Can policy experiments achieve policy change? The politics of experimentation in Canadian cultural policy

This article examines the relationship between policy experiments, a form of policy innovation, and policy change. Despite a great deal of scholarship on experiments, little is known about how experiments lead to change. For example, what factors make change more likely? How can experimentation best be governed so as to lead to policy change? These questions are answered using data from a case study of 45 policy experiments in Canadian arts and cultural policy. The article highlight six factors crucial to enabling mainstreaming and scaling in this case: leadership, the scope of experiments, congruence with existing policy priorities, alignment with an existing modernization program, expanded relationships and stakeholder collaboration, and creative space. Each of these factors is linked to one or more of McFadgen’s (Ecol Soc 24:30, 2019) four pathways to policy change via policy experiments. The article’s findings have broader implications for the study and understanding of how to achieve change in risk-averse policy settings.