THE EMERGENCE OF GLOBAL BEHAVIORAL PUBLIC POLICY – DEVELOPMENTS OF AND WITHIN THE NUDGE UNIT

Abstract

Behavioral Public Policy is an emerging and highly attractive branch of policy-making in the 21st century. The underlying promise of this kind of policymaking is that through conscious modification of decision architectures, individuals make better decisions and, in accumulated form, societal aims are reached. This paper focuses on the key institutions regarding behavioral public policy: The Behavioral Insights Team (BIT), colloquially referred to as the Nudge Unit. In order to analyze the phenomenon at hand, this paper will illustrate the different phases, developments, and transformations of the BIT as it started in the British Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office, then became an agency itself, and ultimately made the move into the free market terrain. This paper will describe how these organizational changes have influenced the BIT’s structure and work. Also, this paper wants to isolate beneficial factors which made the BIT’s success more likely – nationally in the United Kingdom as well as internationally. This paper will end on a critical note and outline future challenges of the BIT.

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