Think Tanks

Origins

The term think tank was first used in military jargon during World War II to describe a safe place where plans and strategies could be discussed, but its meaning started changing during the 1960s when it was used in the United States to describe private, nonprofit policy research organizations. It has been proposed that in reality the first example of a think tank was the Fabian Society, which was aiming to influence public policy in Britain at the end of the 19th century. For many years, the majority of scholars studying think tanks considered them as a uniquely American phenomenon that boomed in the United States because of the exceptionality of its political system and its rich tradition of private funding available for think tanks. From a global perspective, however, the argument that think tanks are a uniquely American phenomenon is not convincing. Think tanks have also flourished in other industrial Anglo-American countries, such as Canada, the United Kingdom (UK), and Australia, where normally, they are more modest than in the United States. European think tanks vary [Page 2608]considerably. In Germany, for example, large, influential think tanks are encountered, but they are often state funded and associated with political parties or universities. In France, what could be described as think tanks are organizations gathered around the government in Paris that operate in a conflictual but subordinate relationship with political parties. In southern Europe, think tanks are a more recent phenomenon as they began to appear in the 1970s after the establishment of democratic governments. Research on think tanks outside the Western world shows that it is likely that an even greater variety of organizations exists globally.

Typology

The diversity of organizations that fall under the term think tank has led to the creation of typologies. At least four types of think tanks can be observed. The first is the ideological tank, which refers to organizations that have a clearly specified political or, more broadly, ideological philosophy and are clearly related to the category of advocacy tanks. Examples include the New Right think tanks in the UK and the think tanks that are affiliated to political parties in Germany. This type is the closest to the stereotypical idea of what a think tank is. The next type is the specialist tank, which includes institutes that have a thematic focus. The most common subjects are foreign and public policy, but think tanks also specialize in other issues, such as the environment. The third category includes institutes that do not work at the national level. They could either work at the regional level, such as the American state tanks, or at the supranational level, such as the think tanks that are based in Brussels and are aiming at the European Union (EU). The final category is the think-and-do tanks that relate to organizations that apart from their traditional research activities, are starting to be active at a more practical level, such as in the funding of charity projects. This type of think tank is closer to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

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