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Reviving Rationality explains how Donald Trump destabilized the decades-long bipartisan consensus that federal agencies must base their decisions on evidence, expertise, and analysis. Under the Trump administration, inconvenient evidence has been ignored, experts have been sidelined, and analysis has been used to obscure facts, rather than inform the public. The results have included haphazard and incoherent policy, social division, defeats in court, a demoralized federal workforce, and a loss of faith in government's ability to respond to the pressing problems facing American society. The hard work of rebuilding a rational regulatory system will fall to future administrations.
List of contents
- Introduction
- Part I. Guardrails
- 1. Politics and Regulation
- 2. A Threatening Synthesis
- 3. Staying in Bounds
- 4. A Retreat from Reason
- Part II. Charade
- 5. The Illusion of Costs without Benefits
- 6. Erasing Public Health Science
- 7. Resurrecting Discredited Models
- 8. Ignoring Indirect Benefits
- 9. Trivializing Climate Change
- 10. Manipulating Transfers
- Part III. Rebuilding
- 11. Future Directions
- 12. Improving the Guardrails
About the author
Livermore and Reveszare the authors of Retaking Rationality: How Cost-Benefit Analysis Can Better Protect the Environment and Our Health (Oxford) and the editors of The Globalization of Cost-Benefit Analysis in Environmental Policy (Oxford). Together, they founded the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law, which Revesz now directs.
Summary
For decades, administrations of both political parties have used cost-benefit analysis to evaluate and improve federal policy in a variety of areas, including health and the environment. Today, this model is under grave threat.
In Reviving Rationality, Michael Livermore and Richard Revesz explain how Donald Trump has destabilized the decades-long bipartisan consensus that federal agencies must base their decisions on evidence, expertise, and analysis. Administrative agencies are charged by law with protecting values like stable financial markets and clean air. Their decisions often have profound consequences, affecting everything from the safety of workplaces to access to the dream of home ownership. Under the Trump administration, agencies have been hampered in their ability to advance these missions by the conflicting ideological whims of a changing cast of political appointees and overwhelming pressure from well-connected interest groups. Inconvenient evidence has been ignored, experts have been sidelined, and analysis has been used to obscure facts, rather than inform the public. The results are grim: incoherent policy, social division, defeats in court, a demoralized federal workforce, and a loss of faith in government's ability to respond to pressing problems.
This experiment in abandoning the norms of good governance has been a disaster. Reviving Rationality explains how and why our government has abandoned rationality in recent years, and why it is so important for future administrations to restore rigorous cost-benefit analysis if we are to return to a policymaking approach that effectively tackles the most pressing problems of our era.
Additional text
This book is another thoughtful and thought-provoking contribution by the authors to our understanding of critical aspects of the regulatory process. The issues discussed and perspectives provided will be particularly important to our country in the years ahead. It is a must read for those involved in the process as well as those who want a clear explanation for how we can and should evaluate government policy.
