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Hello All,
Given the recent excellent discussion between Dr. Farrell and Matt Socha there might be some interest in the following piece.
Enjoy!
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Policy Sciences (2018) 51:387–410
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-018-9325-5

DISCUSSION AND COMMENTARY:
The behavioural state: critical observations on technocracy
and psychocracy
Joram Nanne Pieter Feitsma1
Published online: 18 June 2018
© The Author(s) 2018
Abstract
A ‘Behavioural Insights’ movement has emerged within governments. This movement
infuses policymaking with behavioural scientific insights into the rationally bounded nature
of human behaviour, hoping to make more effective and cost-efficient policies without
being too obtrusive. Alongside sustained admirations of some, others see in Behavioural
Insights the threatening revival of technocracy, and more particularly a ‘psychocracy’: a
mode of public decision-making that wrongfully reduces the world of policymaking to a
rational-instrumental and top-down affair dictated by psychological expertise. This article
argues, however, that the claims of technocracy and psychocracy are overgeneralizations,
emanating from a frontstage-focused debate that ignores a vast backwater of emerging
behavioural policy practices. Grounded in four case studies on behavioural policymaking
in Dutch governance, it will be demonstrated that at least part of this backwater is neither
so technocratic nor so psychocratic as the critics claim.
Keywords Behavioural insights · Nudge · Technocracy · Psychocracy · Evidence-based
policy · Dutch government · Ethnographic fieldwork