Is the behavioral approach a form of scientific imperialism?

Małecka, Magdalena; Lepenies, Robert

doi:10.4324/9781315163673-14

Cited by 3 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…The debate lacks deep empirical knowledge of the behavioural state. Particularly, it lacks knowledge of its many members and their daily practices (Lepenies & Malecka 2018), who together form a so called 'Behavioural Insights' community. Much about these people -the self-proclaimed 'Behavioural Insights Teams' or 'BITs', 'Nudge Experts' and 'Choice Architects' -is unknown.…”

Section: Capturing the Behavioural Statementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Still in the process of experimenting and institutionalizing, BI practices have thus far been little 'disturbed' by legal bounds and accountability demands. Working in an ad hoc fashion and with high 'administrative discretion' (Lepenies & Malecka 2018), experts have been implementing all sorts of nudges that unlike more established instruments have not been subjected to formalized policy procedures. Although BI policymaking trend is indeed sometimes publicly debated in abstracto, a lack of accountability and transparency still remains at the micro-level, in the very concrete choice situations in which citizens are being nudged unnoticeably (see Bovens 2008 on type versus token transparency of Nudge policy).…”

Section: Moral Criticismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It has evoked skeptics and critics across the policy-politics nexus who explicitly resist the behavioural turn. More implicitly, Behavioural Insights faces a systemic resistance to change within the public domain (Ansell et al 2015), while eliciting a paradigmatic struggle between contrasting knowledge disciplines that is not necessarily in favor of the as of yet fledgling behavioural science perspective (although see Malecka & Lepenies (2018) on the 'scientific imperialism' of the behavioural sciences). An additional puzzle is that Behavioural Insights -despite its self-invented rhetoric of 'Radical Incrementalism' (Halpern 2015) -appears to hold a very rationalist outlook on policy design, attributing a central importance to scientific design and analysis in its quest to manage social problems (Lodge & Wegrich 2016).…”

Section: Institutionalizing the Behavioural Statementioning

confidence: 99%

“…1 We ultimately claim that the interdisciplinary zone associated with BI is characterized by a pronounced lack of engagement with a broader range of social sciences, which share similar concerns, but employ very different analytical and methodological perspectives (e.g. Jones et al 2013;Shove 2010;Mols et al 2015;Pykett 2018;Lepenies & Malecka 2018). There are many ways of demonstrating the critical contribution that the broader social sciences could make to behavioural policymaking.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Inside the behavioural state

Feitsma¹

2020

Bestuurskunde

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1.1 Initiation into the behavioural state The emerging behavioural state: promise, pressure or phantom? How confident is present-day government? Not too confident, it would seem. Solving public problems is generally seen as an arduous challenge. Our late modern society doesn't lend itself to be 'engineered'. It has only become more uncertain, complex, and 'liquid' (Bauman 1999) than before (e.g. Beck 1992; Giddens 1998). This acknowledgement of complexity reflects how today's policymakers think, 'see' and act. They commonly acknowledge that some policy issues have become 'wicked' (Head 2008): so convoluted and contested-both substantively and procedurally, empirically and normatively-that they can at best be 'tamed'. Also, today's policymakers-part of the New Public Governance paradigm-generally realize that they are heavily dependent on other societal actors to get things done and that forging strong and unified public-private networks is far from easy. So they buckle up, strengthen their tolerance for uncertainty and nonperformance, and confess that public problem-solving simply isn't easy. And yet, in the past two decades a policy trend has emerged that goes in the opposite direction of a modest state. This trend has given birth to a type of state that seems all too confident about its ability to shape society. This confidence is drawn from the opportunities discovered by recent advances in the behavioural sciences. A body of 'behavioural insights' (e.g. Dolan et al. 2010; OECD 2017; Lourenço et al. 2016) has developed rapidly, showing how humans often don't make decisions in wholly rational, but often more automatic ways. These insights have given rise to an unorthodox policy style, which subtly intervenes in the everyday spaces of society based on rigorous behavioural analyses and experiments (e.g.

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Section: Capturing the Behavioural Statementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Moral Criticismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Institutionalizing the Behavioural Statementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Inside the behavioural state

Feitsma¹

2020

Bestuurskunde

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“…Examples include debates in law and legal theory (Alemanno & Sibony 2015;Kemmerer et al 2016), economic methodology and welfare economic theory (Sugden 2017;Whitman & Rizzo 2015), development studies (Reddy 2012), health policy (Quigley 2013), cognitive and social psychology (Gigerenzer 2015;Hertwig & Grüne-Yanoff 2017), and marketing (French 2011;Chriss 2015). The discipline-specific body of literature about the ethics of nudging shows that not just policy but also the social sciences are being 'behaviouralised' as experimental methodology and behavioural insights are spreading throughout academia (Małecka & Lepenies 2018).…”

Section: Robert Lepenies and Magdalena Małeckamentioning

confidence: 99%

The ethics of behavioural public policy

Lepenies

Małecka

2018

The Routledge Handbook of Ethics and Public Policy

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Public policy is increasingly informed by insights from the behavioural sciences. We highlight three aspects of behavioural public policy which can be incompatible with democratic ethics. First, policymakers can use behavioural instruments such as nudges to steer citizens' behaviour without giving reasons and by relying on non-participatory research methods. Second, behavioural public policy is frequently implemented in the form of administrative discretion by organisations which are not under direct democratic control. Third, behavioural public policy currently relies on a partial and narrow view of the behavioural sciences and is inattentive about value judgements already embedded in the research it draws upon.

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Critical perspectives on science: Arguments for a richer discussion on the scientific enterprise

Toescu

Tuboly

2023

Interdisciplinary Science Reviews

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Science, as a body of knowledge, process or an interactive network of individuals and institutions, is a central component of contemporary society. This privileged position attracts some potential dangers of over-reaching, analysed by a variety of commentators. Central to these discussions is the importance and relevance of values to the practice of science. Far from being 'value-free', science takes place in a social environment that brings its values and influences the contract between scientists and society. In addition to the internal values of scientific practice, the individual scientists are unavoidably influenced by their personal views and biases, acting as external sets of values. This issue, aimed at the young practitioners of science, addresses some of these topics and represents an occasion to (re)examine the assumptions underpinning scientific practice(s). The eclecticism of topics illustrate the rich offerings humanities can provide and such interdisciplinary efforts contribute to the burgeoning field of science humanities.

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Is the behavioral approach a form of scientific imperialism?

Cited by 3 publications

References 1 publication

Inside the behavioural state

Inside the behavioural state

The ethics of behavioural public policy

Critical perspectives on science: Arguments for a richer discussion on the scientific enterprise

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