Mathieu Prevelato London School of Economics
Behavioural Public Policy (BPP) has grown significantly in recent years. While the integration of behavioural science into policy has been a longstanding practice, the last decade has seen a surge in its adoption by governments and international organisations, as demonstrated by the proliferation of behavioural insights teams across the globe. A number of initiatives, such as the International Behavioural Public Policy Conference, have contributed to such growth.
In this spirit, Adam Oliver at the LSE is now convening a symposium dedicated to Behavioural Public Policy to foster a deeper connection between academics and professionals from the public and private sectors and international organisations. This Group, funded by the London School of Economics’ Knowledge Exchange and Impact Fund, aims to identify the hurdles, and opportunities of behavioural public policy from a cross-cutting perspective.
As argued by David Halpern in the foreword to Behavioural Public Policy in a Global Context,, behavioural scientists do not implement society’s rules shaping citizens’ behaviours. Instead, it is up to governments and the citizens’ representatives to choose the laws and policies that govern societies. The uptake of behavioural public policies therefore requires a healthy dialogue between the policymaking and academia realms. This is what this Group seeks to achieve. The hope is to enable academics to understand the reality of policymaking and the barriers faced by policymakers when utilising insights from behavioural science. For policymakers, the Group in part offers an opportunity to express their needs regarding academic research.
Identifying ethical principles for behavioural public policy
Behavioural Public Policy has been dominated by approaches that strive to harness citizens’ cognitive biases to guide them towards decisions that are deemed beneficial for themselves. Nevertheless, such approaches, by keeping citizens in the dark on the ways they are being influenced, often raise ethical concerns. A growing scholarly interest in the field has therefore been to identify the conditions under which leveraging the behavioural effects in policymaking is acceptable and legitimate.
One of the main objectives of the Group is to identify such principles. First, the Group aims to discuss whether BPPs should address both internalities (i.e. the costs or benefits that an individual’s actions impose on themselves) and externalities (i.e. the costs or benefits that an individual’s actions impose on others). Another issue that the Group proposes to discuss is whether it is acceptable for behavioural interventions to be coercive, and manipulative, or if they should protect individual agency.
While the diversity of the Group may pose challenges in reaching an agreement on these matters, we hope that the inclusion of practitioners and academics will offer unique insights into the constraints and opportunities faced during the design, development and implementation of behaviourally informed interventions, from both a practical and a theoretical perspective. The following sections summarise the points of agreement and discord within the Group.
The ethics of internalities: should we manipulate citizens for their own good?
First, the Group could not reach a consensus on whether internalities should be targeted using coercive or manipulative behavioural interventions. Some members of the Group argued in favour of these policies, contending that the exclusion of certain policy tools could limit BPP, depriving it of instruments that could drive positive change and better enable citizens to navigate their lives. Others found such practices objectionable, arguing that these approaches contravene fundamental liberal-democratic principles. According to this line of argument, the diverse and constantly evolving desires of the citizens make it impossible for policymakers to accurately understand what individuals deem best for their own lives. As a result, the Group neither condemns nor advocates for these BPP approaches.
Nevertheless, the Group agrees that interventions targeting internalities are acceptable when they do not attempt to manipulate or coerce citizens. These include interventions that facilitate information processing and educate citizens about the behavioural affects. Similarly, the Group agrees that interventions addressing internalities might be acceptable when accompanied by a clear explanation of their design and purpose.
Addressing externalities for the common good
Additionally, the Group showed support for the use of behavioural public policies addressing externalities. Such interventions may be seen as more legitimate as they focus on the citizens’ actions affecting others. Interventions focused on externalities can be justified in two ways.
First, an action’s externalities may be such that they would require both rational and behaviourally informed interventions. Consider a factory polluting a river. Public policies aimed at regulating such behaviour are likely to attract broad support from policymakers and the public, whether they are rational or behaviourally informed. In other words, the use of coercion, or even manipulation, may be viewed as legitimate to address externalities, due to the harm imposed by one actor on others’ welfare.
Second, the Group did not object to the use of behavioural science to identify and regulate situations where parties utilise the behavioural affects to manipulate individuals. For instance, such scenarios can arise when gambling companies set a relatively high spending limit which could serve as an anchor for consumers, leading some to spend more than they typically would in the absence of such indications.
Overall, the Group supports interventions that improve citizens’ agency when making decisions for themselves and those that target harms imposed on others. These principles constitute one potential framework of acceptability for BPP. Nevertheless, each intervention would have to be examined individually for analysts to decide on their legitimacy and necessity, by analysing their potential costs and benefits regarding harm mitigation, restrictions on freedom, and unintended consequences.
The limitations of ethics in practice
Nevertheless, the first two symposia revealed that ethical considerations in BPP are often not seen as a priority by practitioners involved in their development and implementation. Instead, the efforts of behavioural policymakers are often constrained by concerns over (cost-)effectiveness, insufficient institutional support for behavioural insights units, and limited agency to decide which issues are worth addressing (which are often determined by political leaders). These constraints sometimes limit their ability to ponder the legitimacy of policy interventions, thereby revealing the tensions between the ethics and practicalities of BPP
Join us
By creating a community of individuals with diverse academic backgrounds and perspectives, the Group hopes to bridge the gaps between academia and policy making. It is our hope that this endeavour will continue to develop as new members join us, enriching the Group’s discussions thanks to their unique experiences and insights.
If you wish to join the Group, please reach out to Adam Oliver.