‘Behavioural Insights’ has emerged as an increasingly popular approach to policy making in governments across the globe. Practitioners largely present a frontstage narrative of Behavioural Insights as a coherent concept but this article challenges such a description. We explore how efforts to develop a global Behavioural Insights community are subject to an ongoing process of policy translation. To show how this translation works, we juxtapose findings from two independent ethnographic research projects on Behavioural Insights practitioners: one on practitioners in Australian federal government, the other on practitioners in Dutch local and central government. This exploratory study highlights that Behavioural Insights at one level possesses some consistencies, including a shared use of a family of tools and artefacts. At the same time the field is marked by contingencies, particularly with respect to the methods used. These contingencies raise puzzling questions about the identity of Behavioural Insights and whether its presentation as a coherent whole is of more value in a discursive sense than in a practical one.

中文翻译：

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行为洞察力的边界：来自两项民族志研究的观察。

“行为洞察”已成为全球各国政府越来越流行的决策方法。从业者主要将行为洞察的前台叙述作为一个连贯的概念，但本文对这种描述提出了挑战。我们探讨了发展全球行为洞察社区的努力如何受制于持续的政策转化过程。为了展示这种翻译是如何工作的，我们将两个独立的民族志研究项目的发现放在了行为洞察从业者身上：一个是关于澳大利亚联邦政府的从业者，另一个是关于荷兰地方和中央政府的从业者。这项探索性研究强调了一个层面的行为洞察力具有一些一致性，包括共享使用一系列工具和人工制品。同时，该领域也存在突发事件，特别是在所使用的方法方面。这些偶然性引发了关于行为洞察力的身份的令人费解的问题，以及它作为一个连贯的整体的呈现是否在话语意义上比在实际意义上更有价值。