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The Democratic Virtues of Randomized Trials

  • Ana Tanasoca EMAIL logo and Andrew Leigh ORCID logo
Published/Copyright: February 17, 2023

Abstract

Democratic alternation in power involves uncontrolled policy experiments. One party is elected on one policy platform that it then implements. Things may go well or badly. When another party is elected in its place, it implements a different policy. In imposing policies on the whole community, parties in effect conduct non-randomized trials without control groups. In this paper, we endorse the general idea of policy experimentation but we also argue that it can be done better by deploying in policymaking randomized controlled trials. We focus primarily on the democratic benefits of using randomized trials in policymaking and on how they can enhance the democratic legitimacy of policy. We argue that randomized trials resonate well with three key democratic principles: non-arbitrariness, revisability and public justification. Randomized trials’ contribution to non-arbitrariness and revisability is not unique; other types of evidence can advance these democratic principles as well. But through their peculiar democratic scrutability, randomized trials are well-equipped to contribute to the public justifiability of policy.


Corresponding author: Ana Tanasoca, Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University, North Ryde NSW 2109, Sydney, Australia, E-mail:
Ana Tanasoca and Andrew Leigh contributed equally to this work and author ordering was randomised using the American Economic Association’s Author Randomisation Tool.

Funding source: Macquarie University Research Fellowship provided to Ana Tanasoca.

Acknowledgements

We thank Bob Goodin, Jeevan Haikerwal, John Langmore and participants at a Melbourne University symposium on ‘Social Liberalism in Contested Space’ for valuable comments on earlier drafts.

  1. Research funding: Ana Tanasoca acknowledges financial support from a Macquarie University Research Fellowship.

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Published Online: 2023-02-17
Published in Print: 2024-04-25

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