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Think tanks are beginning to address
bioethical issues. This has important implications for how public
policy on these issues will be formulated in the United States. Think
tanks have played a central role in the proliferation of right-wing
economic, social, and financial policies and it seems reasonable to
anticipate that conservative proponents will attempt to replicate this
successful strategy in the bioethical arena.
The first wave of think tanks in the United States arose from 1900 to
1945. These new organizations were conceptualized as “universities
without students,” which would focus on research on important social,
political, and economic topics. The early think tanks such as the
Russell Sage Foundation (www.russellsage.org), the Hoover Institution (www-hoover.stanford.edu) and the Brookings Institution (www.brook.edu)
were initiated by wealthy individuals, corporations, and private
foundations and were positioned as scholarly, objective research
institutes.
The second wave of think tanks emerged after the second world war and
continued until approximately 1970. Recognizing the important
contributions of academic experts—engineers, physicists, biologists,
statisticians, and social scientists—to the war effort, policy makers
sought a way to harness this extra-governmental expertise to help define
the United States’ role and priorities in the uncharted atomic era. The
RAND Corporation (www.rand.org),
whose mission was to further and promote scientific, educational, and
charitable purposes for the public welfare and security of the USA, was
formed in 1948 with federal dollars. A number of other
government-funded think tanks were formed over the subsequent 30 years,
including the Hudson Institute (www.hudson.org) and the Urban Institute (www.urban.org).
A change occurred in the early 1970s, as think tank organizers realized
that they could increase their impact on public policy by actively
marketing their ideas. Whereas earlier think tanks focused on serving
policy makers, the new breed explicitly targeted the media and the
general public. These organizations placed a greater emphasis on
quick-response research, being able to weigh in as authorities on the
questions of the day. Rather than focusing on isolated individual
issues, the new think tanks addressed specific topics within a larger
framework of goals, striving to advance a comprehensive policy agenda.
Advocacy was seen as a vital complement to traditional research and
analysis activities. Perhaps the most notable change of all was that
these think tanks were privately funded, not government funded. Groups
in this category include the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute (www.cato.org), and Empower America (www.empoweramerica.org).
Most have a conservative perspective, though recent years have seen the
establishment of progressive think tanks such as the Progressive Policy
Institute (www.ppionline.org), the Center for American Progress (www.americanprogress.org), and the Rockridge Institute (www.rockridgeinstitute.org).
The Heritage Foundation, founded in 1973, is a case in point. It was
created by two legislative aides who discovered an insightful think
tank report on defense recommendations. The trouble was that the report
had been delivered to their senator’s office after the vote been taken,
too late to make a difference to the relevant legislation. They
recognized an opportunity for extra-governmental bodies to significantly
impact public policy, if think tanks were organized with this purpose
in mind. Securing $250,000 in seed money from Joseph Coors, a wealthy
benefactor of the conservative movement, they established the Heritage
Foundation. Today, it is a 30-million dollar machine, with membership
of 200,000 and a staff of 195. It is considered one of the nation’s
most influential think tanks.
An example of a progressive advocacy think tank is the Rockridge
Institute. Founded in 2004 under the fiscal sponsorship of the Tides
Center, this group’s mission is to reframe public policy based on a
progressive agenda. Its approach is based on the work of George Lakoff,
a well-known linguistics expert from the University of California,
Berkeley. The organization aims to empower grassroots activism
pioneered by groups such as MoveOn.org, by providing back-end research
and analysis for their successful advocacy engine. Rockridge is
currently funded with $2.5 million in seed money from donors including
George Soros’ Open Society Institute, the Nathan Cummings Foundation,
the Marguerite Casey Foundation, the Women Donors Network, and MoveOn.
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