Moving beyond the obsession with nudging individual behaviour: Towards a broader understanding of Behavioural Public Policy
Published date | 01 July 2020 |
Date | 01 July 2020 |
DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0952076719889090 |
Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Moving beyond the
obsession with nudging
individual behaviour:
Towards a broader
understanding of
Behavioural Public Policy
Benjamin Ewert
Department of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts and
Humanities, University of Siegen, Germany
Abstract
Behavioural interventions are much more than ‘just another policy tool’. Indeed, the
use of behavioural science has the potential to lead to a wide-ranging reassessment of
policymaking and public administration. However, Behavioural Public Policy remains a
policy paradigm ‘under construction’. This paper seeks to contribute to this develop-
ment process by investigating the conceptual features of advanced Behavioural Public
Policy that go beyond the now familiar notion of nudging individual behavioural change.
It thus seeks to provide more illumination in a debate which currently seems to have
become stuck on the pro and cons of nudging citizens’ individual behaviours. In reality,
Behavioural Public Policy should be seen as a pluralist, non-deterministic and multi-
purpose approach that allows the application of behavioural insights ‘throughout the
policy process’ and in combination with regulatory policies. The paper’s line of argu-
ment unfolds in three steps. First, it explores the policy rationales th at have driven
nudge techniques and also summarises the conceptual, methodological, ethical and
ideological criticisms that have made of it. In a second step, state-of-the-art
Behavioural Public Policy, which claims to be more substantial and wide-ranging
than today’s nudge techniques, is empirically examined through interviews
conducted with global thinkers (academics and practitioners) in the field of behavioural
Corresponding author:
Benjamin Ewert, Department of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Siegen, Adolf-
Reichwein-Str. 2, 57068 Siegen, Germany.
Email: benjamin.ewert@uni-siegen.de
Public Policy and Administration
2020, Vol. 35(3) 337–360
!The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0952076719889090
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insights. Finally, there is a discussion of whether advanced Behavioural Public
Policy could be better suited to withstand the criticisms that have been directed at
nudge techniques.
Keywords
Behavioural insights, Behavioural Public Policy, expert interviews, nudge, policymaking,
policy process
Introduction
Behavioural Public Policy (BPP) has become established as a new strand in public
policy research and policymaking. Alongside this process, the initial question of
whether policymakers should use behavioural insights has been replaced by the
more practical questions of where, when and how they should be used in the policy
process. As it turns out, these questions are no less controversial than the former
since they open up the debate on the actual focus, scope and scale of BPP.
For example, while proponents of BPP argue that behavioural science has the
potential for a ‘wide-ranging reassessment of public administration’ (Sanders
et al., 2018: 4), some political scientists call more modestly for ‘a dialogue about
a behavioral approach to public administration’ (Grimmelikhuijsen et al., 2017:
54). Above all, such a dialogue requires a shared understanding of how the policy
process should be informed by behavioural insights and how behavioural
approaches correspond to existing policies (Kuehnhanss, 2018). In addition, an
understanding has to be reached on the policy objectives of BPP. Notwithstanding
these questions, scholars have pointed out that BPP is more far-reaching than most
of the existing uses of behavioural insights and nudges (Straßheim and Beck,
2019), even if ‘nudging’ tends to dominate the understanding of BPP in the
public debate.
This paper will argue that BPP, defined as ‘as a policy intervention that is
directly inspired by, and designed on, the principles of behavioral research’
(Galizzi, 2014: 27), can be regarded as a potentially pluralist, non-deterministic
and multipurpose approach that differs significantly from recent behavioural
change interventions in public policy. Advanced BPP (i.e. BPP that moves
beyond the present notion of the term) can complement and refine existing policy-
making rather than be a stand-alone concept. Moreover, behavioural insights
could be used not only to change individual behaviours but also collective and
organisational behaviours (Feng et al., 2018) and to inform conventional policy-
making by providing evidence about policy problems and the expected behavioural
implications of (particular combinations of) policy tools (Gopalan and Pirog,
2017). When understood in these broad terms and not (mis-)used in an ideological
or politicised manner, an advanced version of BPP may lead to the revival of a
338 Public Policy and Administration 35(3)
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