Mills, S. orcid.org/0000-0002-6698-0983 and Whittle, R. (2025) How ‘nudge’ happened: the political economy of nudging in the UK. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 49 (1). pp. 1-18. ISSN 0309-166X
Abstract
The UK Behavioural Insights Team transformed nudging and behavioural economics from nascent ideas to key policy tools for the UK Coalition Government. This article argues that political economic circumstances significantly contributed to the success of this ‘nudge’ programme. The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) created a ‘contest of authority’ over dominant policy approaches. By framing the crisis as a crisis of rationality, behavioural perspectives gained political support. The GFC also saw that the UK Government (from 2010) adopt a programme of fiscal austerity. Nudging complemented this programme by suggesting effective policy could be made cheaply. Using various accounts of nudging in the UK from those involved in its development, we demonstrate the role of the country’s political economy in the behavioural turn. We conclude by reflecting on the role of behavioural insights today, given a political–economic landscape much changed since 2010.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site—for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.com. |
Keywords: | Behavioural economics, Nudge, Political economy, Austerity |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Business (Leeds) > Economics Division (LUBS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 02 Dec 2024 11:38 |
Last Modified: | 10 Feb 2025 17:18 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/cje/beae038 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:220297 |