One of the most intriguing things of the think tank phenomenon is to determine if these research and policy action units have a real influence in the development of politics. In fact, most of them assure that they have a certain persuasive power over the decisions of government. It is the suppossedly main proof they offer when trying to justify their existence and in the funding process. However, due to the lack of systematic research on the think tank activities and the youngness of many institutes, it is still difficult to draw consistent conclusions about the topic.
Entries categorized as ‘Think Tank Management’
The Official History of Privatisation in Britain: Was There Any Think Tank Influence?
2009/02/24 · Leave a Comment
Categories: Political Economy · Think Tank Management
Tagged: Andrew_Denham, British_History, Institute_of_Economic_Affairs, Keith_Joseph, liberalism, Margaret_Thatcher, Privatisation
Fundación Ideas, is this really a think tank?
2009/02/12 · 2 Comments
In the last post I argued over the question of what is an authentic think tank and I concluded that the Political Party think tanks do not deserve that name. I know it is a controversial issue, but I prefer to say that this type of organization does not emerge from the civil society and is not an alternative way of participating in the public policy process. Simply they contribute to reinforce the power position of the political parties without contributing to the democratisation of the political decisions.
I understand that these factories of ideas have the right to make their points in politics, but I do not think they are real public policy entrepreneurs. The most dangerous role political party think tanks can play is that they work to reduce the political debate to the game of only three or four players: Government officials, civil servants, political parties and the olligarchy of any society (big corporations, trade unions and small group of social leaders). It is not healthy for an advanced democracy. We can find a good example of the pressure that political party think tanks make in the political scene: the case of Spain. In this country, the think tank movement started at early 80’s and exploded around the beginning of the 21th Century. Now there are around thirty think tanks with a limited presence in the public sphere. You can have more data in the Guía de los think tanks en España, published by the Fundación Ciudadanía y Valores.
In the last ten years, managers of big political parties have worked to concentrate all of their research and analysis resources in one big foundation which could get a high public profile. First, it was an iniciative of the conservative Popular Party, which joint all its organisations under the Fundación Faes. The current President of the foundation is José María Aznar, past Primer Minister of Spain. He uses the ‘think tank’ as a political platform to participate in the political debate although he retired from active politics after 2004. Several actions of the foundation have caused a hard rejection and a lack of public confidence on the real value of the ideas of the Fundación Faes in the public policy process. Another bad consequence of the concentration has been the extinction of other voices in the conservative thinking. Journalists give a lot of space to the Faes activities and help to disseminate the belief that this is the paradigm of a think tank. Therefore, Spanish society has become suspicious on the recent think tank phenomenon.
Looking at the mistakes made by the conservatives with the Fundación Faes, I expected that Spanish socialists were going to offer a different paradigm for a political party think tank. They even have excellent examples in other countries of think tanks linked to a political party but which maintain enough distance to assure their independence. But Socialist Party officials, commanded by the past Labour Minister, Jesús Caldera, have followed the same way that Faes’ promoters. They have set up a big think tank, the Fundación Ideas, capable of fighting in the political arena with the Fundación Faes, but very close to the stablishment. It suggest that also is going to extinct the voices of small think tanks around the Socialist power. Like it happens in the electoral systems, citizens see that their political options are diminishing and that political debate is only for professionals. The situation is not good for democratic progress. If you visit the corporate website of the Fundación Ideas, you will see that at the moment, it do not offer any chance for people participation. And we are living in the Web 2.0 .
Categories: Think Tank Management
Political Party think tanks are not think tanks
2009/02/11 · Leave a Comment
A common problem in young disciplines of Social Sciences, like the study of the construction of political discourse is that scholars and researchers do not agree in the basics. Comparing to Experimental Sciences, Philosophy or Humanities, more recent academic areas lack of normative theory. And the main difficulty I have found is that the situation is not changing. After decades of study and research, many times we see Academia do not share the same concepts of fundamental elements.
Obviously, it also happens with the study of think tanks. The systematic research on think tank environment is so young and a first question to discuss is the definition of what is and what is not a think tank. To me, the key is to follow the principles that guide the first founders of think tank projects: ideological independence, scientific method, philanthropy and democratic discourse. Not so many of the institutes named think tank cope with these features. I understand it is a difficult task as think tanks work in the political scene, where power relationships are the main factor. Sometimes, this is not compatible with the democratic discourse, even when political system where think tanks operate is a democracy.
Academics have offered several taxonomies to the global think tank system. One of the categories is that of Political Party Think Tanks. It describes those organizations which are legally dependent on political parties and act as factories of ideas for the election programmes and spaces of promotion of future political managers in Government. The fact is that most of them do not fit in the characteristic I mentioned above, with the exception of democratic discourse (and not all of them). Generally, their research is so biased by the ideological profile of the party, the power relationships of the moment and the need all parties wave to become a perfect machine of winning elections. It means that polls play an important role in the research agendas of this ‘think tanks’.
This superficial reflection is an introduction to the recent born of new Spanish political party think tank, the Fundación Ideas, promoted by the Socialist Party to fight in the public discourse arena with the Popular Party organization, the Fundación Faes. I will discuss the matter in the following post.
Categories: Think Tank Management
Tagged: Fundación_Faes, Fundación_ideas, taxonomy_of_think_tanks, think_tanks
Do Think Tanks Matter?
2009/01/31 · Leave a Comment
It is the title of a Donald Abelson’s book where he asked himself about the utility and relevance of the think tank phenomenon. In the middle of one of the deepest economic crisis the market economy has ever had, I think it is a good point to start. I should say that my focus is very skeptical. It was when think tanks were the main fashionable hobby of richmen and successful entrepreneurs, enjoying in the zenith of irrational exuperance, and it is now, when most of think tanks have demonstrated that they are useless, at least in public policy terms.
Categories: Think Tank Management
Tagged: Donald_Abelson, think_tanks public_policy
