ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the available literature on party study centres in an effort to develop a heuristic typology that classifies different types of party think tanks worldwide. Although political party think tanks do sometimes take different shapes within countries, these differences are usually less outspoken than those differences across countries. The chapter particularly focuses on these cross-country trends. Our empirical input comes from secondary literature about a wide variety of countries including Australia, Flanders, Wallonia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Taiwan, the United States and the European Union. Without claiming exhaustiveness, the cases under study are sufficiently representative of the variety in political systems of modern democracies that exist worldwide. The chapter addresses the autonomy of political party think tanks vis-à-vis their mother party, and considers the various functions fulfilled by these organizations. It combines the two typologies and critically reflects on the meaning of political parties' ideas factories.
