Workshop on “Behavioural Public Policy and Participatory Governance”

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.