Policy Experimentation is a research approach currently funded by the EU (2019) and the European Commission, and promoted by the OECD (Burns & Köster, 2016). Experimentation is seen as a gold standard and powerful tool to identify the impact and effectiveness of a programme, which could lead to reform and optimisation of the current state of the art. Policy experiments are coordinated activities aimed at developing novel policy options that feed into formal policy making and are then replicated on a larger scale. With (quasi-)experiments as the methodologically preferred research orientation to inform decisions about change, the idea of policy direction and control is linked to scientific research. Campbell (1969) describes it as an "experimental approach to social reform (...) to cure specific social problems" (p. 409) in modern nations. This proposal explores Campbell's idea of 'reform as experiment', associated with the 'experimenting society' (1969; see also 1991, 1997), in comparison with contemporary European knowledge policy. The question is to what extent Campbell's idea of the experimenting society is reactualised by the EU's incentive systems. The question of how science and educational research in particular, society and statehood are linked and what idea of education is represented in this conception is explored in greater depth. The approach is based on a long tradition of American psychology and the idea of society as a natural environment for natural (quasi-)experiments. It is shown that the policy experiment addresses the uncertainty and complexity of educational change by informing policy-making and referring to controlled and evaluated settings. Both the successful implementation and the failure of a reform are thus to be studied and fed back as policy learning. However, with the funding of transnational projects, a transnational perspective is added to "enable mutual learning and support evidence-based policy at the European level" (EU 2020). In this context, the idea of a "self-experimental society" (Gross & Krohn 2005; Campbell 1997) is gaining importance and thus policy experimentation is itself a strategy for welfare state reform (cf. Sabato, Vanhercke, Verschraegen 2017). Against the background of the framed epistemological politics of the symposium, the entanglement of policy experimentation and (educational) research can be conceptualised as a form of epistemic governance aimed at the best and most (cost-)effective reform (Alasuutari & Qadir 2014; Sadoff 2014).

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