Behavioural governance in the policy process: introduction to the special issue

Abstract

Research adopting an interdisciplinary, behavioural perspective on Public Policy and Public Administration is booming. Yet there has been little integration into mainstream public policy scholarship. Behavioural public administration (BPA) and behavioural public policy (BPP) have emerged largely as two disconnected subfields. We propose the overarching term ‘behavioural governance’ to refer to the cognitive and decision processes through which decision-makers, implementing actors and target populations shape and react to public policies and to each other, as well as the impacts of these processes on individual and group behaviour. To allow an integrative perspective, this introductory essay discusses how a behavioural perspective can deepen understanding of different phases of the policy process. We connect insights from a long established public policy and administration scholarship which has not always been self-defined as ‘behavioural’ with more recent studies adopting a more explicitly behavioural perspective, including those in this Special Issue from varied national contexts.