Some challenges to the new paternalism.
- Resource Type
- Article
- Authors
- LE GRAND, JULIAN
- Source
- Behavioural Public Policy. Jan2022, Vol. 6 Issue 1, p160-171. 12p.
- Subject
- *PUBLIC behavior
*GOVERNMENT policy
*PATERNALISM
*WELL-being
*INTENTION
- Language
- ISSN
- 2398-063X
Behavioural public policy analysts have examined cases of individuals' failures of reason or judgement to attain their ends and have used these to justify 'means' paternalism: a form of government intervention that tries to save individuals from the consequences of those reasoning failures and to enable them better to achieve those ends. This has been challenged on a number of grounds, including too great a focus on choice-preserving interventions such as nudges, the privileging of future preferences over current ones and the possibility of state failures as damaging to individual well-being as the original reasoning failure. This paper summarizes the principal arguments in favour of means paternalism and then addresses these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]