LIST OF PANELS

Over the past decade behavioural public policy has spread inter- and transnationally. The OECD concluded that behavioural insights in public policy seem to ‘have taken root in many ways across many countries around the world and across a wide range of sectors and policy areas’. The World Bank, the European Commission and the United Nations are developing behavioural interventions in a wide variety of policy areas. While the US, the UK and Singapore are among the forerunners, behavioural public policies can nowadays be found across Western Europe, Central America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Behavioural public policy includes all means and modes of public policy aiming at influencing individual or collective behaviour by using insights from behavioural economics, behavioural sciences, psychology or neurosciences. This entanglement of scientific and political claims, of analysing and governing behaviour is a common feature of all forms of behavioural public policy. In behavioural public policy, expertise has become an essential resource for governing as it is supposed to establish and provide both the scientific evidence and political legitimacy for the behavioural change agenda. Beyond this common denominator, however, the landscape of behavioural public policy is extremely diverse. The spectrum of policy instruments is large, including efforts to reduce the cognitive burden on citizens, education programmes for decisions under risks, techniques of social norms marketing, and behaviourally informed regulations. Today, many behavioural designs are commonplace: the rearrangement of food in cafeterias; graphic warnings on cigarette packages; the fly in the urinal – these and other interventions have become part of everyday life. The banality of some of these interventions suggests that the discourse on behavioural public policy, its institutional and material manifestations are already more widespread than it might seem.

Despite an ever-growing amount of literature, however, there are only few systematic studies on the discursive and institutional modes of behavioural public policy across jurisdictions and policy areas, the causes for its inter- and transnational spread as well as its influence and political implications. This panel aims at bringing together empirically and conceptually rich studies focusing mainly - but not exclusively - on the following questions: How can we explain the inter- and transnational variety of behavioural public policy? What are the discursive and institutional mechanisms leading to the proliferation and professionalization of behavioural expertise across countries and policy areas? How can we conceptualize and study the interlinkages between behavioural sciences and public policy? How does the spread of behavioural public policy change the modes of regulation and the mix of public policy instruments? What are the consequences for political discourses on social progress and the relationship between the state and its citizens? The panel is open for papers from different disciplinary backgrounds such as interpretive policy analysis, comparative public policy, administration studies or science & technology studies; comparative studies across countries, levels or policy areas are especially welcome.

Over the past decade behavioural public policy has spread inter- and transnationally. The OECD concluded that behavioural insights in public policy seem to ‘have taken root in many ways across many countries around the world and across a wide range of sectors and policy areas’. The World Bank, the European Commission and the United Nations are developing behavioural interventions in a wide variety of policy areas. While the US, the UK and Singapore are among the forerunners, behavioural public policies can nowadays be found across Western Europe, Central America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Behavioural public policy includes all means and modes of public policy aiming at influencing individual or collective behaviour by using insights from behavioural economics, behavioural sciences, psychology or neurosciences. This entanglement of scientific and political claims, of analysing and governing behaviour is a common feature of all forms of behavioural public policy. In behavioural public policy, expertise has become an essential resource for governing as it is supposed to establish and provide both the scientific evidence and political legitimacy for the behavioural change agenda. Beyond this common denominator, however, the landscape of behavioural public policy is extremely diverse. The spectrum of policy instruments is large, including efforts to reduce the cognitive burden on citizens, education programmes for decisions under risks, techniques of social norms marketing, and behaviourally informed regulations. Today, many behavioural designs are commonplace: the rearrangement of food in cafeterias; graphic warnings on cigarette packages; the fly in the urinal – these and other interventions have become part of everyday life. The banality of some of these interventions suggests that the discourse on behavioural public policy, its institutional and material manifestations are already more widespread than it might seem.

Despite an ever-growing amount of literature, however, there are only few systematic studies on the discursive and institutional modes of behavioural public policy across jurisdictions and policy areas, the causes for its inter- and transnational spread as well as its influence and political implications. This panel aims at bringing together empirically and conceptually rich studies focusing mainly - but not exclusively - on the following questions: How can we explain the inter- and transnational variety of behavioural public policy? What are the discursive and institutional mechanisms leading to the proliferation and professionalization of behavioural expertise across countries and policy areas? How can we conceptualize and study the interlinkages between behavioural sciences and public policy? How does the spread of behavioural public policy change the modes of regulation and the mix of public policy instruments? What are the consequences for political discourses on social progress and the relationship between the state and its citizens? The panel is open for papers from different disciplinary backgrounds such as interpretive policy analysis, comparative public policy, administration studies or science & technology studies; comparative studies across countries, levels or policy areas are especially welcome.