Keynote: The Emergence of Behavioural Policy-Making: A European Perspective

Sibony, Anne-Lise
(2025) European Consortium for Church and State Research annual conference, New Tools Facilitating Legal Governance of Religion, Brusse — Location: Brussels (20.November.2025)

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This presentation examines the emergence and development of behavioral policy-making from a European perspective, tracing its evolution from academic origins to practical policy implementation. The presentation begins with a historical overview of the field, contrasting the foundational work on heuristics and biases by Nobel laureates Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky with Gerd Gigerenzer's fast and frugal heuristics approach. Key behavioral phenomena are illustrated through classic experiments demonstrating framing effects, the conjunction fallacy, and dual-process thinking models. The second section explores the transition from academic theory to behavioral public policy, highlighting the widespread influence of the "Nudge" framework and its international dissemination. The presentation documents the institutional adoption of behavioral insights across multiple jurisdictions, including the establishment of dedicated units to the current mainstreaming of behavioral insights in EU policy design. Finally, concrete policy examples are presented. The presentation acknowledges both the potential of behavioral insights for policy effectiveness and concerns about policymakers' own bounded rationality, emphasizing the importance of evidence-based approaches to debiasing policy decisions.
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Sibony, A.-L. (2025). Keynote: The Emergence of Behavioural Policy-Making: A European Perspective. European Consortium for Church and State Research annual conference, New Tools Facilitating Legal Governance of Religion, Brusse, Brussels. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/266759