What are we forgetting?

During the last decade, the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) has been the main driver in establishing behavioural public policy as a novel approach in public policy. Adhering to a set of strategic principles, BIT has succeeded in translating insights from the behavioural science literature into policy interventions to show how behavioural science may be applied to public policy in a methodologically as well as economically efficient way. However, as Sanders, Snijder, and Hallsworth notes in their paper, the wide-ranging transformation of public policy development that many thought possible has remained absent. In this comment I argue that this situation itself is due, at least partly, to the strategic principles adopted by BIT and call for developing more ‘diagnostic’ approaches, including better tools and models, to ensure that behavioural science is not perceived as offering merely technocratic tweaks.