"Sludge" in Irish Policymaking

Citation

Lades L, Johnson J & O'Connor R (2022) "Sludge" in Irish Policymaking. PublicPolicy.ie. Dublin. https://publicpolicy.ie/governance/sludge-in-irish-policymaking/

Abstract
First paragraph: Some policies are not as effective as they could be, and “sludge” might be one reason for that. Sludge is the term that behavioural scientists use to describe excessive or unjustified frictions that make it harder for people to do what they want (Sunstein 2021; Thaler 2018). These frictions can come in the form of paperwork burdens, complex application processes, long waiting times, difficult cancellation processes, and many other ways. Concepts closely related to sludge are administrative burden, red-tape, and transaction costs (Bozeman 1993; Burden et al. 2012; Herd and Moynihan 2019; Madsen, Mikkelsen, and Moynihan 2021; Shahab and Lades 2021). Thaler and Sunstein coined the term sludge and also wrote the bestselling book “Nudge” (Tha-ler and Sunstein 2008). As such, it is no coincidence that both terms rhyme, and sludge has been described as the “evil cousin of nudge”.