Experimental policy, price and the provocative state

Abstract

ABSTRACTThere is increasing recognition that the experiment has emerged as a preferred mode of policy making in advanced liberal states and that policy experiments are operating at the frontier of neoliberal reform processes. In this article, by considering Finland’s recent turn to the experiment, we highlight how this non-conventional mode of policy making is connected to a dimension of change so far missing in analyses of experimentality, namely the activation of contests in regard to price and prices. We emphasize how, via experimental policies, the state is actively engaged in opening out the contestability and unpredictability of price. Recognition of this engagement advances the sociology of price by outlining how the state is proactive in making price a contestable value.