Observations of think tank influence and networks

Howard Wiarda suggested an informal but useful way to measure the influence of think tanks: The US government runs on the basis of memos. If a State Department or Defense Department official or an analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or the National Security Council has a study open in front of him at the time he is writing his own memo to the secretary or the director or the president himself—if, in short, he is using the study’s ideas and analysis at the time he writes his own memo—then the study’s authors have influence. ¹ Another interesting informal way of measurement was put forth by Andrew Rich, who interviewed congressional staff and journalists (republican and democratic congressional staff, journalists with elite publications, and journalists with local papers) and asked them to score the influence of a group of think tank lists according to their perceptions. He then developed rank orderings according to think tank influence ratings. ² However, is measuring the influence of think tanks really so simple?