A Post-Ideological Administration?

Cass Sunstein, co-author of Nudge, is going to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Ezra Klein explains why that's significant:

OIRA is quiet, but important. It's the chokepoint of the entire federal regulatory apparatus. If used wisely, it facilitates the flow, provides welcome analysis and judgment, and aids in implementation. If used as an anti-government weapon, it can do a lot of damage. Sunstein can do real good there. But why would he want it? He's shown a taste for celebrity, and OIRA very much does not provide that.

It's worth remembering that Sunstein has recently achieved great fame for Nudge, a book which basically argues that we need to apply the insights of behavioral economics to the construction of regulation. And Director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is the ultimate staging ground for those ideas. Reagan understood that OIRA was the central clearinghouse where you could affect the whole of the regulatory state all at once. He wanted to virtually shut it down. Sunstein wants to "nudge" it.