Think Tanks, Public Policy, and the Politics of Expertise

Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended!
Review: If you study any complex issue being debated in the U.S. Congress or state legislatures, you are likely to find a torrent of reports from independent think tanks. Who are these groups and where did they come from? Good question - and one that political scientist Andrew Rich answers quite thoroughly. This often fascinating study shines its bright light on think tanks, largely overlooked players in the political process. At times, though, Rich's study tantalizes with generalizations, and then it tends toward scholarly restraint at exactly the moment when the reader wants some juicy details. We suggest this book to anyone who wants to shape - or really understand - the public debate on complex policy issues.

Rating:
Summary: Most authoritative, objective survey of U.S. think tanks
Review: Political scientist Rich spent 7 years writing this book - and it shows. The chapters cover evolution, political demography, credibility, policy influence, and the role of experts in think tanks. Rich homes in on just about every hard question I could think of and some I didn't think an academic author would dare touch. Rich provides ratings for ideology, influence, credibility, and visibility of individual think tanks. He compiled these indices by using polls from congressional staff and journalists and interviews with some 135 experts from key organizations of every political flavor. These include the President of the Heritage Foundation (Edwin Feulner), rated as the most conservative and also most influential think tank. Rich concludes, as did most earlier writers like Smith, Abelson, Ricci, and McGann and Weaver (2003), that think tanks have far more influence on policymaking in the U.S. than do universities and academic institutions. If you want to know who's who among the think tanks, or how they influence legislation and public policy, this is your book. I mentioned in the title that the study is objective. Rich surely has opinions, but the only place I really discerned where his heart lay was early in the book, when he almost wistfully reports that earlier thinks tended to focus on giving disinterested research results and information - whereas the recent trend has been toward avowed advocacy among the most influential organizations.