Nudging policy: The role of knowledge in behavioural insights

Behavioural insights is used increasingly by governments around the world in designing public policy. It is an important addition to our knowledge about how policy works. However, little is known about policy actors' interpretation and use of different types of knowledge in the development and applications of behavioural insights. This omission matters because policy actors' privileging or excluding of different knowledges in policy making influences whose voices are heard, how problems are seen and framed, and what solutions are made possible (and preferable). Policy actors bring different forms of knowledge to policy making and, in making sense of policy problems and designing policy, shape policy processes. My research explores the question, how do policy actors interpret and use knowledge in behavioural insights? It has two lines of enquiry: which knowledges are used in behavioural insights, and do policy actors use knowledge instrumentally, politically or conceptually? I adopted an interpretive approach in my research in order to uncover the interpretations that shape policy actors' actions. The interpretations emerged from the analysis of thirty interviews with policy actors in Australia familiar with behavioural insights in their policy work. My findings demonstrate that it is important to pay attention to both what knowledge(s) are used and how they are used. I find policy actors interpret behavioural insights as an instrumental application of policy making that draws on and produces knowledge, with local knowledge struggling to fit into processes that privilege technical knowledge. Local and technical knowledges are interwoven with craft and normative knowledge as policy actors use knowledge politically to support their approach to behavioural insights, granting them resources and authority. These types of knowledge in behavioural insights influence how policy problems are interpreted, understood and addressed. My research contributes to understanding of behavioural insights as a policy approach, but also provides methodological insights into interpretive policy analysis by challenging the intentionality between interpretation and action. It contributes to the knowledge utilisation literature in describing the interdependent uses of instrumental, political and conceptual knowledge. Finally my research suggests that the uses of knowledge shape and are shaped by each other, and it is this 'system' that should be included in the study of knowledge in public policy