Incentives: A Critical History of a Powerful Idea

A challenge to incentivization as a dominant framework for understanding and governing people

From corporate management and consumer behavior to public health and climate policy, incentives are widely treated as a neutral and effective way to shape how people act. In this book, Guus Dix shows that incentives are not simple policy nudges; they lull us into a passive understanding of ourselves as being merely responsive to changes others make to our environment. They foster a politics of incremental tweaks to a socially and ecologically destructive economic system that we are expected to accept without question. Dix argues that it is time to challenge the reign of incentives in contemporary science and public life.

Dix traces the evolution of the incentive, from the engineering of performance charts and rewards for factory workers to combating gridlock at Britain’s National Health Service. He describes the function of incentives under socialism, theories of adjustment incentives developed at the Harvard Business School to manage employees, and incentivizing whole economies—both socialist and capitalist. He shows that incentivization is a distinct way of wielding power. Incentives have become part of a quasi-universal governing philosophy that keeps us from addressing such major issues as poverty and the climate crisis. Finally, Dix analyzes the limits of incentivization, arguing that being governed by incentives keeps us from considering government policies that have the potential to bring about meaningful and transformative change.