Abstract
From 1990s welfare reform to the second Iraq War, much of what constitutes politically relevant policy knowledge in Washington – and, by extension, political news – has winnowed its way into the corridors of power carrying the imprimatur of think tanks. Yet despite their centrality to politics and media, think tanks remain poorly understood in the academic literature. Thomas Medvetz’s groundbreaking book is therefore a welcome and important point of entry for scholars seeking to understand the circulation of ideas – and the non-circulation of competing ideas – in the political public sphere.
Medvetz’s book is centered around three questions: What are think tanks? How did they come into being? What is the nature of their power? The simplicity of the first question beguiles because think tanks appear like a lot of different things. Commentators contradictorily portray them, for example, as both a ‘sanctuary for intellectuals’ and a ‘lobbying firm in disguise’ (p. 29). Neither characterization on its own captures the empirical reality. Think tanks, argues Medvetz, appear like both because they function like both – and more – at different points in time. The essence of being a think tank is to draw upon the resources of academia, politics, business and journalism, while simultaneously differentiating itself from each. To be a think tank is thus to be part of a ‘buffer zone’ (p. 7), mediating between different elites seeking to shape the public sphere.
The second question – how think tanks came into being – is addressed in two historical chapters. The early-to-mid 20th century saw the creation of a number of ‘proto-think tanks’: civic federations, municipal research bureaus, foreign policy groups, and the like. These groups were the result of a relative consensus among elites that political and business interests needed to be directed and informed, to a degree, by scientific reason. This elite consensus broke down in the 1960s and 1970s, as activists on both the left and right criticized technocratic expertise as such. These critiques joined – by both intent and historical conjuncture – with free market capitalists, who saw in the market disruptions of the 1970s an opportunity to reshape the space of technocratic expertise. In this process, ‘old’ groups, like the Brookings Institution, opened themselves up to publicity; ‘new’ activist groups, in turn, become more expert-like in their work. The result of these transformations was the creation of the ‘space of think tanks’ (p. 85).
Media in general, and political journalism in particular, were central to this process. Think tanks not only subjected themselves increasingly to the demands of journalists (e.g. providing quotes, offering timely analyses), publicity itself became a stake in the struggle among elites for power. As think tanks came to be the source of political ideas circulating in the news media, they also became the necessary points of interaction for all those interested in shaping politically relevant policy research. This includes political journalists themselves, who play an important role in certifying think tanks as experts.
This leads directly to Medvetz’s third question – what sort of power do think tanks possess? The peculiarity of think tanks is that their dependence on proximate social fields (i.e. academia, politics, business, media) serves simultaneously as the basis of their power. By juggling the resources of these different fields, think tanks blur the distinctions among fields. This produces two effects. First, it gives think tanks the capacity to exclude others, especially academics, from entering into political debates. ‘The space of think tanks produces its main effects,’ Medvetz writes, ‘not with its interior landscape, but with its structure or boundary’ (p. 7). Second, think tanks become a space that allows political and economic elites ‘to shop for policy expertise to support their pre-held views’ (p. 179). This reverses the promise of early 20th-century technocratic reason, creating a space of experts for hire.
Given Medvetz’s claim that the primary effect of think tanks is their capacity to crowd out other actors, it might seem curious to ask why he downplays variation within the field of think tanks. At various points in the book, data are presented that seem to suggest differences across the space of think tanks. Given that think tanks occupy the primary space for the production of policy knowledge, it seems relevant to consider what factors enable some groups to distance themselves, relatively speaking, from economic and political power and pursue projects that depart from the accepted political wisdom. In short, there are empirical and political reasons to search for variation within the think tank’s ‘interior landscape’.
This book is not written directly for journalism scholars or journalists, but it offers them important lessons nonetheless. Think tanks are the quintessential source organization for political news coverage today. They provide timely analysis in easily digestible formats. Medvetz’s book shows that these seeming advantages also carry democratic costs. For those interested in understanding the production of political ideas today, Think Tanks in America provides a welcome contribution.