Behavioral Political Economy

Traditional political economy models typically assume fully rational actors and perfect information, overlooking the cognitive biases, heuristics, and social dynamics that shape real-world decisions. Behavioral political economy fills this gap by integrating psychological insights and behavioral economics into the analysis of political and economic behavior, enabling a more realistic understanding of how these factors influence voting behavior, policy support, and collective action. This approach reveals how phenomena like limited attention and cognitive biases, motivated reasoning, social influence and preferences, and narratives shaping how individuals interpret causality and responsibility affect outcomes such as public support for redistribution and paternalistic policies, and defines implications for the design of voting rules, collective deliberation, mechanisms for information and preference aggregation, and policy-making. Recent societal challenges, such as populist movements, misinformation, and political polarization, highlight the importance of understanding these behavioral mechanisms. Integrating behavioral insights can enhance the design and efficiency of public policies by improving compliance and fostering broader public support.The aim of this Research Topic is to encourage and recognize research that brings novel insights into phenomena at the intersection of political science, psychology, and economics. Contributions may focus on classic topics — such as voting behavior, elections, voting rules, and public support for redistribution — as well as emerging or less traditional areas of political economy, including populism, paternalism, narratives, and the spread of misinformation. The Research Topic seeks to collect high-quality studies in behavioral and experimental political economy and to support interdisciplinary collaborations, exploratory studies, and experimental replications that tackle either theoretical or applied problems. By pursuing these objectives, it aims to generate new insights into human behavior in society, inform policy design, and enhance our understanding of the mechanisms shaping political and economic outcomes.A non-exhaustive list of themes includes: • Voting behavior and political preferences • Elections, candidate competition, and polarization • Voting rules • Bargaining and information aggregation in committees • Collective deliberation and communication processes • Narratives • Populism, fake news, and information transmission • Paternalism and behavioral interventions • Public finance, redistribution, and welfare policiesWe welcome original research articles, policy analysis, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and experimental replications. Empirical contributions can include observational, survey, or experimental data.This Research Topic will accept the following article types: Original ResearchBrief Research ReportConceptual AnalysisPolicy and Practice ReviewsPolicy BriefOpinionPerspectiveSystematic ReviewReview Topic editors: João V. Ferreira, Benoît Tarroux, Marie Claire Villeval Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/75624/behavioral-political-economy