criticism and many politicians hesitate to propose it. Some politicians believe that voters massively oppose policy experimentation and do not propose it out of fear to lose elections. In this study, we use new and unique survey data from a representative sample of the Dutch population to study what voters really think about policy experimentation. Do politicians become more or less popular when proposing policy experiments? Among what kind of voters are policy experiments (un)popular? What concerns do voters have about policy experiments? And why do they think politicians do not propose policy experiments more often than they do now?

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