Nudge or nuzzle? Improving decisions about active citizenship

ABSTRACT

In recent years ‘nudge’ has come into fashion as a form of policy intervention, under the inspiration of behavioural economics. It has encouraged policy analysts to move away from models of the ‘rational actor’ and instead to start from consumers, clients and citizens as they actually are. Nevertheless, nudge raises larger questions about public policy and the relationship between government and the citizen. This paper takes critical stock of nudge, offers an alternative in terms of ‘nuzzle’ and lays out the very different standpoint on policy to which this points. In doing so, it also puts in question the disciplinary paradigms which underpin ‘nudge’ in the scientific literature, and their underplaying of the social and institutional context of individual behaviour. It offers a perspective on public policy as providing security and supporting creativity: with government under critical scrutiny by citizens, rather than vice versa.

KEYWORDS:

• Behaviour
• citizenship
• libertarian paternalism
• uncertainty

Acknowledgements

These ideas were first presented to seminars at Policy Horizons Canada (Ottawa, September 2013), the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, Victoria University, Wellington (February 2014), Melbourne University (March 2014) and Korea University, Seoul (May 2014). I am grateful to colleagues at all these institutions, as well as at my own university, for comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Graham Room is Professor of European Social Policy at the University of Bath. He was Acting Director of the University's Institute for Policy Research until December 2013. He was Founding Editor of the Journal of European Social Policy and is a member of the UK Academy of Social Sciences. He is author, co-author or editor of twelve books, the most recent being Complexity, Institutions and Public Policy: Agile Decision-Making in a Turbulent World, Edward Elgar, 2011.

Notes

1. Recent contributions to the debate include John, Smith, and Stoker (2009), Oliver (2013) and Leggett (2014), each of whom provides a useful stocktaking on this burgeoning literature. For a useful overview of some of the literature and debates, see also http://economicspsychologypolicy.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/behavioural-policy-readings.html The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee (2011) reviews the practical effectiveness of nudges but also their limitations, if not used in combination with a range of other interventions.

2. More generally, Thaler and Sunstein may have moved away from economic orthodoxy's fixation on the rational actor; but they retain its very weak or ‘thin’ notion of social institutions. There is reference (Ch. 3) to ‘following the herd’ but little to the cues and nudges which are mediated through the social institutions in which we are all involved and into whose rules we are socialised. Instead, the great majority of the examples which they cite involve physical cues associated with the built environment and electronic cues associated with machines and information technology systems. In this they remain wedded to a rather abstract form of methodological individualism (Lukes 1973).

3. ‘Nudge’ has captured the attention of policy-maker and analysts, in part because the word itself has been so well-chosen. It grabs our attention no less than the products displayed to advantage in the supermarket and cafeteria. Thaler and Sunstein – and their publisher – have thought carefully about how we, the educated public, choose the books we read and the ideas which we adopt as fashions. ‘Budge’ (Oliver 2013), ‘shove’ (Leggett 2014) and ‘think’ (John, Smith, and Stoker 2009) are chosen by their respective champions to follow suit: they have a rhetorical purpose: and so, of course, does ‘nuzzle’. When we juxtapose these ideas, and the competing visions they provide of polity and public, we must not allow the rhetoric to excuse us from turning the ideas in question into a robust analytical framework for evidence-based enquiry.

4. Clark and Heath (2014) draw together evidence that inequality exacerbates society-wide anxiety and that in the UK this has driven the so-called ‘social recession’, with a decline in volunteering and ‘informal kindness’. Chung and Mau (2014) review evidence across different European countries concerning subjective insecurity, in particular in relation to employment and the labour market. See also Orton (2014).

5. The classic discussion of how the social context of different social groups shapes their perception of time, uncertainty and risk is Mannheim (1936): but see also Hoggart (1958).

6. Some other writers, making a similar distinction between these two sorts of thinking within the human cognitive architecture, see such heuristics as an exigency of human evolution (Loasby 1999, Chs 3,8). Oliver (2013) in his treatment of ‘budge’ also seeks to draw on a variety of literatures that utilise such arguments. There are however significant differences in these accounts, depending on the overall theoretical position adopted.

7. The investigation of how institutions carry such rules, how they vary, and how individuals learn, practice and adapt them, has long been central to sociological enquiry, from such classical writers as Weber and Durkheim to such contemporary writers as Giddens, Goldthorpe, Bourdieu and Schön. There remains however a considerable gulf of non-communication between the paradigms of enquiry they employ and those of much behavioural psychology and economics.

8. This notion of ‘agile action’ (Room 2011) owes much to Crouch's discussion of ‘institutional entrepreneurs’ (Crouch 2005, see esp 67–68), which he likewise offers in critique of rational expectations theory. It also resonates with longer-standing debates in sociology: see for example Dawe (1970) on the ‘sociology of control’. Also relevant is the substantial literature on experimentation under uncertainty, concerned with the ‘mental models’ we construct, for envisaging the range of possible out-turns, and as a guide to our choices of action. Notable contributors include Simon (1969), Holland (1995) and North (1990). For an overview of the social psychology literature on mental models and decision-making under conditions of uncertainty, see Breakwell (2014, 104–108).

9. These big mover dynamics are well-illuminated in game theory by a Stackelberg game (heuristically helpful because of its simplicity, limited as it is to a single round). One player goes first and others have then to accommodate themselves as best they can, on the terrain that the first mover has already occupied (Stackelberg 1952; Tirole 1988, 8.2). Stackelberg himself applied this to industries with a dominant firm; subsidiary players undertake ‘satisficing’ behaviour by reference to whatever this big mover has done. Stackelberg depicts a nested structure of positional advantage within the resulting market:

The oligopolists of the first category rule the roost and they fight for the most favourable positions in the market. The oligopolists of the second category must adjust their position to that of the stronger competitors, but they compete with one another for the crumbs left by the latter. [Similarly], those of the third category … dominate the next categories below them … . (Stackelberg 1952, 221)

As Stackelberg notes, such a market enjoys greater stability than simple oligopoly because there are clear distinctions in terms of size and power.

10. There is a well-developed literature on ‘first mover dynamics’ (Pierson 2004). Those who move first into a new market or a new technology may be able to establish a self-reinforcing position of advantage. It can however be dangerous to move first: it may be better to move second, once the first movers have revealed the extent of those dangers: albeit what is then left may be only a subsidiary place in the pecking order. Even so, second movers may be able to develop niches of their own (see the literature on the so-called ‘minority game’, starting from Arthur 1994). There is however never an entirely first mover: any terrain onto which we move has been shaped by others. This is why ‘big mover dynamics’ are often more significant than ‘first mover dynamics’.

11. Granovetter (1973) emphasises the importance of the ‘weak ties’ that we have for the sorts of projects that we can undertake: ‘weak ties’ being ties to social actors and organisations remote from our everyday lives. Burt (2004) uses network analysis to depict ‘brokers’ who span gaps across unconnected regions of the network – merchants, idea-brokers and the like. It is by spanning the ties and connections between big actors that innovators can develop their own niche and exploit the larger networks of players to whom these big actors provide access.

12. It is often claimed that the USA, the bastion of orthodox economics, demonstrates the vibrancy of ‘free’ markets. In reality, Government – and especially the US Department of Defense – has played a major role in the post-war period, in providing a stable expenditure and planning environment for long-term technological innovation and investment (Fligstein 2001, Ch. 10; Mazzucato 2013).

13. See for example the forward planning and scenario building undertaken by Policy Horizons Canada, the policy think-tank of the Ottawa government, for a world in which Canada must deal both with China and the USA: http://www.horizons.gc.ca/eng/content/future-asia. See also Hager's (2011) account of New Zealand's efforts to avoid entrapment within the US War on Terror and the conflicting interests of its military and civilian decision-makers.

14. A final example of nuzzle involves scientific ‘revolutions’ as described by Kuhn (1970). New scientific paradigms emerge from amidst established orthodoxies, developed by innovators who have become increasingly concerned at the anomalies and failings of that orthodoxy. It is however precisely their closeness to that orthodoxy that enables them to sense what any new paradigm must be able to offer: they are insiders as much as outsiders.

15. This is reminiscent of John's championing of ‘think’ as an alternative to nudge: emphasising as it does the potential value of deliberative democracy in re-shaping behaviour (John, Smith, and Stoker 2009). What our approach in terms of ‘nuzzle’ adds however is the security and stability which individuals and communities need to be offered, if they are to build more equitable and sustainable lifestyles.

16. Referring to the work of Jane Jacobs, Scott writes that ‘complex, diverse, animated environments contribute … . to producing a resilient, flexible, adept population that has more experience in confronting novel challenges and taking initiative’ (Scott 1998, 349).

17. Here again, there are useful additional insights in Gladwell's recent writing. While he is primarily interested in individual citizens, he adduces lessons also for the big actors, including in particular the public authorities: the importance for them of nuzzling the mass of individual citizens and maintaining legitimacy in their eyes (Gladwell 2013, Part 3). Otherwise, instead of aligning their choices with the wisdom of policy-makers (the goal of nudge), citizens are likely to align them in quite other – and socially disruptive – directions.

 

Additional information

Funding

It draws upon a programme of work supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (Award RES-063–27–0130); my book Complexity, Institutions and Public Policy: Agile Decision-Making in a Turbulent World, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar (2011); and my forthcoming book Agile Actors on Complex Terrains: Transformative Realism and Public Policy, London: Routledge (2016).