Think tank

(Redirected from Think tanks)

For other uses, see Think tank (disambiguation).

A think tank (also called a "policy institute") is an organization, institute, corporation, or group that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, science or technology issues, industrial or business policies, or military advice. Many think tanks are non-profit organizations, which in some countries such as the US and Canada provides them with tax exempt status. While many think tanks are funded by governments, interest groups, or businesses, some think tanks also derive income from consulting or research work related to their mandate.

While the National Insititute for Research Advancement hails think tanks as "... one of the main policy actors in democratic societies", which assure a "... pluralistic, open and accountable process of policy analysis, research, decision-making and evaluation", critics of think tanks have called them "little more than public relations fronts...generating self-serving scholarship that serves the advocacy goals of their industry sponsors." Critics such as Ralph Nader argue that think tanks' results are biased to a varying degree.

History

Since "think tank" is a term that has only found use since the 1950s, there is still some debate over what constitutes the first think tank. One candidate is the Fabian Society of Britain, founded in 1884 to promote gradual social change. The Brookings Institution, founded in the US in 1916 is another candidate for the first think tank. The term think tank itself, however, was originally used in reference to organizations that offered military advice, most notably the RAND Corporation, formed originally in 1946 as an offshoot of Douglas Aircraft and which became an independent corporation in 1948.

Until around 1970, there were no more than several dozen think tanks, mostly focused on offering non-partisan policy and military advice to the United States government, and generally with large staffs and research budgets. After 1970, the number of think tanks exploded, as many smaller new think tanks were formed to express various partisan, political, and ideological views.

Until the 1940s, most think tanks were known only by the name of the institution. During the Second World War, think tanks were referred to as "brain boxes" after the slang term for the skull. The phrase "think tank" in wartime American slang referred to rooms in which strategists discussed war planning. The first recorded use of the phrase to refer to modern think tanks was in 1959, and by the 1960s the term was commonly used to describe RAND and other groups assisting the armed forces. In recent times, the phrase "think tank" has become applied to a wide range of institutions, and there are no precise definitions of the term. Marketing or public relations organizations, especially of an international character, sometimes refer to themselves as think tanks, for example.

Types of think tanks

Some think tanks are clearly aligned with conservative or libertarian approaches to the economy (The Cato Institute, for example), while others, especially those with an emphasis on progressive social and environmental reforms (Tellus Institute, for example), are viewed as more liberal or left-of-center.

A new trend, resulting from globalisation, is collaboration between think tanks across continents. For instance, the Brookings Institution, Washington DC, collaborates with Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Qatar for an initiative on West-Islam relations. Also, in the area of West-Islam relations, Strategic Foresight Group, a think tank based in India, works closely with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in the European Parliament. The World Economic Forum has created a Council of 100 Leaders on West-Islam relations, which brings together heads of major global think tanks ranging from Oxford Islamic Centre at Oxford University to Strategic Foresight Group, Observer Research Foundation, CSDS, Centre for Policy Research, ETC in Delhi of India and Al-Azhar University in Egypt.

Criticism

The nonprofit Center for Media and Democracy's SourceWatch website argues that think tanks are organizations "...that clai[m] to serve as a center for research and/or analysis of important public issues...are little more than public relations fronts...generating self-serving scholarship that serves the advocacy goals of their industry sponsors." It calls think tanks "phony institutes where ideologue~propagandists pose as academics ... [into which] money gushes like blood from opened arteries to support meaningless advertising's suffocation of genuine debate"." SourceWatch argues that a think tank's research findings can tend to be in "...accordance with the interests of its funders." SourceWatch claims that an "...important functions of think tanks is to provide a backdoor way for wealthy business interests to promote their ideas or to support economic and sociological research not taking place elsewhere that they feel may turn out in their favor."

SourceWatch comments that while think tank's researchers have "... titles such as "senior fellow" or "adjunct scholar," but this does not necessarily mean that they even possess an academic degree in their area of claimed expertise." SourceWatch claims that "think tanks are like universities...minus the systems of peer review and other mechanisms that academia uses to promote diversity of thought. Real academics are expected to conduct their research first and draw their conclusions second, but this process is often reversed at most policy-driven think tanks."

Critics such as Ralph Nader have suggested that because of the private nature of the funding of think tanks their results are biased to a varying degree. Some argue members will be inclined to promote or publish only those results that ensure the continued flow of funds from private donors. This risk of distortion similarly threatens the reputation and integrity of organizations such as universities, once considered to stand wholly within the public sector. Defenders state that think tanks arose to challenge the liberal orthodoxy of the universities in place starting in the 1970s.

Some critics go further to assert think tanks are little more than propaganda tools for promoting the ideological arguments of whatever group established them. They charge that most think tanks, which are usually headquartered in state or national seats of government, exist merely for large-scale lobbying to form opinion in favor of special private interests. They give examples such as organizations calling themselves think tanks having hosted lunches for politicians to present research that critics claim is merely in the political interest of major global interests such as Microsoft, but that the connections to these interests are never disclosed. They charge, as another example, that the RAND Corporation issues research reports on national missile defense that accelerate investment into the very military products being produced by the military manufacturers who control RAND. Critics assert that the status of most think-tanks as non-profit and tax exempt makes them an even more efficient tool to put special interest money to work.

In recent years, many think tanks have begun to promote causes which are contrary to established scientific opinion. For example, The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition was formed in the mid 1990s as part of the tobacco industry's attempt to cast doubt on EPA studies showing that secondhand smoke could cause cancer. According to an internal memo from Philip Morris, "the credibility of the EPA is defeatable, but not on the basis of ETS (environmental tobacco smoke) alone. It must be part of a larger mosaic that concentrates all the EPA's enemies against it at one time."

The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition has also worked to cast doubt on the scientific consensus regarding human-caused global warming, as have a number of conservative think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Hoover Institution, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute--all of whom receive large contributions from petroleum industry companies like ExxonMobil and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. The Discovery Institute has put the idea of Intelligent design into public debate, even though most biologists do not accept the theory as scientific.

United States Think Tanks

Think tanks in the United States play an important role in forming both foreign and domestic policy. Typically, an issue such as national missile defense will be debated within and among think tanks and the results of these debates will influence government policy makers. Think tanks in the United States generally receive funding from private donors, and members of private organizations. Think tanks may feel more free to propose and debate controversial ideas than people within government.

Though there are think tanks in every part of the political spectrum, conservative think tanks outnumber their centrist and liberal/progressive counterparts. For example, the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) released a report in 2006 which listed the 25 think tanks which were mentioned most often in the mainstream media news in 2005. The most-mentioned think tank was the centrist or center-left Brookings Institution. The next two most-mentioned think tanks--the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, are conservative while the fourth, the Cato Institute, is libertarian. Of media citations, a plurality, 47% were centrist, while 40% were conservative and 13% were progressive.

Conservative

Modern neoconservatism is associated with some of the foreign policy initiatives of think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The Claremont Institute and the Heritage Foundation are more traditional conservative think tanks.

American Enterprise Institute
Claremont Institute
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Project for the New American Century
Heritage Foundation
Hoover Institution for War, Revolution, and Peace
Hudson Institute

Liberal

On the other side of the political spectrum are think tanks such as the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), Institute for Policy Studies, the Progressive Policy Institute and the Center for American Progress. Economic Policy Institute is a prominent liberal think tank whose research emphasizes interests of low-income and middle-income workers. Other think tanks include Brookings Institution, a center-left organization.

Brookings Institution
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Center for American Progress
Center for Economic and Policy Research
Center for Progressive Reform
Economic Policy Institute
Institute for Policy Studies
Political Economy Research Institute
Progressive Policy Institute
Public Citizen
New America Foundation

Nonpartisan

In order to retain non-profit tax-exempt status most think tanks, including the conservative Heritage Institute and the center-left Brookings Institution, claim nonpartisan status. Other institutions are officially and unofficially nonpartisan. These include the Atlantic Council of the United States and Center for Strategic and International Studies, non-partisan foreign policy-oriented organizations, the Institute for Collaborative Engagement, a non-partisan internationally-focused organization, and the The Lincoln Square Institute, a non-partisan presidential election forum. The Roosevelt Institution is pushing the think tank model by attempting to organize university and college student bodies into effective think tanks.

Libertarian

The most prominent is the Cato Institute, a libertarian or "free-market liberal" think tank. The Mises Institute, focusing on libertarian economic education.

Government

Government think tanks are also important in the United States, particularly in the security and defense field. These include the Institute for National Strategic Studies, Institute for Homeland Security Studies, and the Center for Technology and National Security Policy, at the National Defense University; the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the Naval War College and the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College.