Forthcoming In: Economic Analysis of Law in European Legal Scolarship, Springer-Verlag, Autumn 2015

The effectiveness of nudges in raising the welfare of the population hinges on the policymakers employing them. A frequent criticism based on a logical incon-sistency questions policymakers ' immunity from the psychological biases of indi-viduals that are the very foundation of nudging interventions. We argue that, ra-ther than being concerned about policymakers ' incapacity to raise the population's welfare, we should be concerned about their unwillingness to do so. We offer a so-lution to this problem. We resort to the constitutional level of decision-making in which voters are able to determine the procedures or processes by which govern-ments may resort to nudging. Nudging should not be considered as an innocuous exception to constitutionally based decision-making. It must be admitted, though, that most nudges at first sight do seem to be beneficial to people. In a democracy, even “Liberal Paternalism ” may not be imposed on the population without its con-sent in principle. 1 Nudging as a Concept Nudging is an attractive idea. With low or even zero-cost interventions paternalist