Difference between revisions of "Think tanks"

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Think tanks are funded primarily by large businesses and major foundations.  They devise and promote policies that shape the lives of everyday Americans: Social Security privatization, tax and investment laws, regulation of everything from oil to the Internet. They supply experts to testify on Capitol Hill, write articles for the op-ed pages of newspapers, and appear as TV commentators. They advise presidential aspirants and lead orientation seminars to train incoming members of Congress.
 
Think tanks are funded primarily by large businesses and major foundations.  They devise and promote policies that shape the lives of everyday Americans: Social Security privatization, tax and investment laws, regulation of everything from oil to the Internet. They supply experts to testify on Capitol Hill, write articles for the op-ed pages of newspapers, and appear as TV commentators. They advise presidential aspirants and lead orientation seminars to train incoming members of Congress.
  
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Think tanks have a decided political leaning. There are twice as many conservative think tanks as leftist ones, and the conservative ones generally have more money. This is no accident, as one of the important functions of think tanks is to provide a way for people who believe in and depend upon free enterprise and limited government to promote their ideas or to support economic and sociological research not taking place elsewhere that they feel may turn out in their favor.
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Think tanks have a decided political leaning. There are twice as many conservative think tanks as leftist ones, and the conservative ones generally have more money. This is no accident, as one of the 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.  
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Another explanation for the fact that the majority of think tanks are conservative or otherwise free-market is that the dominance of the left in academia makes liberal and social-democratic think tanks superfluous. Almost all of the hundreds of university economics, political science, and sociology departments, together with schools of public policy, have a distinctly leftward bias, and serve many of the purposes of think tanks for the left. Lacking a home in the university, the right is left to seek funding from private sources to conduct their policy research.  
 
  
 
"Modern think tanks are nonprofit, tax-exempt, political idea factories where donations can be as big as the donor's checkbook and are seldom publicized," notes Tom Brazaitis, writing for the ''Cleveland Plain Dealer''. "Technology companies give to think tanks that promote open access to the internet. Wall Street firms donate to think tanks that espouse private investment of retirement funds." So much money now flows in, that the top 20 conservative think tanks now spend more money than all of the "soft money" contributions to the Republican party.
 
"Modern think tanks are nonprofit, tax-exempt, political idea factories where donations can be as big as the donor's checkbook and are seldom publicized," notes Tom Brazaitis, writing for the ''Cleveland Plain Dealer''. "Technology companies give to think tanks that promote open access to the internet. Wall Street firms donate to think tanks that espouse private investment of retirement funds." So much money now flows in, that the top 20 conservative think tanks now spend more money than all of the "soft money" contributions to the Republican party.

Revision as of 10:35, 25 February 2004

A think tank is an organization that claims to serve as a center for research and/or analysis of important public issues. In reality, many think tanks are little more than public relations fronts, usually headquartered in state or national seats of government and generating self-serving scholarship that serves the advocacy goals of their industry sponsors; in the words of Yellow Times.org columnist John Chuckman, "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". [1]

Of course, some think tanks are more legitimate than that. Private funding does not necessarily make a researcher a shill, and some think-tanks produce worthwhile public policy research. In general, however, research from think tanks is ideologically driven in accordance with the interests of its funders.

"We've got think tanks the way other towns have firehouses," Washington Post columnist Joel Achenbach says. "This is a thoughtful town. A friend of mine worked at a think tank temporarily and the director told him when he entered, 'We are white men between the ages of 50 and 55, and we have no place else to go.' "

Think tanks are funded primarily by large businesses and major foundations. They devise and promote policies that shape the lives of everyday Americans: Social Security privatization, tax and investment laws, regulation of everything from oil to the Internet. They supply experts to testify on Capitol Hill, write articles for the op-ed pages of newspapers, and appear as TV commentators. They advise presidential aspirants and lead orientation seminars to train incoming members of Congress.

Think tanks have a decided political leaning. There are twice as many conservative think tanks as leftist ones, and the conservative ones generally have more money. This is no accident, as one of the 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.

"Modern think tanks are nonprofit, tax-exempt, political idea factories where donations can be as big as the donor's checkbook and are seldom publicized," notes Tom Brazaitis, writing for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. "Technology companies give to think tanks that promote open access to the internet. Wall Street firms donate to think tanks that espouse private investment of retirement funds." So much money now flows in, that the top 20 conservative think tanks now spend more money than all of the "soft money" contributions to the Republican party.

A think tank's resident experts carry 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. Outside funding can corrupt the integrity of academic institutions. The same corrupting influences affect think tanks, only more so.

Think tanks are like universities minus the students and 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. As writer Jonathan Rowe has observed, the term "think" tanks is a misnomer. His comment was directed at the conservative Heritage Foundation, but it applies equally well to many other think tanks, regardless of ideology: "They don't think; they justify."

North American Examples

UK Examples

Western European Examples

External links

  • Richard Morin and Claudia Deane write a weekly column on Washington's think tanks for the Washington Post, called "The Ideas Industry."
  • News from Reality: "The People We Pay to Think" [20]
  • The Strategic Philanthropy of Conservative Foundations, a research report from the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP)[21], no date.
  • Comment: Philanthropy and Movements by Robert Kuttner, The American Prospect, July 15, 2002. Excellent article relating "think tank" summit meeting between funders and four major conservative "philanthropies" -- American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, and Manhattan Institute -- observed by an invited guest "liberal". This is a virtual "how to" to build a movement.
  • The Center for Consumer Freedom: a funder/foundation watchdog organization.

Other Related SourceWatch Resources

Think Tank Research Links

External Articles

  • Jill Junnola, Perspective: Who funds whom?, CampusWatch.org from Energy Compass, October 4, 2002. Re neo-conservative think tank funding/funders.
  • Thought Control "Money will always be part of the think-tank business. But when that money and the interests behind it lurk in the shadows of the policy debate, the nation's interests are put at risk."
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