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Real Nudge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Luc Bovens
Luc Bovens*
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
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Abstract

The novelty in Adam Burgess’ paper is that he assesses nudge policies in the context of the shift in the UK government's approach to risk from the nannying policies of Labour to the nudge policies of the Conservatives. There is a wealth of ideas in this paper. I find it useful to disentangle some of these ideas focusing on the following two questions:

  1. 1. In what respects do Labour's nannying policies and the Conservatives’ nudge policies differ?

  2. 2. What is problematic about Labour's nannying and the Conservatives’ nudge policies?

Subsequently I will reflect on how a particular strand of research in the social sciences can be made relevant to designing a more responsible way of dealing with societal risk and show how this approach can evade some of Burgess’ concerns.

Type
Symposium on Nudge
Information
European Journal of Risk Regulation , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , March 2012 , pp. 43 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

1 Thaler, Richard and Sunstein, Cass, Nudge – Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

2 See, e.g., Brand, Donald A., Saisana, Michaela, Rynn, Lisa A. et al., “Comparative Analysis of Alcohol Control Policies in 30 Countries”, 4(4) PLoS (2007), pp. 752–759 Google ScholarPubMed; Ritter, Alison “Comparing Alcohol Policies between Countries – Science or Silliness?”, 4(4) PLoS (2007), pp. 616–619 Google ScholarPubMed; Sheron, Nick, Hawkey, Chris and Gilmore, Ian, “Projections of Alcohol Deaths: A Wake-Up Call”, 377 The Lancet (2011), pp. 1297–1299 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.