Introduction

Ideas are powerful, but in a world of increasingly diverse and globalized sources of information the good ideas can be lost. Often policymakers suffer not from a lack of information but from an avalanche of information. Policymakers need better ways of organizing and filtering policy ideas in order to respond more effectively to an ever changing policymaking environment. Public policy research institutions, or think tanks as they are more commonly referred to, have begun to extend their capacity to address the policy issues that stretch across borders. The great innovations for global public policy are the proliferation, physical expansion, and networking of public policy research institutions. These three distinct trends have magnified the potential for think tanks to contribute to the resolution of the problems facing global public policy. With the help of think tanks, global public policy, the financing and delivery of global public goods, is becoming a reality. Our goal is to identify, map, and analyze these phenomena of pro-

liferation, expansion, and networking in order to provide a primer and a roadmap for global public policy practitioners, participants, and the interested public. We begin by identifying the forces driving these phenomena by addressing some of the historical and current factors that have dominated policy debates around the world. Next, we follow with our “mapping” study, in which we attempt to identify the range of existing global think tanks and a representative group of global public policy networks and conduct detailed profiling of these organizations. From this mapping study, we extrapolate trends in current think tank research that provide a basis for understanding the impact that think tanks have on policymakers. With our mapping analysis and a literature review as a foundation, we identify and critique the role of global think tanks and global public policy networks in civil society and analyze the challenges and opportunities facing global think tanks and policy networks. Finally, we seek to recommend improvements to think

tanks and global public policy networks so that they can continue to contribute to global public policy and serve as a catalyst for civic engagement around the world. The challenges facing global think tanks and policy networks include

the traditional challenges to think tanks of maintaining their funding and independence, and, for the think tanks and networks that originate in developing countries, managing Western influence. When think tanks and networks extend to operate on a global scale, they face the further challenges of defining an issue niche and maintaining a multidisciplinary approach. Think tanks must choose a global expansion strategy, learn new civil society norms in international locales, and execute and maintain effective partnerships. Policy networks face many of these same challenges plus the particular difficulties of shaping their organizational structure, managing members, and maintaining a relevance that is greater than the sum of its affiliated parts. During the process of global expansion, think tanks and policy net-

works enjoy access to new opportunities that provide a reward for undergoing new management and strategy challenges. Global expansion inevitably means greater funding requirements but also greater access to new funding possibilities such as local governments and corporations in new international locales. Global expansion can also build the developing-country research capacity of developing countries, most notably whenWestern influence is well managed and the local civil society norms are respected in these developing countries. The flexibility that comes with being a member of a policy network invites multi-sectoral solutions to traditional policy problems; these solutions are often more complete and innovative than those derived from a single sector. For policymakers, the expansion of think tanks and policy networks

across the globe is a boon to the need for precise, time-sensitive information and multidisciplinary problem-solving approaches. Global policy has been and continues to be revolutionized by the budding ability of global think tanks and policy networks to establish locations in politically closed areas, to connect grassroots civil society forces and field researchers with policymakers, and to take on global policy tasks in areas such as the environment, international finance and international security that cannot be effectively addressed by domestically oriented governments or policy research institutions. The term “think tank” was introduced in the United States during

World War II to characterize the secure environment in which military and civilian experts were situated so that they could develop invasion plans and other military strategies. After the war, the term was applied to contract researchers such as the RAND Corporation that did a

mixture of deep thinking and program evaluation for the military. The use of the term was expanded in the 1960s to describe other groups of experts who formulated various policy recommendations, including some research institutes concerned with the study of international relations and strategic questions. By the 1970s, the term “think tank” was applied to those institutions focusing not only on foreign policy and defense strategy, but also on current political, economic, and social issues. The growth in numbers and influence of independent public policy

research organizations-think tanks as they are commonly called-has been noted by a growing number of scholars, donors and practitioners in the United States and abroad.1 Regional and global intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations (UN), World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have recently come to recognize the significant role these institutions play in the policymaking process. Subsequently, think tanks have organized nascent think tank networks to help develop and assess policies and programs and serve as a link to civil society groups at the national, regional and global level. Think tanks, which function as public policy research, analysis and

engagement institutions, generate policy-oriented research, analysis, and advice on domestic and international issues, enabling policymakers and the public to make informed decisions about public policy issues. Think tanks may be affiliated with a political party, a university, a government, or independent institutions that are structured as permanent bodies, not ad hoc commissions. These institutions often act as a bridge between the academic and policymaking communities, serving the public interest as independent voices that translate applied and basic research into a language and form that is understandable, reliable, and accessible for policymakers and the public. However,

the idea of think tanks as a research communication “bridge” presupposes that there are discernible boundaries between (social) science and policy. Moreover, the social interactions and exchanges involved in “bridging,” themselves muddy the conception of “boundary” allowing for analysis to go beyond the dualism imposed in seeing science on one side of the bridge, and the state on the other, to address the complex relation between experts and public policy.2