A lot of what local government does is to try to change citizen’s behaviour. We have a research project at Southampton with colleagues from Manchester that is on-going on these issues (http://www.ipeg.org.uk/civicbehaviour/). The entrenched rational choice model in public policy pushed by traditional economic thinking assumes that citizens engage in self-interested, ‘rational’ behaviour, a product of processes of cognitive deliberation and instrumental calculation. And on this basis policy interventions often start with supplying citizens with sufficient information to make informed choices about the available options. But what if citizens systematically miscalculate or employ mental ‘short cuts’ such as heuristics, cues and habits. Enter the thinking captured in Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler’s Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. I know of one local authority- the London Borough of Barnet- that is taking the language of this book and the issues it raises seriously. Are there any others out there?