Organizing the use of behavioral insights within governments; from nudge hype to long term change

The use of behavioral insights in policy making is on the rise in many different countries (Ly & Soman, 2013; Whitehead, 2015). More and more governments become interested in the great promises of ‘nudging’ (Thaler &... [ view full abstract ]

The use of behavioral insights in policy making is on the rise in many different countries (Ly & Soman, 2013; Whitehead, 2015). More and more governments become interested in the great promises of ‘nudging’ (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008), but face the challenge of how to organize this. The use of behavioral insights is often not yet embedded within the organization, nor in the process of policy making. How to organize the structural use of behavioral insights?

Governments who want to structurally use behavioral insights in policy-making, face a number of questions. First, there is a question of professionalism. Who should be working on nudging? Should it be all civil servants, or a special team? Should these be psychologists, or also people from other backgrounds? Second, there is a question of positioning. Where should these people be located? Should they work within the governmental organization, or outside of it, like for example the British ‘nudge unit’ which is now privatized. And if they are inside the organization, should they have their own ‘nudge unit’, or should it be a loose network of people across bureaucratic borders? Should they be positioned close to politics, or more in the lower levels of government? Third, there is a question of performance. What should these people do? Should they have a specific place in the policy cycle, for example at the start of designing new policy or at the end to evaluate how it works? Should they work on specific policies, or generate more general advices and reports on how to use behavioral insights?

These are no innocent questions, because the choices have real implications for the way nudging becomes part of policy-making, the role of politics in this process, and checks and balances involved. In this research, we first gather information from the literature about organizational options for governments who want to structurally use behavioral insights in the policy making process. Then we explore the strategic challenges involved in these choices by performing a case-study on the Dutch Ministry of Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK), which intends to organize the use of behavioral insights within their Ministry. Using our framework, we explore the strategic choices to be made in semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders in and around the Ministry. Our paper presents the results of the literature study and the case study. Hereby, the paper gives more insight in organizational options and strategic considerations concerned with structurally embedding the use of behavioral insights in governments.