Power, Paternalism and Libertarianism : Libertarian Paternalism – More than a Nudge

Abstract: It is commonly believed that paternalism is at odds with libertarianism. Recent literature has suggested that there are forms of paternalism which are acceptable to libertarians: namely “nudging”, sometimes even referred to as “libertarian paternalism”. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to investigate the taxonomical question of how libertarianism, paternalism and nudging relate to each other. Secondly, to investigate whether, and if so when, paternalism is compatible with libertarianism. I argue that any action which is not coercive is compatible with libertarianism. Thus, any non-coercive paternalist action is compatible with libertarianism. I also argue that there are several paternalist action types, such as nudges, informing and incentivizing, which are not coercive, and thus are compatible with libertarianism.