Think tanks + partnerships for change
Enrique Mendizabal
Read the transcript:
Why think tanks and partnerships for change?
For this year’s annual review and annual conference we have decided to address the issue of partnerships for change. Last year, Anne Marie Slaughter at the On Think Tanks Conference talked about the concept of a change hub. She reflected that to bring about change, think tanks have to work with others and create a space that will be welcoming of other actors in the policy space. Not just policy-makers, the private sector and the media but also NGOs, grassroots social movements, why not even lobbies.
Think tanks, in our experience, are good at working with maybe one or two of these actors but not with everybody else and it depends very much on their own personal stories. We‘ve convened a number of think tank experts working across the world, who have a particular affinity or experience working with different actors.
What do think tanks need to do differently to work better across the different stakeholders in any political context?
We think that part of the answer is in how they govern themselves, who sits on their boards, what roles do they have. Are their boards made up of just academics, some policy-makers? Do they also involve NGO activists, social movement activists, community leaders, indigenous leaders in some cases, members of the media or from political parties?
We also think it has to do with how they developed their own strategies and how they conceived their roles and their function in their societies. Are they thinking about influencing policy directly- going directly to politicians, to policy-makers, to anybody who is in power right now? Or do they think it is much more effective in the long run to help build or participate in coalitions? This is going to affect, of course, how they engage with others and the question we have is: Do they have the capacity to engage with others in this way?.
It also has to do with how they communicate their research. How they develop their own research agenda. How do they choose what is important and what needs to be studied? And then, how do they choose how they communicate and who they communicate with? These things might have to change if think tanks want to engage with other actors in the policy space.
Something very important has to do with who they hire and how they hire: Who are the people that work in the organisation?
I think it’s safe to say that, by and large, think tanks around the world are perceived as middle class/upper-middle class organisations. The barriers of entry are very high for the general public. Think tanks tend to recruit from top universities, they tend to recruit from backgrounds that push aside researchers, communicators and managers, think tanks from disadvantaged backgrounds. So, in some way, they might end up being quite homogeneous organisations, not very representative of the rest of society, so engaging with people from other parts of their country, from other parts of the cities where they are based, who might be working in other types of organisations, might be hard.
Engaging with other actors
Some think tanks are better than others at engaging with certain actors. Some think tanks are better than others at engaging with the private sector, some think tanks are better at engaging with political parties, with NGOs, with activists, with social movements. Listening to experts discussing this with think tanks over the years, I think it has to do with a number of factors, but let me identify at least three.
The first one has to do with their story of origin: Where do they come from? Some think tanks come from government, they are set up, designed by governments and they function within or at arms’ length from government. Those will naturally have an affinity and will find it very easy to engage with government. Other think tanks come from academia, they were set up within universities or by academics who left university and set up their own organisations. Of course they will find it a lot easier to engage with universities and with other academics around the world. Others have been set up by NGOs, or campaigning NGOs have become think tanks, so they will find it a lot easier to work with activists and social movements, maybe even with grassroot organisations. Then you have think tanks who have close affinity with the media, some of their directors are former editors or journalists. And then, think tanks that are clearly linked to political parties whether it’s in a formal way, like some political party think tanks, or in an informal way, where political party operators have set up a think tank.
It’s inevitable that these different think tanks, based on their origin story and on who was there at the beginning, will be better at engaging with different actors.
We believe there are very good lessons to learn from those organisations. It doesn‘t mean that every think tank needs to be good at working with everybody, this would be very hard. But there are lessons to be learned at least to establish working relationships or channels of communication.
The second factor is one that think tanks probably have a lot less control over and this has to do with the sector. Some sectors are dominated by certain types of organisations. For example in the environmental sector, in the climate change sector one might find that activist NGOs or social movements are quite prominent in public debates. So, think tanks working in those sectors will have to engage with those organisations or those movements if they want to be relevant. In the economics/fiscal policy/macroeconomic/monetary policy world maybe it’s more about academic-type of discussions, more technocratic discussions and so think tanks in those sectors will inevitably be engaging more with technocrats within the Ministry of Finance, will be engaging more with academics in universities. So, the sectors themselves will force think tanks to develop skills and competencies to work with those organisations, those types of other stakeholders in the field.
And a third factor explaining why some think tanks find it easier to work with others, I believe, is the people that work in the organisation: where do they come from?
If a think tank wants to shift its attention, say from technocrats and government to NGOs, social movements, or the media, one sure way of addressing that is to bring people from those groups.
Bring people from campaigning NGOs, from activist NGOs into the organisation. They don‘t have to do the research that the more academic-minded researchers are doing. But they can certainly help develop the right research agendas, they can help develop the right communications strategies and they can help build bridges with organisations in those areas or fields. Journalists can certainly help a think tank think a little bit more like a journalist, like a media organisation so that their work is much more relevant. Political party operators, politicians themselves, when they want a break from government or from politics or, even as they are active, bringing them in as senior fellows, bringing them in as board members is an excellent way for a think tank to learn a little bit more about this other actor that they want to work with to bring about change.
What is our expectation of this process? We don’t think that all think tanks should be working with everybody, but we certainly think think tanks can play and should play a central role in bringing about change. And they can do this by following what Anne-Marie Slaughter was suggesting last year: become a hub, become a space. A space that is welcoming of different types of organisations, of people from different backgrounds, of people in organisations that are using and promoting different types of evidence, that bring with them different values, maybe different ideologies but that, if we are realistic about how change happens, we must accept they all have to be part of that conversation and they all have to be part of that process of change.
