Technocracy without society: a critique of nudging as an approach to managing risk

This article considers the evolution of public risk management over the past half century in the United States, focusing on ‘nudging’ as a technique to manage a variety of risks – environmental, health, and financial – through shifts in individual behaviour. I argue that nudging operates according to a privatised, market-based logic of security that displaces more democratic approaches. I further show how nudging aims to go beyond the political – which is to say beyond the realm of democratic contestation over the assessment and mitigation of risk, thereby reinforcing an unsustainable view of risk management as an apolitical set of ‘best practices’. I further argue that this technocratic approach to risk has become particularly problematic amid a populist backlash against scientific expertise and elite institutions, and may even leave advanced democracies less able to manage the risks they face: the erosion of public trust in experts and government undermines both the attempt to nudge individuals towards ‘prudential’ choices and government mandates to manage risks through more aggressive regulatory means.