Think tank
A tradition of hiring teams of independent lawyers to advise monarchs about their financial and political prerogatives against the church spans from Charlemagne all the way to the 17th century, when the kings of France were still arguing about whether they had the right to appoint bishops and receive a cut of their income.
From its first appearances in the 1890s up to the 1950s, the phrase was most commonly used in American English to colloquially refer to the braincase or especially in a pejorative context to the human brain itself when commenting on an individual's failings (in the sense that something was wrong with that person's "think tank").
[14]: 25 Around 1958, the first organization to be regularly described in published writings as "the Think Tank" (note the title case and the use of the definite article) was the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.
For instance, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace operates offices in Washington, D.C., Beijing, Beirut, Brussels and formerly in Moscow, where it was closed in April 2022.
They argue that these links allow for the construction of a discourse coalition with a common aim, citing the example of deregulation of trucking, airlines, and telecommunications in the 1970s.
For example, The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition was formed in the mid-1990s to dispute research finding an association between second-hand smoke and cancer.
In China a number of think tanks are sponsored by governmental agencies such as Development Research Center of the State Council, but still retain sufficient non-official status to be able to propose and debate ideas more freely.
[68] The corporate world has focused their efforts to central representative organization Confederation of Finnish Industries, which acts as think tank in addition to negotiating salaries with workers unions.
The Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (Suomen Ammattiliittojen Keskusjärjestö, SAK) and the Social Democratic Party are associated with the Labour Institute for Economic Research (Palkansaajien tutkimuslaitos, PT).
On the left, the main think tanks in France are the Fondation Jean-Jaurès, which is organizationally linked to the French Socialist Party, and Terra Nova.
It works on producing reports and analyses of current public policy issues from a progressive point of view, and contributing to the intellectual renewal of social democracy.
VIPA acts via advocacy for strong and safe European Union, analyzing and advocating for anti-authoritarian, transparent, and open governance ideas in Central and Eastern Europe, is an opinion leader offering an alternative opinion to the public versus populism, radicalism, and authoritarian trends, reinforcing active citizens' participation in decision making, analyzing fake news, disinformation, and offering media literacy initiatives, putting forward solutions to improve the accountability, transparency, and openness of Lithuania's public sector, building a network of open society values oriented experts, civil activists and NGO's.
Another notable state-sponsored think tank is the Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW), which specializes in the countries neighboring Poland and in the Baltic Sea region, the Balkans, Turkey, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
[citation needed] Former Prime Minister José Maria Aznar presides over the Fundación para el Analisis y los Estudios Sociales (FAES), a policy institute that is associated with the conservative Popular Party (PP).
For example, the London-based think tank Chatham House and the Council on Foreign Relations were both conceived at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 and have remained sister organisations.
Past chairmen have included Conservative Party leader Michael Howard, Margaret Thatcher's longest-serving Cabinet Minister Geoffrey Howe, Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont and former British Telecom chairman Christopher Bland.
[91] In collaboration with the Douglas Aircraft Company, the Air Force set up the RAND Corporation in 1946 to develop weapons technology and strategic defense analysis.
The Hudson Institute is a conservative American think tank founded in 1961 by futurist, military strategist, and systems theorist Herman Kahn and his colleagues at the RAND Corporation.
One of the cases the journalists cited was Brookings, where scholars paid by a seemingly independent think tank "push donors' agendas amplifying a culture of corporate influence in Washington."
For example, in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars the Brookings Institution provided Lennar – one of the United States' largest home builders – with a significant advantage in pursuing a US$8 billion revitalization project in Hunters Point, San Francisco.
In 2014, Lennar's then-regional vice president in charge of the San Francisco revitalization, Kofi Bonner was named as a Brookings senior fellow – a position as 'trusted adviser' that carries some distinction.
FFRDCs, are unique independent nonprofit entities sponsored and funded by the United States government to meet specific long-term technical needs that cannot be met by any other single organization.
[99] Research done by Enrique Mendizabal[100] shows that South American think tanks play various roles depending on their origins, historical development and relations to other policy actors.
In this study, Orazio Bellettini from Grupo FARO suggests that they:[101] How a policy institute addresses these largely depends on how they work, their ideology vs. evidence credentials, and the context in which they operate including funding opportunities, the degree and type of competition they have and their staff.
As Simon James said in 1998, "Discussion of think tanks...has a tendency to get bogged down in the vexed question of defining what we mean by 'think tank'—an exercise that often degenerates into futile semantics.
[106] Working on public policies, Brazil hosts, for example, Instituto Liberdade, a University-based Center at Tecnopuc inside the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, located in the South Region of the country, in the city of Porto Alegre.
Today it hosts faculties (Law, Business, Economics, Social Sciences and Mathematics), libraries, and also research centers in Rio, São Paulo and Brasilia.
The oldest and most influential think tank in Turkey is ESAM (The Center for Economic and Social Research; Turkish: Ekonomik ve Sosyal Araştırmalar Merkezi) which was established in 1969 and has headquarters in Ankara.
Ideologically it performs policies, produces ideas and manages projects in parallel to Milli Görüş and also influences political parties and international strategies.
Established in 1994, TESEV is an independent non-governmental think tank, analyzing social, political and economic policy issues facing Turkey.
