What's Wrong with Think Tanks?
Dan Drezner wonders why think tanks do such lousy, superficial work when they could be addressing important questions, in part by translating academic research.
Well, Dan, let me tell you the way of the world. For the most part, think tank donors (especially individuals, as opposed to foundations or corporations) are completely uninterested in original research and unable to evaluate its quality. On the whole, individuals give to think tanks for the same reason they give to religious organizations--to demonstrate commitment to a belief system and to support the people they believe will spread the word. They want to hear the same messages over and over and over again, and they financially reward those who give them what they want. While generally nice, generous people, donors are on the whole indifferent to originality, bored by wonky policy proposals, and annoyed by any think tank employee who challenges their political cathechisms. Boards of trustees tend to reward executives not for doing or supporting important work but for raising money.
Since you can't do the work without money anyway, think tankers who want to do good, significant work eventually either flee or give in to the system's preference for superficiality. Making the system even worse are media bookers who want predictable, preferably partisan views. Dan worries about op-eds. Op-eds are philosophy tomes compared to TV, and as Nicole Kidman aptly observed in To Die For, you're nobody in America if you're not on TV. That goes double for public policy circles.
Think tanks, unlike universities, are supposed to influence public policy, not to produce knowledge for its own sake. Donors and boards want hard evidence that their money is working, that it's influencing the public debate. The easiest, flashiest way to measure that influence--especially since 501(c)3 think tanks aren't allowed to lobby--is to count media appearances. (Most media counts don't even differentiate by the quality of the appearance, except perhaps in raw audience numbers.) Even successful books reach few readers, compared to a TV appearance. And the best way to sell political books is, of course, to get on TV, preferably with an easily digested, highly partisan message.
I should also mention that, outside of a few foreign policy shops, there is a huge intellectual stigma attached to association with a think tank. Too many people, including reviewers, don't read what you actually write. They read what they imagine the work from that think tank will say. And that's in the happy event that your work actually gets reviewed, rather than tossed unread on the trash heap as more think tank crap. I say that as a tosser as well as a tossee.
In short, think tanks are well into their decadent phase. They're giving their donors what they want--simple sound bites--but they aren't producing many new ideas.
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