Devlette Davranışsal Kamu Politikalarının Ortaya Çıkışı ve Gelişim Süreci: Türkiye Örneği
Özet
KUŞSEVEN, Ayça. Emergence and Development of Behavıoral Publıc Polıcy Unıts in
Government: The Case of Turkey, Ph.D.Thesis, Ankara,2022.
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.
