Several ideas are associated with the term Nudging and its use in policy-making. There is, however, still no concise concept of nudging. The term describes new forms of behaviourally informed regulation but without clarifying its impact on classical political instruments. We present a new typology of political instruments and discuss the varieties of behaviorally informed policy-making influencing political instruments. Furthermore, the argument is followed that behavioural insights change the effects that policy instruments provoke and thus trigger a “behavioural spin” with regard to policy instruments. We explain how to apply the new typology to empirical cases. We give some examples from the field of health policy (nutrition) and energy consumption in the United States of America (USA).
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