Making Strange

Setting the Stage for Mixes

The picture on the left illustrates two behavioural policy tools. The books by Kahneman, Thaler and Sunstein introduced nudges, discussed in detail below. The picture on the right is a screenshot from an anti-commercial of Kit-Kat by WWF. 

In the previous post, we discussed the key debates around Behavioural Public Policy and the Holy Grail of the new emerging consensus: that these tools cannot function on their own and require mixing for any effective policy impact. In the blog post below, I set the stage for the discussion of policy tools and introduce the typology of behavioural and reflective policy tools. In Parts 3 and 4, I will introduce the research question, offer a brief discussion of methodology and results. (more…)

Introducing the Series of Three Blog Posts

This is a series of  four blog posts of approximately 1000 words to discuss various debates and issues around Behavioural Public Policy (BPP) and policy mixes. It’s based on this article published in 2022 in the Journal of Environmental Planning and Management.

Part 1 introduces the field of BPP, some major authors and pieces that laid foundation of this relatively new field and key debates around it. It also briefly introduces the idea of policy mixes. Part 2 explains in more detail the concept of policy tools and their mixes and discusses the typology that Mukhtarov offered to engage with mixes of reflective and behavioural policy tools. Part 3 answers one of the two questions that the paper asked: to take stock of the types, geography and the extent of empirical detail in the studies that did analyse policy mixes in environmental policy. Part 4 then focuses on a more specialised discussion of whether the literature on policy mixes reflects key debates in the public policy studies around dealing with uncertainty and complexity.

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