From entitled citizens to nudged consumers? Re

Behavioural Public Policy seeks to produce behavioural change by altering people’s choice architecture. As exemplified in the field of health, this behavioural turn in public policy comes at a cost since policymakers (‘nudgers’) tend to disregard the historical policy legacies and policy rationales that have shaped the notion of health citizenship. Behavioural interventions challenge the traditional hallmarks of health citizenship, such as trust in providers and professionals, lifestyle as a matter of individual choice, and healthcare provision and voice within healthcare governance arrangements. As demonstrated in the areas of health promotion, health insurance provision and the doctor–patient relationship, nudge tactics make state–citizen relations more patchy and inconsistent. This calls for a behaviourally informed citizenship model, which accommodates human flaws and the inevitability of systematic exploitation, offers a way to explore new forms of protecting individuals from coerced behavioural change strategies, and helps to maintain the collective engagement of citizens in the process of public policymaking