In 2011, for the fourth consecutive year, Ifri was the only French based research institution to be ranked among the top 50 most influential think tanks worldwide outside of the United States, placing 3rd in Western Europe according to "Global Go-To Think Tanks", a study undertaken by a team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, and ranking more than 6,480 institutes located in 169 countries.

Its political and intellectual independence is paramount and the Institute chose to diversify its public and private sources of funding.

Outside of their research work, every year, Ifri hosts guest speakers from all over the world for them to shed light upon international issues.

Guest speakers from previous years have included, among others: Nicolas Sarkozy, Dmitri Medvedev, Hu Jintao, Jalal Talabani, Hamid Karzai, Vladimir Putin, Mikheil Saakashvili, Abdoulaye Wade, Vaclav Klaus, Pervez Musharraf, Abdullah Gül, Boris Tadic, Viktor Yanukovych, Paul Kagamé, Herman Van Rompuy, José Manuel Barroso, and Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Ifri was established upon an already existing institution, the Centre d’Etudes de Politique Etrangère founded in 1935 by French universities and by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

It is mainly addressed to political and economical decision-makers, academic institutions, opinion leaders as well as representative of civil societies.

Ramsès, an annual collective work and the quarterly magazine Politique Etrangère are the two main editorial activities of Ifri.