Articles for category: English Articles

Why lawyers should deal with Nudges

Emanuel Towfigh and Christian Traxler have asked why the nudging debate has arrived so late in the German legal discourse. They argue that this is due to a mixture of reasons related to legal culture and legal education. I agree with their analysis. So let me address one question that both authors do not touch. Why should lawyers deal with the question of nudging? Wouldn’t this rather be a task for psychologists or behavioral economists? Prima facie, there seems to be a lot in favor of leaving the discussion on nudges to social scientists. A nudge seeks to alter people’s behavior without restraining choices. In order to influence people’s behavior, however, you have to analyze behavioral patterns, which is impossible without empirical methods.

18. April 2015

Take your 3D glasses off – How nudging provokes the way we imagine law

Nudging does polarize, but it also challenges the conventional way German legal scholars imagine the world of law. Even though it is good intuition to be afraid of a totalitarian government of economic rationality, it would be wrong to defend our current logic of judicial proportionality against the nudging approach. Instead, we should embrace democratically supervised economic expertise within our regulatory framework, without giving up on the possibility of radical love and revolution.

17. April 2015

Path dependencies of nudging, and how to overcome them

In a thought-provoking comment on the legitimacy of nudging, Towfigh and Traxler rightly point out that nudges have many facets. As a result, their legitimacy has to be judged case by case. Responding partly to Towfigh and Traxler and partly to the broader issue of the legitimacy of nudging, I want to distinguish between two aspects that are raised in the comment: firstly, public and legal legitimacy and secondly, legitimacy among legal professionals.

17. April 2015

A Design Perspective on Nudging

Although design thinking has become a buzzword in business and although human-centered design approaches are being explored in a range of public innovation labs concerned with developing and delivering citizen-centric policies and public services, nudging is rarely discussed for its design implications. What would such a discussion contribute and how may it help us focus on the potential benefits of a nudging approach? It would begin by questioning how nudging enhances or diminishes people’s abilities to take deliberate action or to make informed decisions.

17. April 2015

Nudges polarize!

Die Vorstellung, dass Regierungen auf „Nudges“ zurückgreifen, um Entscheidungen der Bürger zu beeinflussen, polarisiert, vor allem unter Juristen. Die einen betrachten diesen verhaltenswissenschaftlichen Ansatz als faszinierenden und attraktiven Weg der Politikgestaltung. Die Aussicht auf billige und sich gleichsam selbständig vollziehende Regulierungsinstrumente klingt gerade in finanziell harten Zeiten verlockend und lässt diese „sanften“ Interventionen als bestechende Alternative zu konventionellen Regulierungsmechanismen erscheinen. Andere hingegen beschwören die Gefahr eines überfürsorglichen Staates herauf, der mit „Psycho-Tricks“ seine Bürger manipuliert. Verglichen mit traditionellen Politikinstrumenten wie etwa Steuern sind Nudges eher hintergründige Regierungsaktivitäten, die nur schwer durch demokratische Prozesse zu kontrollieren sind und damit leicht außer Kontrolle geraten können. Obwohl eine starke Polarisierung im politischen Diskurs heutzutage nicht unüblich ist, lohnt es sich, die Hintergründe dieser emotional und leidenschaftlich geführten Kontroverse in den Blick zu nehmen.

15. April 2015

A European Network of Constitutional Law Blogs

When Hungary adopts an undemocratic constitution it is not just the Hungarians who have a problem. When Scots and Catalans strive for independence it is not just UK and Spain that get into trouble. Anyone who reads this blog regularly will be familiar with the fact that we share common constitutional space in the European Union in which the national and the supranational constitutional levels interact in manifold ways. And yet we still know so little about each other’s constitutional culture, our commonalities and differences, our views and preferences. We hardly ever engage in discussions with people from other constitutional ... continue reading

17. März 2015

Searching for the Ariadne‘s thread – The Legal Complexities of »Grexit« and »Graccident«

It seems more and more likely that Greece will not be able or willing to fulfill the reform demands by the Eurogroup, condition for the payment of available funds under the prolonged financial assistance programme, not to mention an additional programme. The immediate consequence seems obvious: Greece would, deliberately or not, have to leave the Euro. But that is tremendously problematic, legally. Should grexit or graccident still occur – the regulatory power of monetary law is sometimes limited – this would produce an aftermath of legal proceedings and generate legal uncertainty for years to come, at least in Greece.

15. März 2015