ABSTRACT
I started studying think tanks 23 years ago when several of my colleagues at the Pew Charitable Trusts (PTC) asked me why the foundation was spending so much money on think tanks. At the time, the PTC was spending about 11 million dollars a year on public policy research. This simple question propelled me to find out why think tanks and ideas matter, and more importantly why they deserve our support. In 1983, the world of politics and policy advice in the United States was still defined by the progressive-era notion that knowledge must be brought to bear on government decision-making. Since that time, changes such as the fall of communism in Europe, challenges to the welfare state, a revolution in information technologies and telecommunications, the rise in partisan politics, and the emergence of new threats with 9/11 have completely altered the working environment and conceptual and organization paradigms employed by independent, nonprofit research organizations, or think tanks, especially in the United States. The ever-accelerating pace of communication and the immense quantity of information we are bombarded with every day, makes it even more difficult for policymakers and the public to gain a comprehensive understanding of contemporary issues. Think tanks have been increasingly required to bridge the gap between: the world of ideas and politics; raw information and relevant data; scholarly research and policy relevance; and the medium and the message.
