The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations provide normative orientation for many national and regional governments as well as actors from industry and other parts of the civil society. There is a growing consensus that the corresponding transformation processes needed – e.g., in the field of production and consumption patterns (SDG 12) – have to be fostered by a corresponding institutional framework. Properly designed experiments that generate a learning system for all actors involved may be an important building block. Based on an interdisciplinary approach, we provide an overview of the various terminologies for experimentation currently discussed in the social sciences, derive common criteria for a broader approach to the concept of “regulatory experimentation” in reflexive governance structures and present a novel conceptual framework for analysing empirical studies of regulatory experiments.

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Regulatory experiments can be useful to guide complex transitions in the field of sustainable development. They help to understand the effects of policies and regulations and offer insights into the dynamics of social processes. Empirical studies analyzing heterogeneous samples of regulatory experiments are missing. This paper uses a qualitative content analysis to examine 26 international cases of regulatory experiments in the field of sustainable development. The results show the diversity of existing regulatory experiments in terms of their design. We use the results to formulate implications on how to use regulatory experiments that facilitate learning processes.

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