The Power to Nudge

Abstract

N udging policies rely on behavioral science to improve people's decisions through small changes in the environments within which people make choices. This article first seeks to rebut a prominent objection to this approach: furnishing governments with the power to nudge leads to relations of alien control, that is, relations in which some people can impose their will on others-a concern which resonates with republican, Kantian, and Rousseauvian theories of freedom and relational theories of autonomy. I respond that alien control can be avoided, if nudging is suitably transparent and democratically controlled. Moreover, such transparency and democratic control are institutionally feasible. Building on this response, I then provide a novel and surprising argument for more nudging: democratically controlled public policy nudging can often contain the power of private companies to nudge in uncontrolled and opaque ways. Therefore, reducing alien control often requires more rather than less nudging in public policy.

The ethics of nudging: An overview

“…Compared with other complex policies—like taxation and regulation—nudges are comparatively easy to understand and spot. And if nudge policies are indeed amenable to being made transparent, they might be just as amenable to individual and democratic control (Ivanković & Engelen, ; Schmidt, ). But note that the claim is merely that nudging is amenable to democratic control, not that all current nudge practices fully meet democratic standards.…”

“…As mentioned above, like other policies, governmental nudges should be sufficiently transparent and subject to democratic accountability and control. Like with other policies, transparency and control should lower the risk of a problematic slippery slope by achieving a closer match between people's interests and the goals pursued through nudging (Schmidt, , p. 413).…”

“…Compared with other complex policies-like taxation and regulation-nudges are comparatively easy to understand and spot. And if nudge policies are indeed amenable to being made transparent, they might be just as amenable to individual and democratic control (Ivankovi c & Engelen, 2019;Schmidt, 2017).…”

Ethical Criteria for Health-Promoting Nudges: A Case-by-Case Analysis

“…Nudges by public institutions or policymakers can be aimed at those ends that surveys and deliberative polls reveal to be endorsed by a vast majority of citizens. 5 In fact, nudges-and definitely health-promoting ones-perform well in this respect, both because they are easily made sufficiently transparent (Schmidt 2017) and because public support for them is relatively large (Hagman et al 2015). This gives rise to a second, related criterion, according to which the legitimacy of nudges depends on the extent to which nudgees support and endorse them:…”

Odd bedfellows: how choice architecture can enhance autonomy and mitigate inequality

“…Another set of objections addresses the fear that choice architecture grants too much influence to the 'nudgers' over the 'nudgees' (Schmidt, 2017). Nudgers are free to tinker with the choice environment to produce certain outcomes.…”