Experiments almost always begin out of curiosity, of wonderment, of wondering—whatever it is, wondering what this is, wondering how this works, wondering if there’s a different way of doing this, wondering if we change this thing, what would the outcome be.
So in order to give a little structure to our wonderment, we use a simple method that says, well, here’s what I’m going to test for. If we change this thing, then A is going to happen, and here’s why I think so. We’re going to talk to other people who have carried out similar experiments. We’re going to look at where their points of departure were, what their rationale was. I say, “Okay, well, now that I’ve got a pretty good sense of what others have done and why they’ve done it, and what the results of their experiments were, then I’m going to try this experiment.” Experimenting is trying. I’m going to try this, and then I’ll see what happens.
I’m not sure that the experimental method is designed or meant to be predictive. It’s meant to be carried out to see what happens, and what happens helps us determine whether the premise of the experiment and the outcome of the experiment establish some causality—that it’s not happenstance, that it’s not correlation, but it’s causation.
So there are scientific experiments, there are social experiments, and there are political experiments, and they all follow this pattern. We’ve seen what others have done and what has happened when they did that. We think that if we do it this way, or if the premise of what we do is this, then it’s going to lead to a more desirable outcome. And if the outcome is social, as in a social experiment, then it is up to the people affected by the outcome to witness what has happened to them, what did not happen to them, whether they consider that this is better or not, and why. The same applies for political experiments, which are just a subset of social experiments.
That’s what an experiment is. An experiment is when it’s your turn to try something because you have a different idea. And it’s your turn because your idea represents most of what the voters wanted, so you try that out. It’s more of an experiment when you’re genuinely trying to figure out what works and what leads to better outcomes for those involved.
The experimental nature diminishes when feedback from participants becomes less important. It fades further when what’s implemented strays from what voters thought they were choosing. And perhaps it’s least experimental when certainty overshadows curiosity, when we become more committed to our theories than to understanding their real effects on people’s lives.
At that point, what was once an experiment becomes something else: an assertion, an imposition, or a doctrine masquerading as discovery.
This is exactly what concerns me about the American experiment today.
When the founders launched this nation, they weren’t implementing a proven system. They were testing a hypothesis: that a government derived from the consent of the governed could endure and prosper. The Constitution wasn’t a sacred text. It was a working document, meant to evolve as experience revealed its strengths and weaknesses.
But experiments remain experiments only when they stay responsive to results. When Americans stop showing up, when representatives forget who they serve, when guardrails against human nature erode, the experiment starts hardening into something else. Something rigid. Something resistant to the feedback that could improve it.
The promise of the American system was never that it would be flawless but that it could self-correct. The problem emerges when that capacity weakens; when those elected become more invested in winning than in ensuring the system works for ordinary people.
To call oneself an experiment is one thing. To keep experimenting is another.
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the Democracy Series
- Democracy’s Forgotten Basics
- The Experiment ← You are here
- The Slow Unraveling of Democracy
- The Totalitarian Self