The boundaries of Behavioural Insights: observations from two ethnographic studies

Abstract

‘Behavioural Insights’ has emerged as an increasingly popular approach to policy making in governments across the globe. Practitioners largely present a frontstage narrative of Behavioural Insights as a coherent concept but this article challenges such a description. We explore how efforts to develop a global Behavioural Insights community are subject to an ongoing process of policy translation. To show how this translation works, we juxtapose findings from two independent ethnographic research projects on Behavioural Insights practitioners: one on practitioners in Australian federal government, the other on practitioners in Dutch local and central government. This exploratory study highlights that Behavioural Insights at one level possesses some consistencies, including a shared use of a family of tools and artefacts. At the same time the field is marked by contingencies, particularly with respect to the methods used. These contingencies raise puzzling questions about the identity of Behavioural Insights and whether its presentation as a coherent whole is of more value in a discursive sense than in a practical one.