Policy-making has largely relied on compliance-deterrence models despite early recognition that people often deviated from the models’ predictions. Challenging these dominant models, behavioural economics and co-production research have recently influenced policy making by embracing complexity, biases, and heuristics resulting in ‘behavioural’ interventions and policies. With the creation of nudge units and behavioural laboratories within governments, this growing interest in accounting for behavioural considerations in policy-making has given rise to the concept of ‘behavioural state’.
Yet, there remains little theorizing on the implications of this behavioural turn in policy making, nor empirical evidence generated showing its extent and nature. This presentation is based on Leong and Howlett’s (forthcoming) paper that addresses this gap through a bibliometric review. A behavioural turn in policy making is evident but it has been geographically and sectorally uneven, suggesting further room for behavioural research and practice to expand.