BEIRUT — A conference scheduled for May 11-12 will reflect on the initial impact of a potentially powerful new political tool in Lebanon — a branch of behavioral economics called "Nudge."

Fadi Makki, an expert and adviser in public policy and the founder and director of the Qatar Behavioural Insights Unit and Beirut-based nongovernmental organization Nudge Lebanon, is the first person to formally apply the Nudge theory in the Middle East. He described it to Al-Monitor as a “beautiful combination of psychology and economics with the potential to change citizen behavior and government policy.”

Pioneered by Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Thaler and academic Cass Sunstein in the book “Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness” (2008), the economic theory espoused by Nudge Lebanon is based on the concept of “choice architecture,” which leverages human psychology to influence and alter citizens’ behaviors and decisions without stripping them of individual agency.

Nudge uses randomized control trials to test different approaches and find the most effective ways to influence people’s behavior, in a process Makki describes as “changing contexts to steer people gently in the right direction … without taking away other options.”