Experimental policy, price and the provocative state

Adkins, Lisa; Ylöstalo, Hanna

doi:10.1080/1600910x.2018.1494615

Cited by 15 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Experimental activities undertaken outside the confined space of laboratories has received increasing attention by social scientists generally, and science and technology scholars in particular. Concepts such as real-world experiments (Gross and Hoffmann-Riem, 2005;Gross and Krohn, 2005;Levidow and Carr, 2007), in-vivo experiments (Muniesa and Callon, 2007;Callon, 2009;Callon et al, 2009), regulatory experiments (Millo and Lezaun, 2006;Laurent, 2016;Adkins and Ylöstalo, 2018;Jones and Whitehead, 2018) and living experiments (Marres, 2009(Marres, , 2012 all bear witness to the allegedly more recent phenomenon that scientific experiments as well as tests of new technologies are conducted on and withsociety rather than in controlled settings.…”

Section: Real-world Experiments -Leaving the Laboratorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Demonstrating a Flexible Electricity Consumer: Keeping Sight of Sites in a Real-world Experiment

Pallesen

Jacobsen

2021

Science as Culture

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Real-world experiments have become a common method for testing and developing new technologies to decarbonize the energy system. The significance of the site of such experiments is evident yet elusive. A case in point is the Danish island Bornholm, test site for a smart grid experiment involving more than 800 private households. The object of intervention of this experiment is the socalled flexible electricity consumer; a means for countering radical increases in fluctuating, renewable energy that challenges the stability of the electricity system. A flexible consumer adjusts consumption to production rather than the other way. Accordingly, the experiment seeks to knit together the electricity system infrastructure and its users in new ways. The island provides the boundaries for this experiment, all the while it is endowed with multiple politics by its various participants. To the scientists running the experiment, Bornholm is their living laboratory: it provides a partly controllable electricity system upon which to test their reorganized energy system. To local participants, however, the experiment is above all a demonstration of their commitment to the island and its role in a green transition. Finally, during the experiment, the local energy supplier begins to frame the island's energy system and its users as assets; a test island for future participatory experiments. Eventually, the site of this real-world experiment makes a flexible consumer possible as object of intervention, yet at the same time, it transforms the scientific results produced and the identity of the island.

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Section: Real-world Experiments -Leaving the Laboratorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Demonstrating a Flexible Electricity Consumer: Keeping Sight of Sites in a Real-world Experiment

Pallesen

Jacobsen

2021

Science as Culture

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“…This paper only speculates about how the historical and political context in which stress tests are performed shape their reception and legitimacy. But in a time in which public trials and experiments are becoming an increasingly ubiquitous governmental technology (Adkins & Ylöstalo, ), there is an opportunity for sociologists to add a further layer to their research by studying under what conditions tests become a legitimate and credible basis for policymaking. To some extent this recommendation is anticipated by Pinch ().…”

Section: A Predictable Act Of Public Theatre?mentioning

confidence: 99%

What do stress tests test? Experimentation, demonstration, and the sociotechnical performance of regulatory science

Coombs

2020

British Journal of Sociology

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After their successful introduction during the 2007-2009 financial crisis, central bank stress tests were adopted as a fixture of international banking supervision. However, in recent years a new normal has emerged where banks are expected to pass the tests, raising questions about the tests' usefulness and legitimacy. Combining a dramaturgical interpretation of regulatory science with the idea of performativity in the sociology of finance, this article understands stress tests as a sociotechnical Goffmanian performance. With a focus on the Bank of England's program, the paper argues that the Bank's decision to make their tests "predictable" is an attempt to shore up central bank legitimacy by constraining regulatory discretion. This is accomplished through the use of calculative and procedural stage management techniques which allow the Bank to control the contingency of the testing process while demonstrating its objectivity. Nevertheless, the conclusion suggests that in the context of low levels of trust in central banks, routine declarations of "all clear" may undermine public confidence in the tests' credibility and necessity. The study draws on 20 interviews with high-level regulators, financial practitioners and other stakeholders in the Bank of England's stress tests. K E Y W O R D S central banks, finance, legitimacy, performance, regulation, stress testing | 521 COOMBS

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“…By interrogating the diversity of liberalization processes we may identify forms of hybridity that can reduce precarity. However, this depends on whether reforms are driven by social demands and political mobilization, as they were around child poverty through the femocrat experience, or whether they act to extend contestability via price, as Adkins and Ylostalo (2018) fear the Finnish trials suggest. It is useful to remember that the Keynesian institutions of the post-War order themselves took time to develop, did so alongside new technocratic expertise in policy making and statecraft, and always represented a compromise between the needs of capital and the growing power of labour movements.…”

Section: Affluence-testing Universalism and Basic Incomementioning

confidence: 99%

Advancing Universalism in Neoliberal Times? Basic Income, Workfare and the Politics of Conditionality

Spies-Butcher

2019

Critical Sociology

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Workfare is an exemplar of neoliberal welfare reform generating precarity. In response, critics have sought to advance a politics of universalism, through either a return to social democracy or the embrace of a universal basic income. Yet, these responses invoke different understandings of universalism. This paper explores the politics of universalism in the context of neoliberal reform to benefit systems. Using Australia as a case study, it applies a variegated understanding of neoliberalism to identify two distinct reform trajectories for family payments and unemployment benefits. While appearing to follow a common template of liberalization, in practice each trajectory fostered distinct social outcomes and political dynamics. I argue the more inclusive restructuring of family benefits reflected the influence of social movement pressure intersecting with an increasingly pro-competition and technocratic state, producing new, hybrid, patterns of universal social provision similar to forms of basic income. However, in reflecting on these political dynamics I highlight how the mobilization of universalism is contingent on existing welfare institutions, suggesting dangers in applying these lessons more broadly.

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Experimental policy, price and the provocative state

Cited by 15 publications

References 32 publications

Demonstrating a Flexible Electricity Consumer: Keeping Sight of Sites in a Real-world Experiment

Demonstrating a Flexible Electricity Consumer: Keeping Sight of Sites in a Real-world Experiment

What do stress tests test? Experimentation, demonstration, and the sociotechnical performance of regulatory science

Advancing Universalism in Neoliberal Times? Basic Income, Workfare and the Politics of Conditionality

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