The Feld-Blog

WARNING: the opinions expressed in this article (and in the rest of my blog for that matter) are my own and not necessarily shared by any of my employers current or former.

In Democratic Athens, Greece there was no difference between the citizenry and the government. The citizens were the government. In early European and American democracies there were two entities: the government, and a separate citizenry who elect the government. We call this a Republic. In modern American (and to some extent European) democracies there is now a third entity: the Non-governmental organization (NGO). And just as Athenian and early American democracies transformed the topography of government, this new, powerful, and growing level of entities is transforming modern politics.

Some NGOs are exclusively dedicated to a advocating for an issue or issues. These are usually called interest groups. Then there are the organizations that advocate for a variety of issues, but that also do their own research to back up there positions. These are called think tanks. Finally there are the groups that specialize in communicating the ideas of other NGOs and getting paid for it. We call these the lobbying groups.

What I don’t understand is certain think tank’s adamant asserting that they are purely research organizations – that they don’t have any policy preferences. Yeah Right. It isn’t possible to spend your entire life researching the problems of the world and not have some opinion as to the better or worse ways to go about solving those problems. Some Think Tanks claim they need to remain nonpartisan, while others reply that they are “a think tank, not lobbyists.” But here’s a newsflash for you: No matter how much you emphasize the ‘non-governmental’ part of NGO, Think Tanks are a part of the political process. The virtue of think tanks is that they employ experts and specialists who can enlighten politicians (who tend to be generalists) about the best ways to solve this world’s problems.

So get off your high horse. What any NGO or think tank wants is to have the best public policy come out the other end of the political process. So then, if you as a think tank have spent years researching something, don’t just try to present dry and boring facts…TELL government what the best idea is. Think tank’s research exists to support governmental decision making. The employees of think tanks, then, should be helping elected officials make the decisions the think tank thinks are important. If you want to do pure, unadulterated, unfiltered research…get a job at a University somewhere. But think tanks need to begin to understand their role in the political process. Think Tanks are invaluable, but only if they tell elected officials what they think, not just what they’ve found.