'Compulsory sobriety' or 'drunken freedom'? The role of the state in changing behaviour

Governments have long acted to curb or encourage particular behaviour amongst their citizens.Debates about the correct levels of government intervention and how this fits with personal responsibility are as old as democracy.The quotes in the title of this article are taken fromdebates about the 1872 Licensing Act,yet could have easily appeared inmedia coverage ofmore recent legislation on alcohol.

The stance taken by any government sets out the limits of socially acceptable behaviour, whether by giving tax breaks to married couples, passing legislation aimed at preventing anti-social behaviour or fining speeding drivers.The New Labour government takes this further than most, by explicitly discussing the ‘social contracts’ and ‘rights and responsibilities’ which underpin their approach to social welfare.Together with an increased knowledge about what works in behaviour change, and growing understanding that government cannot tackle issues such as climate change alone, this has led to a greater focus than ever upon public behaviour and questions of personal responsibility. Policy areas including climate change and other environmental issues, health, crime and employment are seen to be insolvable without public buy in.

Broader social debates also contribute to the changing way behaviour is discussed.As the great Victorian civic infrastructure projects were implemented there was a heated public debate about the limits of state intervention.The current debate is characterised by a focus on the social costs of intensely personal activities. Behaviours in the home such as energy use, eating habits and waste disposalare all under scrutiny. Public views on risk are changing, and there is a greater reluctance to countenance risk than ever before,with strong calls for government intervention following food safety or transport crises.At the same time excessive caution about health and safety is heavilyresisted and mocked.This sits alongside ongoing debates over surveillance and privacy in the wake of the London bombings in July 2005.

The government can intervene in different realms of public behaviour. It can act directly in behaviours thought to be personal, such as drinking or eating habits. It can aim measures at the relationships between people, such as improving parenting or reducing mugging, or the relationships between people and wider society, such as addressing climate change by reducing home energy use. Finally, the government can affect the environment in which individual decisions are made by regulating the market – for example, by pressurising supermarkets to reduce the amount of packaging they use, so that individual decisions about recycling are less important.

Social norms are enormously important in dictating the choices an individual makes – for example students arriving at university for the first time in the United States were told that the university culture is hostile to drinkers and that other students do not drink.The study found that these students did not go on to drink, even when others around them did. People – and young people in particular – want to conform to their peers.An important and long term role government can play is in shifting deep rooted social norms by influencing the wider environment, and changing people’s views through communications.

However, focusing solely on changing long term social norms ignores political realities, which are that governments need to focus on relatively short term political popularity alongside longer term measures. Which of these areas government aims to affect is inevitably affected by political considerations – in other words, will the public accept that the government has a legitimate role to play? There is generally considerably greater public acceptance – and indeed philosophical justification – for interventions aimed at preventing harm to others. Measures aimed at preventing crime and disorder are much more publicly popular than those targeting behaviours thought to be private, such as reducing obesity.This is partly because these kinds of behaviours are thought to be committed by ‘other people’ – therefore,measures to prevent binge drinking amongst young people are always going to be more popular amongst older voters than any aimed at reducing alcohol consumption in the home.We tend to be reluctant to think that our own behaviour is a problem. But there is also a commonsense public understanding that government has an important role in preventing harm to bystanders.The debate over smoking was revolutionised when it was seen as being about passive smoking – particularly about harm to children – rather than as a personal health choice. Equally, the public tends to be supportive of measures which improve default choices, such as making all goods such as fridges environmentally friendly.

These political considerations influence the measures government feels able to take.Harsher measures such as taxation are very difficult to impose if the public does not see a wider social cost to their actions.Any government which attempts this will be politically punished, as, for example,with the fuel tax protests a few years ago.Government, therefore, needs to ensure that people know which actions do affect others – directly or indirectly. The default position otherwise is to provide people with information, and allow them to make the choices themselves. For many behaviours, particularly those which are addictive or very socially normal, simply providing information is not enough.We now know that many decisions are not based upon rational calculations about what is good for us, and policy needs to take this into account.

Any policy debate about changing a particular behaviour needs to be seen in this wider context, rather than as a narrow issue upon which the government will be able to act in isolation.This is partly to make sure that learning from one policy area is translated into another. Experts in environmental behaviour change rarely speak to experts in health behaviour change. But more importantly, it means assessing the public mood and understanding that people do not interpret government actions in silos. If the samepeople are targeted by poorly coordinated behaviour interventions their self efficacy and ability to change is potentially undermined. For example, the target groups for reducing anti-social behaviour, obesity and smoking are very similar. Equally, if conflicting messages come out of different government departments – for example, hearing about Heathrow Terminal 5 alongside the increase in air passenger duty – behaviour change messages are likely to be undermined. Alcohol policy is one area of many in which these debates about the limits to individual freedom are played out, and it is important to understand it within this broader framework. Alcohol is such an entrenched part of British culture that these wider issues about personal responsibility and the role of the state are particularly pressing; any intervention needs to have a solid grounding in strong moral, philosophical arguments if it isto have any chance of succeeding politically.

Too often alcohol misuse is seen simply as a matter of personal choice.The debate, therefore, gets trapped in terms of ‘good drinkers’ and ‘bad drinkers’.This ignores wider social harms, and the enormous costs in terms of the impact upon health services, upon crime and upon quality of life in town centres. It also casts alcohol and whether to drink purely as a rational choice.This ignores the broader issues which affect private decisions. At the individual level, alcohol is addictive.At the societal level, drinking – and drinking to excess – is completely normalised culturally and in our social set up. In many areas, going to the pub is the main available leisure activity.These social messages about the acceptability of drinking are reinforced by its price,which has fallen dramatically in relation to income over the last few years, and its ever widening availability. Messages about safer drinking and units, therefore, compete against extremely strong social and economic messages about how normal it is to drink.

For many people drinking is not, therefore, a rational choice that can be seen in terms of purely personal responsibility. Interventions need to move on from addressing it in these terms. Part of this is helping people to understand the wider social costs of their behaviour. But it is,more importantly, about changing the environment in which decisions are made, including by looking at price, availability and social norms. Whilst this may be politically challenging, it is socially responsible.