Regulatory experiments: genetically modified crops and financial derivatives on trial

Experiments play a crucial role in contemporary policy-making, yet their political and epistemological dimensions have been neglected in studies of regulatory practice. This article offers an initial examination of the uses of experiments in regulation. It analyses two examples: the partial release of genetically modified organisms in the UK Farm-Scale Evaluations, and the unleashing of option contracts in the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. We analyze both cases in terms of the dialectic they institute between the ‘experimental gap’ created to observe these regulatory objects under controlled conditions, and the need to ‘project’ the experimental evidence onto the world at large. In our two examples, experiments fail to produce a final consensus or definitive certainty, but serve to translate conflicts into amenable forms of uncertainty. Regulatory experiments should thus be seen as tests on the governability of new objects, and should be open to further scrutiny by interested parties.