Emergence and development of behavioral public policy units in government: The case of Turkey

The main concern for those who design and implement public policies is how the target audience will react and adapt to public policies. The period since 2000 has witnessed the successful application of behavioural insights to the design and implementation of public policy. This creative approach and practice in public policy design is referred to as 'nudging' in the literature. The 'nudge' aims to improve the quality and success of public policy interventions, based on biases that occur in the individual decision-making process. As of 2021, there are more than 200 behavioral public policy/nudge units in the world. Many of them are also organized within the state structure. This thesis has examined the formation and development process of behavioural public policy units in the world and in Turkey in detail and detailed information has been given about the studies carried out in this field. The behavioural public policy unit in Turkey was established in 2018 under the Ministry of Commerce (Formerly Ministry of Economy). This unit was imported (or adapted) into Turkey through policy transfer, inspired by the UK Behavioural Public Policy Unit, with the help and guidance of the UK Embassy in Ankara. In order to evaluate this transfer process from a theoretical point of view, the formation and development process of the 'nudge' unit in Turkey was analysed using Kingdon's Multiple Streams Model. In this context, this thesis has analyzed the establishment process, organizational structure, activities (nudge experiment, cooperation activities with universities, etc.) of the behavioral public policy unit in Turkey and the future goals of the unit, with the help of the data obtained from the interviews, review of the relevant literature, and the examination of the official documents. The lessons learned from this study can be beneficial for all public policy actors, especially bureaucrats, as well as for developing countries. Keywords: Behavioural public policy, Nudging, Kingdon's Multiple Streams Model, Turkey