October 25, 4:30PM, Jesse Dashefsky at Money, Markets, & Governance: Of Nudges and Neoliberalism: Behavioral Governance Reexamined

Please join us for our next meeting of the Money, Markets, and Governance Workshop on next Tuesday, 10/25, 4:30-6PM, in Social Science Research Building classroom 401.

 

Jesse Dashefsky
MA student, MAPSS (Political Science), University of Chicago

Of Nudges and Neoliberalism: Behavioral Governance Reexamined

Discussant: Larry Svabek, PhD Student, Political Science, University of Chicago

Abstract: In the last ten years, states and other governance stakeholders have increasingly turned to behavioral techniques such as “nudges” to advance their aims in public health, tax compliance, and consumer and environmental protection. While this trend has attracted a great deal of attention from social scientists, the literature is largely normative. This thesis takes a different tack. Instead of asking whether governments and other actors should takes their cues from behavioral research, it will consider why they have begun to do so in the first place and in the particular ways that they have. Drawing on Foucault, it will argue that the turn to behavioral governance reflects a desperate attempt by states and other stakeholders to compete in a neoliberalized world, such that it reflects less the strength of practices like nudging than the vulnerability of the practitioners.

Questions about the workshop or accessibility concerns can be addressed to yanivr {at} uchicago {dot} edu

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