| Sumario: | This paper examines a key concept of democratic experimentalism, asking what is a "democratic experiment"? Starting with Donald Campbell's argument in favor of an experimenting society, I critically examine whether randomized controlled experiments should be the gold standard for democratic experimentalism. I next suggest that a more compatible conception of experimentalism might be found in recent work on design experiments that iteratively improve design through real world application. Avoiding verificationism, Dewey's treatment of experimentalism as a basis for modern democratic authority adopts a more general interpretation of experimentation as a form of cooperative inquiry. Finally, I examine the meaning and application of experimentalism in the area of adaptive management, an approach to natural resource management. This analysis finds many of the same tensions in practice as they are described in theory, particularly between "experimental" and "collaborative" forms of adaptive management, pointing to the challenges of making experiments democratic.
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