The Globalization of Behavioural Expertise: Political and Epistemic Authority in the Making

Over the past ten years behavioural public policies have spread inter- and transnationally. Drawing on insights from behavioural economics, behavioural sciences, psychology or neurosciences, interventions such as ‘nudges’ are designed to influence individual or collective behaviour. Based on a survey conducted in 23 countries, the OECD recently concluded that behavioural public policies have taken root across many countries around the world and across a wide range of sectors. In a similar way, the World Bank, the European Commission and the United Nations have all issued reports on their efforts to use behavioural insights in a wide variety of policy areas such as taxation, energy, climate protection, pensions, health, employment, development or gender mainstreaming. The paper discusses core mechanisms of the inter- and transnational spread of behavioural public policies. Based on the project “The Global Networks of Behavioural Expertise” carried out in cooperation with the National University of Singapore, it traces the activities of main organizations of behavioural expertise across the inter- and transnational level. It is being argued that organizations of behavioural expertise have successfully gained political and epistemic authority by a) establishing boundary-crossing networks of behavioural expertise, b) by producing scientifically and politically accepted forms of evidence based on randomized controlled trials (RCT) and c) by redefining economic and political progress in terms of state-society relations. The case of behavioural public policy sheds some light on the multiple ways expertise and politics are intertwined under the conditions of the post-national constellation.