We are hosting a Workshop on “Behavioural Public Policy and Participatory Governance” that will take place at UCD in Dublin, Ireland on June 05/06, 2023. We are thankful for funding from the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Topic: The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers working on behavioural public policy and participatory governance. The use of behavioural insights to change people’s behaviours has become widespread in governments all over the world. However, behavioural interventions such as nudges have also been criticised for being paternalistic and being designed “top-down”. Meanwhile, participatory governance approaches are being developed in other strands of the policy literature (e.g., in well-being and sustainability) that encourage “bottom-up” policymaking through, for example, citizen assemblies, citizen juries, and deliberative mini-publics. Those approaches haven’t made their way into the behavioural policy discourse yet. This workshop aims to discuss possibilities and limitations of bottom-up approaches to behavioural public policy making. While grounded in philosophical perspectives, the workshop will focus on applied public policy that can be of direct influence to behavioural public policy.

Confirmed speakers include

Participation: If you are interested in this topic, please get in touch with the organisers (see their emails below). If you would like to present your work on the topic, please share some details about your work (e.g., a title and an abstract) in an email to the organisers.

We are also exploring opportunities to organise a special issue on the workshop’s topic. When sending the details of your work, please let us know if this was of interest to you.

Logistics: The workshop will be free of charge and we will cover catering, venue, and dinner for the speakers. You will need to make your own travel and accommodation arrangements. We plan to meet on Monday the 5th for lunch and finish on Tuesday the 6th by 5pm.

This will be a hybrid event and all participants (including the speakers) can join either remotely on Zoom or (preferably) in-person on the UCD campus in Dublin. Registration for participants will open about a month before the workshop.

Best wishes from the organisers:

Malte Dold (Malte.Dold@pomona.edu), Mark Fabian (mark.otto.fabian@gmail.com), and/or Leonhard Lades (leonhard.lades@ucd.ie).