The bibliometrics of the behavioural state: structure, agency, and institutions

Behavioural Public Policy (BPP), which focuses on the psychological micro-mechanisms involved in public policy, has experienced prodigious growth over the last decade. This study examines 2,301 BPP articles from 1980 to 2024 on the Scopus database. Our findings reveal an exponential increase in BPP publications since 2019. As a proportion of all public policy publications, BPP articles have been rising in number and significance. We also observe a thematic shift from environmental and transport issues to global emergencies (e.g., global pandemic), a reflection of how deeply BPP research engages with the real policy world, with its research agenda aligned with policy challenges of the day. We uncovered a greater level of diversity in countries involved in terms of output, collaboration, and funding. As evident from our brief discussion of two case studies and considerations from the “heterogeneity revolution,” granular contextual factors do lead to differences in outcomes from similar policy interventions. Taken together, these show the rising importance of BPP, not just as a tool for designing interventions to achieve some public end, but also as a legitimation device in specific contexts. However, the pursuit of contextual heterogeneity without any organizing mechanism leads to a real risk of BPP turning into an atheoretical policy lab, where the intervention effects are so varied and diverse that literature is limited in its ability to inform policy research or design. We argue that embedding BPP within institutional theory can be useful both for theorizing efforts and for understanding the rising importance of the legitimation role of BPP.