Digital Commons Network^™

Laboratories Of Destitution: Democratic Experimentalsim And The Failure Of Antipoverty Law, David A. Super

Faculty Scholarship

Democratic experimentalism, the procedural component of the “new governance” movement, has won widespread acceptance in calling for decentralization, deliberation, deregulation, and experimentation. Democratic experimentalists claim that this approach offers pragmatic solutions to social problems. Although the democratic experimentalist movement formally began only a decade ago, antipoverty law has reflected its major principles since the 1960s. This experiment has gone badly, weakening antipoverty programs. Key elements of this participatory approach to antipoverty law – decentralization, privatization, and the substitution of ad hoc problemsolving for individual rights – all contributed to the calamity that low-income people suffered during and after Hurricane Katrina. …