Our democratic system is having a hard time. Today, a bill proposing a referendum on voting reform remains stalled in the House of Lords, amid frantic manoeuvring amongst political parties. Political representatives feel misunderstood, mistrusted, disconnected from the electorate and frustrated by their inability to legislate solutions to complex problems. They cannot ban obesity, they cannot treat addiction with taxation and when they offer consultative websites, people use them to take the mick. For these reasons, the Cabinet Office’s Behavioural Insights Team, set up by David Cameron last July, is drawing upon cognitive psychology and behavioural economics to ‘nudge’ citizens into better behaviours:
Better than using nudge strategies to help political elites operate on a wayward citizenry, however, would be to draw on its considerable advances to budge political elites. Having discovered that our elected representatives cheat on their expenses, renege on their promises and are not above making false claims about their electoral competitors, it is surely time for democratic citizens to help them behave more rationally. One way they could do this is to nudge them into better managing the democratic deficit. This is no more than to say that democracy involves some level of popular control over elected representatives, and that these new ‘choice architectures’ might here be of some assistance.
To counter problems with democratic legitimacy, nudge technology would suggest the continual subliminal reminder that political elites are the servants of the public. Rather than etching flies on urinals to reduce spillage, like an early ‘nudge’ intervention at Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport, a simple definition of democracy might be displayed in the House of Commons tearoom. In addition, here in mimicry of the ancient Romans, a person could be detailed to constantly whisper in the ear of the leader, ‘remember you are mortal.’ In case such reminders were insufficient, and again copying from the ancients, we might demand that politicians keep the promises they contracted to in exchange for our votes, that they pay citizens to inform them on what they should do when in office, and that they appear in person, in public, to answer questions on their performance at the end of their tenures. It’s true that such measures are rather more budge than nudge, but educating all citizens to play a role in government, as they currently do in jury trials, would go some way towards reconnecting the public with parliament, as well as rescuing political elites from the hardships of their current isolation.
Nudging politicians to refrain from imagining that citizens lack social and political competence will surely take time and patience, as such attitudes are often found at the root of current democratic practice. When a politician refers to citizens as ‘not understanding the current fiscal restraints,’ as ‘choosing benefits as a life-style,’ as ‘being mistaken about the quality of public services’ or as ‘not having understood the message from government’, they should be budged rather than nudged.
The Behavioural Insights Team urges that it will not come up with a “magic bullet” for complex social issues. Instead it suggests its work can support “a combined approach between many partners – local communities, professionals, businesses and citizens themselves”. But how does it square this collaborative approach with its emphasis on drawing upon egotistical motivations? And how does it counter the concern that the government seeks ways to manipulate citizens – in the language of encouraging “people to make choices that are in line with their underlying motivations”? Rather than seeking to reinforce social norms – defined, of course, by experts– perhaps we should look to draw on the resources of democracy itself.
[1] Cabinet Office Behavioural Insights Team (2010), ‘Applying behavioural insight to health’, London: Cabinet Office
