| CODE | PPG5114 | |||||||||
| TITLE | Behavioural Public Policy | |||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 05 - Postgraduate Modular Diploma or Degree Course | |||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 7 | |||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 5 | |||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Policy, Politics and Governance | |||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | Various developments have taken place over past decades with regards to the behavioural and socio-psychological foundations of policy-making and governance, the empirical testing of different policy initiatives, and related discussions on different variants of state paternalism. Accordingly, this study-unit provides a holistic overview of the field of behavioural public policy, by addressing the above developments being witnessed around the globe. Students will be exposed to the debates relevant to the field, such as those concerning the origins of behavioural public policy, the conceptual frameworks relevant to our understanding of behavioural policy-making (e.g., libertarian paternalism, and its critiques); the tools (e.g., interviews, surveys, experiments, and other methods) needed to test policies behaviourally; policy-making strategies that have been established in both the academic literature and by different States around the world (e.g., nudges, shoves, budges, etc.); relevant case studies of both successful and unsuccessful behavioural policy-making (e.g., involving environmental policy, etc.); ongoing fresh debates on the nature of behavioural public policy; and the emerging critiques of behavioural public policy initiatives. This study-unit will serve to provide students with knowledge relevant to the frontiers of policy-making, which increasingly involve strong behavioural elements. Moreover, students will be able to think about different behavioural insights and how best to implement them for better policy-making. Study-unit Aims: This study-unit has the following four main aims: 1. To provide students with the conceptual frameworks relevant to the behavioural foundations of policy-making and governance; 2. To provide students with both the empirical tools, and the established strategies, relevant to behavioural policy-making; 3. To discuss the latest case studies in the field, and derive the relevant insights; 4. To help students think critically about the ethical and governance implications of behavioural policy-making. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Meaningfully differentiate between behaviourally-informed policy-making, and other more top-down approaches to policy-making; - Identify the different approaches to behavioural policy-making (e.g., the localised implementation of nudges, vs. large-scale studies), with the help of case studies; - Describe and discuss the advantages of a behavioural public policy approach; - Understand the often technical and fast-paced literature in the field; - Think critically about the societal implications of behavioural policy initiatives. 2. Skills By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Design a plan to tackle select policy issues in a behavioural manner (from conceptualisation, to research design and policy implementation); - Identify and critique the ideological assumptions of both behavioural and non-behavioural approaches to policy-making; - Adopt a behaviourally-informed shift in mindset, which can shed light on other areas of public policy and public administration covered in their academic programme. This shift in mindset can fruitfully inform students' eventual discussions with stakeholders in the public and private sectors; - Discuss a multiplicity of state-of-the-art examples of behavioural public policy-making. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Main Text/s - Hall, C. C., & Jurcevic, I. (2022). Behavioral insights for public policy: Contextualizing our science (Cambridge elements: Applied social psychology). Cambridge University Press. - Strassheim, H., & Beck, S. (Eds.). (2019). Handbook of behavioural change and public policy. Edward Elgar Publishing. - Oliver, A. (2017). The origins of behavioural public policy. Cambridge University Press. Supplementary Readings - Buhagiar, L. J., & Sammut, G. (2022). Idiography and the fractal nature of psychological research. In S. Salvatore & J. Valsiner (Eds.), YIS: Yearbook of idiographic science (Vol. 9). 福利在线免费 Age Publishing. - Oliver, A. (2022). A political economy of behavioural public policy. Cambridge University Press. - Sunstein, C. R. (2021). Sludge: What Stops Us from Getting Things Done and What to Do about It. MIT Press. - Buhagiar, L. J., & Sammut, G. (2020). 鈥楽ocial re-presentation for鈥︹��: An action-oriented formula for intergroup relations research. Frontiers in psychology, 11, 352. - Muthukrishna, M., Bell, A. V., Henrich, J. et al. (2020). Beyond Western, educated, industrial, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) psychology: Measuring and mapping scales of cultural and psychological distance. Psychological Science, 31(6), 678鈥�701. - Ruggeri, K., Benzerga, A., Verra, S., & Folke, T. (2020). A behavioral approach to personalizing public health. Behavioural Public Policy, 1鈥�13. - Sunstein, C. R. (2020). Behavioral science and public policy. Cambridge University Press. - Oliver, A. (2019). Reciprocity and the art of behavioural public policy. Cambridge University Press. - Brady, L. M., Fryberg, S. A., & Shoda, Y. (2018). Expanding the interpretive power of psychological science by attending to culture. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(45), 11406鈥�11413. - Byerly, H., Balmford, A., Ferraro, P. J. et al. (2018). Nudging pro-environmental behavior: Evidence and opportunities. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 16(3), 159鈥�168. - Hornsey, M. J., Harris, E. A., & Fielding, K. S. (2018). Relationships among conspiratorial beliefs, conservatism and climate scepticism across nations. Nature Climate Change, 8(7), 614鈥�620. - Nzinga, K., Rapp, D. N., Leatherwood, C. et al. (2018). Should social scientists be distanced from or engaged with the people they study? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(45), 11435鈥�11441. - Thunstr枚m, L., Gilbert, B., & Ritten, C. J. (2018). Nudges that hurt those already hurting: Distributional and unintended effects of salience nudges. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 153, 267鈥�282. - Benartzi, S., Beshears, J., Milkman, K. L. et al. (2017). Should governments invest more in nudging? Psychological Science, 28(8), 1041鈥�1055. - Gigerenzer, G. (2015). On the supposed evidence for libertarian paternalism. Review of philosophy and psychology, 6(3), 361-383. - Abrahamse, W., & Steg, L. (2013). Social influence approaches to encourage resource conservation: A meta-analysis. Global Environmental Change, 23(6), 1773鈥�1785. - Bevan, G., & Fasolo, B. (2013). Models of governance of public services: Empirical and behavioural analysis of 鈥楨cons鈥� and 鈥楬umans鈥�. In A. Oliver (Ed.), Behavioural Public Policy (pp. 38-62). Cambridge University Press. - Oliver, A. (Ed.). (2013). Behavioural public policy. Cambridge University Press. - Shafir, E. (Ed.). (2013). The behavioral foundations of public policy. Princeton University Press. - Sunstein, C. R. (2013). Simpler: The future of government. Simon and Schuster. - Kahneman, D. 2011. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Allen Lane. - Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2鈥�3), 61鈥�83; discussion 83鈥�135. |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture and Independent Study | |||||||||
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2025/6. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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