The democratic world is stuck in a self-destructive, self-reinforcing loop: unforced policy errors lead to desperate gambles both by politicians and voters, leading to yet more unforced policy errors. I think it’s safe to say that there is room for improvement. But what might a better path look like?
民主世界陷入了一个自我毁灭、自我强化的循环：非强制性的政策错误导致政客和选民孤注一掷，进而导致更多非强制性的政策错误。我认为可以肯定地说，还有改进的空间。但更好的道路可能是什么样的呢？
It sometimes pays to look for a very different perspective, and I’ve found one in an “abbreviated and extemporaneous” lecture given in 1971 to the American Psychological Association, unpublished for many years, and yet even today worth serious attention. That lecture was titled “Methods for the Experimenting Society” and it was given by an academic, Donald T Campbell. It’s partly a manifesto arguing for the use of more rigorous randomised trials in evaluating public policy, but it’s much more than that.
有时候，寻找一个截然不同的视角是值得的，我在1971年美国心理学会(American Psychological Association)的一场“简短即兴”演讲中找到了这样一个视角。这场演讲多年来未公开发表，但即使在今天也值得认真关注。演讲的题目是“实验社会的方法”，由学者唐纳德•T•坎贝尔(Donald T Campbell)发表。这不仅仅是一篇倡导在评估公共政策时使用更严格随机试验的宣言，它的意义远不止于此。
Campbell begins: “The experimenting society will be one which will vigorously try out proposed solutions to recurrent problems, which will make hard-headed and multidimensional evaluations of the outcomes, and which will move on to try other alternatives when evaluation shows one reform to have been ineffective or harmful. We do not have such a society today.”
坎贝尔开始说道：“实验性社会将积极尝试针对反复出现的问题提出的解决方案，对结果进行冷静和多维的评估，并在评估表明某项改革无效或有害时继续尝试其他替代方案。我们今天没有这样的社会。”