How Think Tanks Shape Social Development Policies

By James G. McGann

Across the globe, there are more than four thousand policy institutes, or think tanks, that research or advocate for economic and social development. Yet the relationship between these organizations and the policies they influence is not well understood. How Think Tanks Shape Social Development Policies examines case studies drawn from a range of political and economic systems worldwide to provide a detailed understanding of how think tanks can have an impact on issues such as education policy, infrastructure, environment and sustainable development, economic reform, poverty alleviation, agricultural and land development, and social policy.

Each chapter provides an overview of the approaches and organizational structures of specific think tanks, as well as the political, economic, and social opportunities and the challenges of the environments in which they operate. The contributors study the stages of innovative think-tank-aided strategies implemented in highly industrialized world powers like the United States and Russia, emerging countries such as China, India, Brazil, and South Korea, and developing nations that include Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania. Accompanied by an extensive introduction to contextualize the history and theory of policy institutes, this comprehensive comparison of policy success stories will be instructive and transferable to other think tanks around the globe.

Contributors: Assefa Admassie, Celso Castro, Kristina Costa, Francisco Cravioto, Marek Dabrowski, Matt Dann, He Fan, Rajeev Gowda, Oh-Seok Hyun, Christian Koch, Jitinder Kohli, R. Andreas Kraemer, Elena Lazarou, William Lyakurwa, Ashwin Mahesh, Florencia Mezzadra, Partha Mukhopadhyay, Mcebisi Ndletyana, Sridhar Pabbisetty, Miguel Pulido, Marco Aurelio Ruediger, María Belén Sánchez, Dmitri Trenin, Samuel Wangwe, Vanesa Weyrauch, Maria Monica Wihardja, Rebecca Winthrop, Wang Xiaoyi.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Release date: May 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9780812209624

Book preview

Introduction: Social Development, Think Tanks, and Policy Advice

Governments, developmental organizations, and individuals are closer than ever before to a consensus about the appropriate strategy to development. This is attributable to the recent and ongoing crises that have exposed the depth of human insecurity and the inadequacy of reforms put in place over the past three decades to create sustainable and equitable growth, or to move poor countries and populations on to a stable development trajectory.¹

The path leading to today’s consensus began in the years after World War II with a development strategy focused purely on economic growth. Increased output and growth maximization were thought to be the key components to a nation’s security and stability. Those who dissented, who argued that economic growth did not eliminate or minimize human suffering, because it failed to provide the most basic human rights and needs, lost out to the governments and organizations that supported the focus on economic growth. Those who sided with a social development trajectory, which focused on empowering and mobilizing the poor and closing the equality gap, were overruled by the stronger consensus of their time. Thus, the move to a social development strategy in recent decades, which now has governmental, organizational, and financial support, was not a smooth one. There was no clean evolution, with support for economic growth decreasing steadily over time in favor of a social focus.

A number of scholars have examined this shift in thinking about development policy that has culminated in an increased emphasis on social development. John Friedman, in his book Empowerment: The Politics of Alternative Development, writes that, along with the social movements of the 1960s, there was an intellectual movement limited mainly to scholars and development professionals who fought for an alternative approach to the development of poor countries; the achievements of this movement were not won in the streets, but at international conferences held throughout the 1970s.² These conferences included the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, which established the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) to help counteract environmental degradation. Two years later, in 1974, the Cocoyoc Seminar, convened in Mexico by UNEP and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, brought together professionals from all over the world who came to the conclusion that international development efforts were ineffective. In the seminar’s final report, the participants noted that thirty years have passed since the signing of the United Nations Charter launched the effort to establish a new international order. Today, that order has reached a critical turning point…. It has proved impossible to meet the inner limits of satisfying fundamental human needs. On the contrary, more people are hungry, sick, shelterless and illiterate today than when the United Nations was first set up.³ The seminar helped important individuals in the world of development recognize the need for an alternative development strategy. Friedman shows how this tide continued to advance into 1975, when the Swedish Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation published a pamphlet titled What Now? Another Development, which again challenged the focus on economic development. The push for an alternative social development in the 1970s concluded with the establishment in 1976 of the International Foundation for Development Alternatives in Switzerland, whose principal purpose was to launch the Third System Project.⁴ This project recognized that people can act as autonomous power centers that are distinct from the powers of the state and the market. The third system included those groups that serve the needs and interests of the people. Despite this strong tide of support, the dying social movements of the 1960s, along with modernization and economic growth and a focus on market liberalization, negated the movement’s efforts.

The United Nations Research Institute for Social Development argues that a package of market-led liberalization reforms, initiated in the 1970s and applied to developing countries through the structural adjustment and stabilization programs of the 1980s, imposed heavy costs on the poorest countries and peoples, leading much of Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa to a lost decade of development.⁵ The neoliberalism initiated in the 1970s opened the financial credit market, with funds flowing from the United States and Europe to developing countries throughout the decade. These loans, invested in the receiving nations’ economies, were thought to spur economic growth by developing export economies. However, funds were now flowing from poor to rich countries as lender nations collected money from the steep interest rates that were imposed. When credit institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) requested repayments on the loans, the burden of repayment proved too steep for poor countries, and an international debt crisis ensued. To ensure that receiving nations allowed for market liberalization, the IMF required countries to carry out structural adjustment programs geared toward the requirements of a recently rediscovered neoliberal economic doctrine in order to qualify for loans.⁶ Such requirements included deregulation, privatization, and promotion of export production. In the end, the developed countries’ enforcement of economic liberalism on the developing world for the purpose of development led only to debt, unemployment, and civil unrest.

Compounding this was a shift, beginning in the 1980s, that saw governments limit the scope of social provision in the developing world. In Thandika Mkandawire’s terminology, the shift was from universalism—a country’s entire population is the beneficiary of social benefits as a basic right—to targeting, which used a form of means testing to determine the truly deserving.⁷ This shift was concurrent with the neoconservative ideology that grew ascendant in the 1980s, finding strong support in the Western world, including that of U.S. president Ronald Reagan and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. The principles that became the new orthodoxy, including individual responsibility and a limited role of the state, coupled with the fiscal caution and limited spending of the decade, countered the movement for social development and empowerment of the poor.

Despite the fact the world seemed to be moving in a different direction, the movement for social development remained alive. In addition to more landmark conferences and publications in the 1980s, including the United Nations’ appointment of the World Commission on Environment and Development and the publication of the Brundtland Report, which stimulated renewed discussion of alternative modes to development, Friedman shows that proponents of social development began pushing for social development outside established institutions.⁸ There are various explanatory frameworks for development. The main theme that can be derived from the literature that critiques these frameworks is that in many cases increasing economic productivity can improve social welfare, but it cannot be achieved without significant investments in health, education, and training of people.⁹

In 1984, social development proponents began to meet annually for what they called The Other Economic Summit, at which they debated topics such as the international economic disorder, putting people first, in search of self-reliance, working like women, and local economic regeneration.¹⁰ Over the next few years, these efforts began to shake mainstream institutions, gaining the support of governments and developmental organizations alike. As the world transitioned to the twenty-first century, the establishment of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, the recent economic crisis, and the widespread recognition of the need for sustainable social growth to remedy the lack of basic human needs in many regions of the world have led to the strongest consensus yet in support of social development.

Social Development: Main Theoretical Concepts

Social development is an especially broad topic, and the definition presented here will be equally broad in order to properly convey the full breadth of social development practice. The major sectors of social development are dissimilar—agriculture, criminal justice, defense, environment, health, human rights, and social services.¹¹ We will not examine the individual sectors in detail here, though they may be addressed in the regional discussions in which they are prominent issues.

Most broadly, social development refers to the processes that lead to improvements in human well-being and progress toward desirable social goals.¹² It is a movement, a practice, and a perspective concerned with helping people to realize the fullness of the social, political, and economic potentials that already exist within them.¹³ Unlike economic development, the primary focus of social development is the human element.¹⁴ Social development aims to help people by pursuing three overarching goals. First, practitioners work to create inclusive institutions: those that allow the people to participate and to have equal access to opportunities. They also endeavor to generate cohesive societies in which all population groups work together to solve problems. Finally, social development works to ensure that institutions are accountable; that is, they respond to the public interest in an efficient and effective manner.¹⁵

Social development is a multidisciplinary field that reaches across all geopolitical borders and … all levels of social, political, and economic organization.¹⁶ Richard Estes outlines the eight specific levels in which social development can function: individual empowerment; group empowerment; conflict resolution; institution-building; community-building; nation-building; region-building; and world-building.¹⁷

Social development operates on a set of assumptions that, together, give special importance to its practice. Estes identifies the most important of these assumptions. Practitioners commonly believe that the events occurring in other regions of the world have direct consequences on quality of life in all other regions of the world, thereby classifying social development not solely as a regional issue but also a global one. They also believe that human degradation has underlying causes in social, political, and economic factors that are international in nature. Moreover, peaceful coexistence is necessary for any meaningful advancement in social development, and given the current circumstances, the need to restructure the national and international social order is urgent.¹⁸ In sum, social development is the practice that aims to empower people in every region, and it does so largely through the means of transforming institutions, particularly those that define relationships between actors.

The General Goals and Values of Social Development

As solutions to leading social policy issues continue to evade the minds of policymakers, the goal of social development is to provide a platform for world leaders, policymakers, and think tanks to enhance the living conditions of the millions of impoverished persons worldwide. The focus on the social dimension of development is to aid members of societies plagued by gender inequality, extreme poverty, or human rights violations. The global economic crisis of 2008 and 2009 caused poorer countries especially to spiral into deeper political, economic, and social turmoil. As a result policymakers advanced socioeconomic issues to the forefront of policy. In the 1990s, in comparison to the present, the areas social development focused on—to a greater extent—included ethnic conflicts and rebuilding war-torn societies. Hence, social policy will shift priorities to address problems that harm the most vulnerable.

The paramount goal of social development is to ensure social sustainability by creating, improving, and preserving social cohesion.¹⁹ At the core of social development is the belief that the international community, in collaboration with world governments, can improve the conditions in which many are forced to live, by creating innovative policies that promote security, democracy, human rights, and gender equality. Additionally, policymakers use social development as a means of aiding the United Nations millennium goals, via measures aimed at reducing the ramifications of social problems. Another goal of social development is to rectify urgent issues like the vast amount of money governments provide financial institutions in comparison to the amounts allocated to combat poverty.

Social development’s goal of promoting social equity requires world leaders, policymakers, think tanks, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) to develop multidisciplinary research for contemporary problems. Effective social development policies are contingent on an understanding of both the social and political circumstances of contemporary times whereby such knowledge can be used to construct methodologies for normative social policies.²⁰ In order to create effective social development policies, these key players must set policy priorities, as well as commit to focusing on development, eliminating poverty, and responding to the needs of the most vulnerable. Thus, social development’s goals require the support, advocacy, and partnership of all key players in the international community.

While the definition of social development can be elusive, the Development Working Group of the G20 is meant to provide some cohesion on the issue of development. At the 2012 G20 Summit held in Los Cabos, Mexico, the Development Working Group asserted:

We recognize the impact that the modest global recovery might have on developing countries, particularly Low Income Countries …, in addressing the most pressing challenges of development and poverty reduction, including the fulfillment of the UN Millennium Development Goals. Promoting sustainable development and eradicating poverty by ensuring sustainable economic growth and decent job creation, therefore, remain key challenges for the G20. In order to meet these challenges, we need to adopt the right economic policies and appropriate coherent and large-scale actions that boost growth in a manner that is inclusive, sustained and environmentally sustainable, in order to benefit present and future generations.

The G20 considers social dimensions separate factors of development rather than necessary preliminary initiatives for all other development. These leaders still maintain a focus on economic development as a means to achieving development on a larger scale. In the UN Millennium Goals, issues of social development are mentioned as steps to be taken after economic development has occurred.

Defining Think Tanks and Their Role in Social Development

As social development emerges, however, it is coming to be seen not just as a supplement, a necessary partner to economic development, but as a project in itself. As a result, more resources are being dedicated to social development by major international organizations, the G20 governments, and the think tanks in G20 countries and it is at the forefront of discussion on development.

Yet even as the G20 countries and think tanks in that bloc treat social development as a goal in itself, no official channel of cooperation has been established to exchange information and to bridge the gap between the approach and perceptions of the G20 and the major think tanks. It is important to concede that no government alone and no single institution can individually manage a tremendous amount of data, influence domestic as well as international policy, and take action on its own. The lack of resources, the ubiquitous presence of misunderstanding, and the variety of economic and political interests demand more comprehensive cooperation and integration of G20 as an entity and think tanks into the development momentum.

Just as the definition of social development can be elusive, so too can the meaning of think tank. Indeed, the most agreed upon characteristic of think tank seems to be the elusiveness of its etymology. To Thomas Medvetz, it is a murky object that is difficult to nail down precisely.²¹ Simon James, too, posits that the discussion of think tanks … often degenerates into futile semantics.²² Indeed, the majority of scholars in the literature, from the initial inquiries of Harold Orlans and Paul Dickson to the present-day coverage of the think tank domain, attempt to tackle this difficulty, in varying degrees of detail.²³ These attempts can be categorized.²⁴ Some offer a broad definition, an approach that often avoids engagement with the significant points of contention and is subsequently reductive and averts any attempt to provide a cohesive definition. Medvetz comments that these scholars gesture towards both sides of the dilemma … then step backwards to acknowledge the concept’s slippery, mutable, fuzzy nature.²⁵ An futile pursuit in most cases, such a treatment essentially amounts to a retreat to the murky political folk notion that was started with.²⁶ We can call this the minimalist school approach, a school in which the majority of the literature falls. To Diane Stone, such definitions allow researchers considerable flexibility in application, but can be too broad and encompassing.²⁷ However, some continue their pursuit of a more precise definition and attempt to provide a narrower one. At this point, a definition emerges that is too narrow and ignores the diversity of think tanks, excluding a number of institutions commonly accorded the classification of think tank.²⁸ This narrower definition characterizes the parochialist school of thinking about think tanks. The third school of defining think tanks can be called the typologist approach, which accepts the difficulty of defining the term (indeed, just as those above do too), but proceeds to wrestle with the points of contention until it apprehends a notion of think tank that is as universal and portable as possible. These scholars consider an absolute definition elusive because of these points of disagreement and obscurity.

During the fifty years that the body of literature grappling with the etymology of think tank has existed, there has been a gradual development of a broad definition that identifies a number of core institutional characteristics on which there is a consensus. Even on a broad level, however, attempts to define or categorize think tanks immediately start a debate over the meaning of basic terms such as public policy research, think tank, and advocacy. There is no wonder, then, that a struggle exists among think tanks concerning their role in the policymaking process; are they academics, advisors, or advocates? This debate reflects the inherent tension between the world of ideas and world of politics or the clash of academic and policy cultures. While there is a general consensus at the broadest level of scholarly attempts to define the term think tank (irrespective of the aforementioned debate), when scholars seek to refine the definition to a more specific level, a number of points of contention emerge, and these are the core loci of divergence in the literature. One is the notion of financial autonomy, and associated with this debate is one concerning whether think tanks practice the academic freedom and conduct the nonpartisan, objective research that they were associated with before World War II. Another is the now rather antiquated notion of ideological autonomy—are think tanks nonpartisan and institutions sans institutional policies?

The debate over this notion is also inextricably related to the question of academic freedom. Such debates have a distinctly Anglo-American character and attempts to transfer past and present definitions of the term to other sociopolitical contexts have proved unworkable. The notion of independence as applicable to think tank is both contested in the Anglo-American domain and in the global domain, albeit for different reasons. Questions of ideological affiliation or financial obligation are at the forefront of the Anglo-American debate, whereas the question of governmental affiliation is at the center of the global critique. A further difficulty surrounding the definition of the term arises because it carries social consequence.²⁹ If an institution is accorded the classification think tank, an aura of credibility and academic objectivity and a cache of intellectual authority are bestowed on it, accurately or otherwise, each of these perceptions contributing to a comparative advantage in the marketplace of ideas.³⁰

The Historical Role of Think Tanks

To understand the current status of the debate over the meaning of the term, one must follow the trajectory that the definition of think tank has taken over the past century. Doing so offers substantial insight into the confusion that seems to permeate the literature on the topic thus far.

The First Era (1830–1946)

Like any concept, think tank has meant different things to different people at different times since its inauguration in 1830.³¹ During the first era—between 1830 and 1946—think tanks were characterized as objective research organizations. According to Donald Abelson, few disagree that think tank once described nonpartisan, truly independent public policy research organizations. Dickson notes that think tanks advised the U.S. government in this way as early as the 1830s,³² with such institutions growing out of the intellectual and social movements of the nineteenth century.³³ Although these institutions, like many modern ones, could survive only with the generosity of outside donors, their primary goal was not to actively interfere in the decision-making process but to provide a more passive source of nonpartisan, policy-primed advice.³⁴ Such a nonideological stance was the by-product of an avowedly apolitical mandate.³⁵ The rise of think tanks during this period follows a trajectory similar to the emergence of the United States as a global leader, and various institutions of this character—the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (1910), Kiel Institute for Economics (1914), Brookings Institution (1916), and Royal Institute for International Affairs (1920)—were established during the early twentieth century. Another less formal example existed during the winter of 1917–1918 in the form of an assembly of prominent scholars, known as The Inquiry, which was organized around an exploration of U.S. options for postwar peace. The brainchild of Colonel Edward House, an advisor to President Woodrow Wilson, this group was a primary source of advice for the U.S. contingent at the Paris Peace Conference that ended World War I, and eventually joined with New York bankers, lawyers, and academics to establish the Council on Foreign Relations in 1921.³⁶ This first generation institutionalized the link between the academics frequenting the various disciplines of the social sciences and policymakers in both Washington, a connection thus far only a tacit one, and the global domain, with this connection fostering international engagement. This rise created both a tool to be used to professionalize the government during the progressive era and a set of institutions that could satisfy the growing information imperative, the latter a force that continues to be the primary energy behind the proliferation of public policy research organizations today.³⁷

The Second Era (1946–1970)

The second era—beginning in 1946 and ending in 1970—was heavily influenced by the rise of Cold War tensions. While independent public policy research organizations had existed in the United States before the outbreak of World War I, the term think tank was initially employed in the United States during World War II to refer to a physically secure room or environment where expert defense industry, the various branches of the military, and civilian strategists discussed military plans.³⁸ Though the term had been associated with human intelligence prior to this military-specific usage (it was coined in 1900 as a flippant colloquialism for the brain) the immediate post–World War II period saw its association with institutionalized intelligence engaging in research activity and producing policy or strategy-primed advice. This second generation of think tanks could be classified as contract-researchers,³⁹ since they received generous and direct legal, financial, and administrative support from the U.S. government. This compelled them to allocate resources to scientists and researchers, which was symptomatic of their involvement in the Cold War. The Rand Corporation (1948) is a paradigmatic example of the nature of think tanks during this period and an institution that played a core role in the formulation of defense policy.⁴⁰ Institutions were also established during this era separate from military preoccupations. They include the general-purpose American Enterprise Institute (1943) and the Institute for Policy Studies (1963), operating from a perspective that it called existential pragmatism.⁴¹ On this note, David Ricci contends that the emergence of partisanship in the think tank domain began during the 1960s as a result of the flourish of liberalism, manifest in the Institute for Policy Studies, and the conservative response in the 1970s.⁴² Indeed, the notion of think tanks as truly independent, public policy research organizations appears naı¨ve in the presence of this dynamic.

The Third Era (1970–1994)

Finally, the third historical era of think tank development, occurring between 1971 and 1994, was characterized by an influx of both freedom and partisanship. Scholarly inquiry into the meaning of think tank is a distinctly post–World War II pursuit: these institutions were accorded negligible scholarly attention before then. During the latter part of this era, academia began to acknowledge the emergence of a knowledge-value society from a previously industrial one. Value came to be treated as a consequence of information and analysis generated by humankind, and, in turn, these inputs of human intelligence were recognized as the cornerstone of modern society. Hence, think tanks, seen as factories producing this intellectual value, began to harness the interest of not only their two main consumers, policymakers and the media, but also scholars. Thus, the third generation of think tanks emerged during a period when scholarly attention to the phenomenon first materialized. That being said, the only consistency that emerged was the susceptibility of the scholars to minimalism or parochialism, this disposition shrouding the term with an alarming obscurity.

In the 1960s Bill Baroody, Sr., president of the American Enterprise Institute, issued the now famous statement the competition of ideas is fundamental to a free society.⁴³ During the 1960s and the rise of the New Right, an alternative doctrine of ideas emerged to challenge the liberal orthodoxy that had prevailed over Washington for the first half of the century.⁴⁴ Accordingly, it is fair to assert that the politicization of think tanks only became a problem during the ideological revolution of the 1970s, when conservative thinkers and think tanks entered the marketplace of ideas.⁴⁵ Apt examples are the Heritage Foundation (1973) and the reinvigoration of the American Enterprise Institute. Corporate financing initiatives also became part of the think tank domain during this era and this influx of capital contributed to a veritable proliferation of public policy research organizations. Two-thirds of all the think tanks that exist today were established after 1970, and over half were established since 1980. This exacerbated the crowding of a marketplace of ideas already divided along partisan lines. Further, such crowding became increasingly unequal—by 1982, the Republican national committees took in $191 million compared to $32 million for the Democratic national committees.⁴⁶ Consequently, competition became rife and the priorities of think tanks further shifted from utility to visibility.⁴⁷

Given that scholars of this period were exploring untraversed terrain, the literature from the 1970s focused not so much on grappling with this notion of partisanship and the associated question of academic freedom as ascertaining a broad definition of the term. Indeed, the impulse to begin thinking about these institutions was induced by an increasing interest in matters other than the politicization of the think tank domain. Scholars became interested in (1) the competition between independent research institutions and the new research universities, (2) the methodology and uses of applied social research, (3) the methodology, uses, and limits of professionalized public policy research, and (4) the emergence of interdisciplinary pursuits in a world of disciplinary research.⁴⁸

The first comprehensive scholarly attempt to categorize and define think tank came with The Non-Profit Research Institute: Its Origins, Operations, Problems and Prospects (1972) by Harold Orlans. His point of departure is the second generation of think tanks, the defense-related research and development centers established after World War II. With his inclusion of all public policy research institutes, as well as research and development centers, Orlans’s definition, albeit broad, provided an ample platform for forthcoming scholars to build on. Orlans concludes that think tanks were independent, often separately incorporated, non-degree-granting organizations that devote most of their annual expenditures to the development of new technology and to research in the natural and social sciences, engineering, humanities and professions.⁴⁹ Though Orlans does not expand on this definition, we can assume that he is referring to all research and development centers that are independent of higher education institutions. Such a notion of independence, one that disassociated think tanks from institutions of higher education as well as from government, was pathbreaking, and Orlans is to be credited for introducing the whole notion of independent nonprofit research institutes into the literature.⁵⁰ Indeed, the presence of this characteristic, or lack thereof, has proved to be the cornerstone of debate regarding the definition of think tank.

Other works from the 1970s, such as Paul Dickson’s Think Tanks (1972) and David Boorstin’s article Directions of Policy Research (1975), conduct their inquiries in a similar vein. According to Dickson, the term acquired a new meaning in the 1960s when it became associated with institutions based on military research and strategy. Since the mid-1970s, it has been used to describe a diverse set of research organizations localized around Washington, DC.⁵¹ Despite the breadth of the definition, or rather the absence of clarity, Dickson contributed substantially to the field in his distinction between research and development centers and think tanks.⁵² To Dickson, think tanks conduct policy research or research that provides ideas, analysis, and alternatives relevant to people who make policy whereas research and development centers are committed to traditional science and solely produce scientific knowledge for scientists and researchers.⁵³ Put simply, think tanks act as a bridge between knowledge and power and are closer to being agents of new knowledge and discovery than creators of new knowledge.⁵⁴ Dickson also associates a number of characteristics with think tanks, such as scientificity and interdisciplinariness of approach to research, substantial freedom in defining and exploring problems, a role of making formulations and recommendations, privileged access to and interaction with policymakers, and permanent organizational status, that have become almost timeless in the definition of the term.⁵⁵ Boorstin also attempts to define what he terms a think tank though, like Dickson, he lacks some precision in his definition. To Boorstin, think tanks are a special class of R and D institutions [designed] to act as synthesizers bringing together scholarship and scientific and technological tools for the use of policymakers combining the ‘know-how’ and the ‘know-who.’ ⁵⁶ Despite Dickson’s attempts to provide a typology of public policy research organizations, both Dickson’s and Boorstin’s definitions are all inclusive and lack clarity. The authors agree that the term think tank is broad and subjective (Boorstin)⁵⁷ and ill-defined, subjective, and debated (Dickson).⁵⁸ Hence, while both scholars are to be credited for their inauguration of the inquiry into the term think tank, they are equally accountable for setting in motion a trend that would inhibit the majority of scholars from seeking a definition that is at once narrow and universal for decades to come.

A number of scholars have written articles on a narrower field of institutions to which they accord the term think tank. In contrast to Dickson and Boorstin, these scholars begin from a point too narrow and each uses markedly different frameworks for analysis, thus making synthesis difficult. Roger Levien (1969) asserts that there are six characteristics that an institution must possess within its organizational structure to qualify as an independent public policy research institution: a policy orientation, influence, breadth of charter, interdisciplinary character, an eye to the future and a concern with systems.⁵⁹ Levien was the first author to associate independence with public policy analysis organizations and to separate them from university-based think tanks and for-profit research and development centers. However, Levien’s definition of think tank appears markedly similar to the agenda and organizational dynamic of the Rand Corporation (Levien was a researcher at Rand) and this significantly undermines the universality of his interpretation. Very few, if any, of the institutions operating today practice interdisciplinary research and systems theory to the extent demonstrated by Rand.⁶⁰

Nelson Polsby, in his article Tanks but No Tanks, introduces the notion of public policy research institutes by distinguishing them from what he terms true think tanks.⁶¹ He contends that public policy research institutes, or those engaged in the social sciences, are the policy-oriented progeny of these true, ivory towerish think tanks, and that these institutions represent a paradigm shift from the notion of think tanks abstaining from actively participating in public matters to one of tanks engaging in such participation.⁶² George Fauriol elaborates on this notion by extending Dickson’s bridge metaphor, heralding a disposition to poeticism that has permeated scholars’ approach to defining the term ever since. To Fauriol, the foreign policy think tank acts as a conveyor belt of thought … a midpoint between the ivory towers of academia and the hustled atmosphere of the policy making world of government.⁶³ He asserts that think tanks may be distinguished from political educational organizations and helps us to further clarify the differences between university-based research centers and those that are freestanding.

Building on Levien and Fauriol, Yehezkel Dror defines a think tank as a bridge between power and knowledge.⁶⁴ For Dror, a public policy research institute has six independent features: (1) mission; (2) critical mass; (3) methods; (4) research freedom; (5) clientele-dependency; and (6) outputs and impacts.⁶⁵ In addition, he adopts the views of Boorstin and Levien, proposing that a public policy think tank’s mission should be focused on interdisciplinary science-based contributions to policy-making and that its research staff should enjoy a considerable level of freedom in defining and exploring the problem.⁶⁶ Dror contributes in a number of ways to the literature. First, he distinguishes think tanks from ad hoc research or think groups, introducing into his definition the requirement of a full-time staff. Second, his concept of outputs and impacts focuses on the unique product that these institutions produce and its character as policy oriented and timely.⁶⁷ Finally and perhaps most significantly, in his approach Dror provides the first detailed definition and typology that centers solely on public policy research institutes yet is universal enough to encompass a whole range of these organizations.⁶⁸ To some degree, Dror’s represents the first scholarly attempt to surpass the minimalism and parochialism of definitions before him, reconciling uniqueness of think tanks in relation to other institutional forms, with their diversity within their own form. Winard Gellner, along with Howard J. Wiarda, refine Dror’s notion of outputs and impacts. Gellner identifies four functions or outputs: generation of ideas and ideologies; convocation [networking]; publication [diffusion]; transformation [of elites].⁶⁹ He asserts that it is these functions that separate think tanks from non-political ‘scientific institutions’ on the one side and non-scientific ‘interest groups’ on the other.⁷⁰ In these scholars’ attempts to define think tank, the simultaneous pursuit of clarity yet universal applicability to all institutions of this form is notable, and Dror’s, Gellner’s, and Wiarda’s approach will constitute a vital influence in the definition developed later in this chapter.

Perhaps the most influential example of this approach is Kent Weaver’s pathbreaking treatment of the term in his article The Changing World of Think Tanks. Weaver’s reflections on the changing world of think tanks, or even just his acknowledgment of the fluidity of the domain, introduce into the literature a number of useful concepts and areas of focus that allow us to capture the diversity of the think tank domain in the most distilled manner possible. This approach amounts to organizing such institutions under organizational structure, product lines, and marketing strategies.⁷¹ Weaver’s work focuses on those institutions with organizational independence and asserts that institutions (think tanks) in this group follow one of three organizational models: universities without students, the contract researcher, and advocacy tanks.⁷² Building on Orlans’s notion of think tanks as non-degree granting⁷³ institutions, Weaver describes universities without students as relying heavily on academics as researchers and on private sector funding and primarily producing book-length studies, academic monographs, and journal articles. This type of think tank is typically funded by foundations, corporations, and individuals, with their agendas set internally as part of a bottom-up process in which the researchers themselves play an important role. According to Weaver, this type of think tank maintains a long-term focus and seeks to change elite opinion.⁷⁴

Traditional examples of this type of think tank are the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute, with a new breed represented in the Carnegie Endowment for World Peace and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Contract researcher think tanks, like universities without students, practice objective analysis with a heavy reliance on academics as researchers, emphasizing rigorous social science methods.⁷⁵ With a reputation for objective research, these institutions provide a useful external voice to supplement their clients’ own work. Where contract researchers and universities without students differ, however, is in their sources of funding, research agendas, and output. Contract researchers mainly produce reports for specific agencies and hence their research agenda is determined accordingly. In the late 1980s, this assertion was novel and one that broke with Levien’s and Dror’s belief that one of the defining characteristics of think tanks was their research freedom. Indeed, many of the studies produced by these think tanks are not even available to the general public unless the specific agencies consent to their release. Unsurprisingly, contract researchers are funded in large part by contracts with these agencies. Institutions that best exemplify this type of think tank are the Rand Corporation and the Urban Institute.

Weaver’s final category, advocacy think tanks, is different in a number of ways and, at the time of the publication of his article, was a relatively new phenomenon. Weaver contends that while universities without students and contract researchers were the predominant models operative in the think tank domain in the 1970s to 1980s, they were supplanted by the proliferation of advocacy tanks in the 1980s.⁷⁶ This new breed of think tank was unabashedly partisan and ideological, and prioritized putting a spin on existing research over the production of original research.⁷⁷ In the words of Weaver, they combine a strong policy, partisan or ideological bent with aggressive salesmanship and an effort to influence policy debates, decreasing their academic character in favor of increasing their accessibility to policymakers.⁷⁸ Advocacy tanks frequently draw their resources disproportionately from sources linked to specific interests (e.g., corporations for conservative think tanks, labor unions for liberal think tanks). Their staffs, in comparison, are typically drawn more heavily from government, political parties, and interest groups than from university faculties, and may be less credentialed in terms of social science expertise. Normally in the form of policy briefs or white papers, their product tends to advocate a particular policy rather than the more monograph-like tomes that are associated with the more academic think tanks. This medium of communication tends to be more condensed and concise and to clearly illustrate policy implications and options. Examples of this type of think tank can be found on the right in the Heritage Foundation and