According to the new Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program survey, here are the TOP 15 global think tanks:
1. Brookings Institution – US
2. Council on Foreign Relations - US
3. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - US
4. RAND Corporation - US
5. Cato Institute - US
6. Chatham House - UK
7. International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) - UK
8. Heritage Foundation – US
9. Center for Strategic and International Studies – US
10. Peterson Institute for International Economics - US
11. International Crisis Group - Belgium
12. American Enterprise Institute - US
13. World Bank Research Department - US
14. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars - US
15. Amnesty International – UK
[...] Lone Wolf Librarian has some interesting [...]
I constantly hear especially on NPR and PRI so-called experts from these organizations offering their opinions on various issues. May constant thoughts are: who/what funds these institutions and how does on get to work with them?
Any insight on this question?
“A think tank (also called a policy institute) is an organization, institute, corporation, or group that conducts research and engages in advocacy in public policy.[1] Many think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide 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.[2] In some cases, 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.
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.’
‘In 1970, Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell wrote a fateful memo to the National Chamber of Commerce saying that all of our best students are becoming anti-business because of the Vietnam War, and that we needed to do something about it. Powell’s agenda included getting wealthy conservatives to set up professorships, setting up institutes on and off campus where intellectuals would write books from a conservative business perspective, and setting up think tanks. He outlined the whole thing in 1970. They set up the Heritage Foundation in 1973, and the Manhattan Institute after that. There are many others, including the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institute at Stanford, which date from the 1940s.’ –George Lakoff [1]
Think tanks are funded primarily by large businesses and major foundations…” From SourcWatch http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Think_tanks