Arguments for Aid Transparency Equally Apply to Think Tanks

Guest blogger Nicole Valentinuzzi of Publish What You Fund explores common space shared by the aid transparency movement and efforts to make think tank funding more transparent. Transparify does not edit the content of guest blogs; the views expressed in this blog are those of the author alone, and may not reflect the views of Transparify.

Every year, Publish What You Fund produces an Aid Transparency Index (ATI) to rank the world’s biggest donors according to how transparent they are about the aid they give. The ATI has become the industry standard, assessing the state of aid transparency among the world’s major donors, while encouraging progress and holding them to account.

It is a fantastically useful tool for monitoring the progress made by donors with implementing their own commitments to make aid transparent. The ATI can work as both a carrot and a stick.

For example, in many cases, donors working to improve their aid transparency are keen to have their efforts reflected in the ATI. The deadline for collecting data for last year’s Index was 31st July, so donors had until the end of that month to make one final attempt at improving their ATI ranking – and several of them did, with a flurry of activity and phone calls in the final days of July.

Year-on-year, donors can improve either by making the information they already publish comprehensive for all their activities, or by publishing information items for the first time. This is fundamentally what makes for a good index - incentivizing those being measured to change their behaviour.

The good news in our field is that all the world’s largest donors have signed up to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), the only internationally-agreed standard for publishing aid data. As part of this commitment, they have said they will publish all their aid information to IATI by the end of 2015. (Our Aid Transparency Index also measures this commitment.)

This and other lessons learned by the aid transparency movement can also be applied to think tank transparency.

 So why do we bother?

Well, put simply, there is too little readily available information about aid, and this undermines the efforts of both sides, those who give and those who receive it. Knowing what is being spent where, by whom, and with what results is the basic foundation for increasing aid effectiveness.

Once all of the world’s largest donors are publishing to IATI, we’ll be able to track the money right down the development chain. Being able to follow the money from a donor all the way to the specific project it funds will make it possible to also track donor funds to individual think tanks in developing countries.

 Aid transparency is important because without it:

• Donor governments don’t know what other donors are spending or planning to spend, leading to the duplication of efforts in some areas and under-funding in others. Without aid transparency, donors cannot coordinate to achieve the maximum impact with their scarce resources.        
• Recipient governments struggle to know how much aid is invested in their country, let alone where and how it is spent.
• Civil society, including NGOs, legislators and citizens, who have the right to know what aid is coming into the country and what it’s being spent on, remain in the dark.

These arguments for aid transparency can equally be applied to think tank transparency, where it is just as important to be able to follow the money.

Nicole Valentinuzzi is the communications manager of Publish What You Fund, a not-for-profit organisation that campaigns for aid transparency. The campaign was originally launched in 2008 by a coalition of governance, aid effectiveness and access to information organisations.

When Think Tanking Hurts the Poor: Egypt and Beyond

Two decades ago, the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies think tank was formed with a ten million dollar endowment by USAID. According to the Washington Post, the think tank, which “gathered captains of industry in a small circle”, then advocated for a privatization program that eventually led to the sell-off of state assets worth 104 billion dollars. Apparently, less than ten percent of that value went into state coffers – the rest was lost to high-level corruption involving senior officials closely tied to the think tank. In total, the Washington Post reported, the losses to the Egyptian taxpayer of that privatization program exceeded the total amount of aid provided by the US to Egypt over the course of six decades.

While it would be facile to pin the blame for this sorry saga on a single think tank, it does highlight that some donor-funded think tanks can punch far above their weight when it comes to influencing political and economic decisions with massive implications for economic development and poverty reduction efforts. 

Throughout the developing world, donor-funded think tanks are now weighing in on domestic political debates on issues as diverse as democratic reforms, foreign affairs, military doctrine, economic governance and social policy. Having worked for a think tank in an emerging economy ourselves, we at Transparify strongly believe that think tanks can play a positive role in enriching national debates and decision-making, especially where there is limited capacity for policy analysis by other players. However, as long as most think tanks remain opaque, it will remain impossible for stakeholders in these debates to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Many think tanks in developing countries are predominantly or even exclusively dependent on foreign donors to carry out their work. Far from requiring these think tanks to be transparent, some donors – notably USAID – on occasions actively abet opacity by their non-profit grantees. Such opacity is not helpful at a time when developing countries are increasingly suspicious of donor-funded think tanks, a suspicion that often extends to all NGOs receiving support from abroad. For example, India is reportedly considering further restricting foreign funding for think tanks and other non-profits.

Policy decisions matter hugely, and developing country think tanks can play an important role in informing and improving them. Donors wishing to improve the quality and integrity of policy-making inside developing countries should do two things. First, donors themselves should disclose which think tanks they fund, with how much, and for what work. Second, they should require think tanks to be fully transparent about all the funding they receive before even considering their applications for grants. Financial transparency is not a panacea, but it is an important step on the road to making policies work better for the poor.

This blog is an abridged version of a longer piece written by Transparify that was originally posted on the website of Publish What You Fund, a not-for-profit organisation that campaigns for aid transparency.

A Rare Look at Italian Think Tanks

Guest blogger Anna Longhini provides a snapshot of the emerging think tank scene in Italy. Transparify does not edit the content of guest blogs; the views expressed in this blog are those of the author alone, and may not reflect the views of Transparify.

Think tanks remain mysterious entities to most Italians.Conversely, in the Anglo-Saxon world there seems to be a much better understanding of what think tanks are, what they do, why they are relevant, and how they are funded. The first book on think tanks came out in Italy only in 2009; a chapter on Italian think tanks and the political system had been published in 2004. While foreign policy think tanks have a much longer tradition, some are comparatively new and take the form of “personal think tanks” linked to individual political leaders.This latter kind of dependency raises questions about the use of the term ‘think tank’ itself and creates some confusion within public opinion.

The two key players in the Italian foreign policy think tank landscape are the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI, since 1965) in Rome and the Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale (ISPI, since 1934) in Milan. A unique player is the Italian branch of the Aspen Institute, established in Italy in 1984 with a focus on transatlantic relations. Other, smaller think tanks mainly operate in Rome, Milan and Turin. All of these have less well defined activities, their main decisions are in the hands of their directors, and they are comparatively understaffed.

When I first started to research Italian think tanks, I found it hard to find financial information on their websites. When it comes to foreign policy think tanks receiving public money, we do have data on relevant national public funding in 2012 because some think tanks are listed among the so-called “EntiInternazionalistici”. This means they are under the control of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and as such are listed in a report released by the ministry that disclosed these relationships as part of a wider open government effort. At the same time, we know that major corporations fund some think tanks, but we do not know to what extent and on what terms. Is such private sector funding just a matter of generating visibility? Or do companies expect something in exchange? These questions remain unanswered.

Behind Italian think tanks there is a world composed of experts. These experts’knowledge on current international issues seems fresh and appealing when compared to that offered by often boring and far-from-reality academic professors. Their profile is rising within Europe, partly through (contested) international rankings, partly through events such as the recent European Think Tanks Summit. But they still remain almost unknown to the Italian public, partly due to historical factors, partly because Italian policymakers do not draw on them for policy advice.

Italian think tanks do not seem to recognize the importance of transparency. At the same time, in my experience, major Italian think tanks are willing to give details on their budgets when interviewed. So their current lack of transparency may be chiefly ascribed to low pressure to become more transparent about their funds and activities.

Anna Longhini is a PhD student at Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, and a visiting PhD student at Royal Holloway University of London in spring 2014. Her current research interest is comparing foreign policy think tanks in Italy, Germany and the UK.

How We Rate Think Tanks’ Financial Transparency

Transparify rates the extent to which think tanks disclose who funds them, with how much, to do what work. While looking into think tank finances is not a new idea – a variety of other players have done so in the past and some continue to do so today – our initiative differs in two regards.

First, we exclusively look at what information think tanks disclose publicly through their websites. We do not contact institutions asking them to provide us with lists of their funders or similar funding data because we believe that transparency involves being transparent towards all interested stakeholders by default, rather than constituting a favour that an institution may choose to bestow upon request. In our view, if information is not accessible, it is not public. For example, a journalist may not have time to wait for think tank’s clarification of who funded its research on a given issue before her deadline expires and her piece goes to press.

Second, our scope is global. We rate think tanks across dozens of countries, applying the same rating criteria to all. A policy research institution based in a small and poor nation may not enjoy a high profile on the international stage, but within its home country, its findings and recommendations are more likely to remain unchallenged by other researchers and thus may have significant impact on policy formulation. Plus, our findings to date indicate that many well-funded think tanks in rich countries can learn a lot about transparency from some of their smaller peers in Africa, Asia and Latin America. We want to recognize excellence wherever it occurs.

So how does it work? Each think tank is assessed by two or more raters following a standard protocol. Working independently from each other, they award between zero and five stars according to the type and extent of financial information available on the think tank’s website.

Think tanks that score the maximum possible five stars enable stakeholders to see clearly and in detail who funds them, how much each donor contributed, and what projects or activities that money went towards (some great examples are listed here). Think tanks that do not provide any up-to-date information on where they get their money from receive zero stars. Most institutions we have looked at so far fall in between these two extremes.

We pre-tested this methodology in late 2013 and found that the results returned by different raters tend to be highly consistent. In the few cases in which raters do assign different scores, an experienced external adjudicator reviews their findings, revisits the institution’s website, and determines the final score.

Best of all, anyone can visit the website of any think tank we rate and compare the information provided there using our rating tool and criteria – so our findings will be easy to check up on.

By the way, in case you were wondering – we plan to release our final rating results before the end of this month.

How a Fake ‘Think Tank’ Deceived 97% of Journalists

Guest blogger Brendan Fischer recounts how a US public relations firm set up a ‘think tank’ to promote clients’ points of view in the media. Transparify does not edit the content of guest blogs; the views expressed in this blog are those of the author alone, and may not reflect the views of Transparify.

American low-wage employers like restaurant chains may not want their brands associated with unpopular positions like opposition to the minimum wage, but lucky for them, they’ve got the Employment Policies Institute on their side.

EPI, which describes itself as “a non-profit research organization dedicated to studying public policy issues surrounding employment growth” and is often cited as a “think tank” by the media, has been one of the most prominent voices opposing the minimum wage in recent months. It produces or commissions reports purporting to show that workers don’t need higher pay. Its staff are quoted in the press providing respectable-sounding quotes opposing living wage laws.

But the Employment Policies Institute operates from the same office suite as Berman and Co., a public relations firm owned by Richard Berman that counts the restaurant and retail industries among its clients.

Berman – who is EPI’s President and Executive Director – specializes in helping corporate interests launder their messages through phony front groups. His clients have included the tobacco and fast food industries, and he has formed fronts like the Center for Consumer Freedom to fight against indoor smoking bans and nutrition labeling requirements. After Berman received funding from the Corn Refiners Association, the Center for Consumer Freedom launched a TV, radio, and print campaign defending corn syrup and attacking critics. Berman has talked about being in a "long-term war" with unions, and his shop also runs the "Center for Union Facts," which spends tens of millions on anti-union ad campaigns. 

EPI passes itself off as a “think tank,” but it is really just another weapon in Berman’s arsenal of astroturf, offering low-wage employers like restaurant chains a modicum of distance and a veneer of respectability for messages that just-so-happen to benefit their corporate bottom line.

EPI has just a handful of employees, and the expertise of its staff is grounded in public relations rather than academic research. Journalists, in an effort to create a perception of “balance,” regularly tap EPI’s research director, Michael Saltsman – who doesn’t have an advanced degree in research or economics – when they need a pithy quote to counter positions by academics, policy experts, or politicians. 

Yet, a Center for Media and Democracy analysis showed that journalists rarely identify EPI’s public relations ties. In 97 percent of the stories quoting EPI or Saltsman over the past three years, reporters provided readers with no information about EPI’s relationship with Berman and Co. In most cases, journalists described EPI as a “Washington DC nonprofit.” Occasionally, EPI was called “conservative” or “pro-business.” Only about 3 percent of the time did journalists note EPI’s connections to Berman and Co.

Failing to note EPI’s role as an arm of a public relations shop deceives readers into thinking they are hearing an independent perspective, warping the discourse and keeping the public in the dark.

Brendan Fischer is the General Counsel of the Center for Media and Democracy, a group that investigates and reports on the influence of corporations on public policy.

Are Think Tanks Turning into Lobbyists?

Transparify today releases an annotated bibliography on how think tanks influence policy makers containing dozens of media stories and academic articles on the nexus between policy wonks and policy makers.

Think tanks influence policy in multiple ways. Their staff pen op-eds, appear on television, testify in hearings, cultivate close relationships with politicians, build coalitions on policy issues, and shape public debates. In the US, government representatives by now are reportedly utilizing think tanks’ research outputs more often than they use the Congressional Research Service, but this does not necessarily reflect a global trend. For example, think tanks in India are thought to lack access to government officials, while in China, the degree of access seems to depend on where an institution is located. In Brussels, their lack of influence on debates is reportedly limited by… their boringness. 

Where think tanking ends and lobbying begins is often unclear. Many think tanks would argue that educating politicians is distinct from lobbying them, and do not want to be associated with lobbying. However, think tanks have often been criticized for overstepping the line, with many senior staff in the US reportedly moonlighting as lobbyists even as they work for supposedly independent research institutions. On the far end of the spectrum, there are rumours of some public relations firms setting up fake ‘think tanks’ in order to lend their propaganda a veneer of impartial scholarship. The distinction is not only ethical, but also carries legal implications, as a lobbying outfits most certainly are not charitable organizations and therefore do not qualify for tax free status. In at least one case in the UK, the country’s Charity Commission concluded that a registered think tank was in fact a lobbying front and shut it down. 

Where should the line be drawn? What the legal and regulatory issues are at stake? Is freedom of speech in peril once regulators start stepping in? If you want to share your views, post a comment below or contact us to submit a guest blog on the subject.

For your reference, our latest bibliography is here.

The Double Opacity of Think Tanks

Guest blogger Thomas Medvetz asks whether the growing role of think tanks as providers of policy expertise may have serious drawbacks. Transparify does not edit the content of guest blogs; the views expressed in this blog are those of the author alone, and may not reflect the views of Transparify.

What role do think tanks play in advanced democratic societies? Among observers of contemporary politics, few questions have generated a more polarized set of responses. On the one side are the many journalists, scholars, and other commentators who have described think tanks in celebratory terms—often by portraying them as emissaries of scientific reason in political affairs. On this view, think tanks should be applauded for their role in offering sound advice to policy-makers, and more broadly, for spanning the divide between intellectual and political institutions.

Of course, not everyone agrees with this assessment. Over the last four decades, a large body of critical research and writing has depicted think tanks not as advocates of science or reason, but as weapons in a political struggle dominated by moneyed sponsors. Those who have advanced this view have argued that think tanks operate as the organizational machinery of elites, a cluster of “mercenary” groups engaged in “deep lobbying” practices on behalf of their sponsors. If think tanks project the image of intellectualism, these critics argue, then it is only as a veneer for a new kind of political claims-making that tends to reinforce and mask inequalities of power.

Stepping back from this polarized debate, we can see that it is based on a false choice: either think tanks are “truly” intellectual organizations, or they are “really” agents of anti-intellectualism, and possibly anti-democratic in character. Yet neither hypothesis must be true in any general sense. There is nothing built into the form of a think tank that determines what kind of social, political, or intellectual role it will play. In fact, the organizations that currently exist under this moniker are so varied in their aims, affiliations, and intellectual products that they are better thought of as a nebulous array of groups, not as members of a distinct category. (On this note, it is enough to point out that more than three decades of academic research on the topic has failed to yield even a clear or agreed-upon definition of a think tank.)

Only by recasting the discussion, then, can we shed new light on the question of the think tank’s social role. Rather than search in vain for a fixed think tank “essence,” we are better off examining the institutional ecology in which they are embedded along with all those who seek to contribute knowledge and ideas to policy debate. What are the “rules” of this system? What determines who wins or loses in the competition to supply “relevant” policy-oriented knowledge? The prominence of think tanks in this competition has led to growing calls for greater financial transparency among them—including those of Transparify and the recent statements by Senator Elizabeth Warren. These are welcome calls because they speak to one of the central questions about the workings of the knowledge-policy nexus in the U.S.: does money direct the production of ideas, or are the idea-producers free to direct their own thought?

Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that the focus on financial transparency is incomplete in two ways. First, money is not the only form of power that can undermine a think tank’s ability or desire to promote rigorous scientific knowledge. Another impediment is the growing professional power of “policy experts”—the new breed of specialists in rhetoric and advice, of which think tanks are the main incubators. To the degree that policy experts have developed a professional identity of their own, distinct from other intellectuals, it is an identity based on skill and savvy in “selling” arguments to politicians, journalists, and funders. To excel in the world of think tanks, after all, typically means supplying “useful” rhetoric and advice to politicians and journalists—by adhering to the distinctive rhythms, languages, norms, and boundaries of policy battles; anticipating which issues will become “hot” months in advance; and always being ready with a quotable “sound bite.” Even in the absence of financial constraint, then, the need to serve one’s clients can push scientific rigor to the backseat.

This point leads to the second reason why calls for financial transparency among think tanks are good—but not good enough. Financial transparency relates to the production of intellectual goods by think tanks. But we should also seek greater transparency regarding their consumption. Ezra Klein’s recent Bloomberg View article, “The Real Reason Nobody Reads Academics”—written in response to the outcry over Nicolas Kristof’s February 15 New York Times column on the public irrelevance of American professors—speaks to this concern. Klein argues that the “real problem” with the relationship between scholars and journalists “is that the primary system for disseminating academic research”—especially academic journals—“doesn’t work for anyone but academics.”

Klein’s piece is a useful entry into what I hope will become a more robust dialog about the criteria journalists and politicians use to decide which forms of knowledge are “relevant” to political debate, and which are irrelevant. However, in placing the blame squarely on the system of academic publishing, he overlooks what is actually the more significant recent development shaping the relationship between scholars and journalists: the growth of a cottage industry in professional “policy expertise” centered in the world of think tanks.

Shifting the focus to think tanks and their rapid-fire production of talking points, policy memoranda, and punditry raises a new set of questions:

• Has the growth of think tanks led to an over-valorization of “timely” proclamations, irrespective of their scientific validity, and of polished sound bites and legislative testimony, regardless of how rigorous their claims may be?
• How do journalists and politicians assess the value of the policy-oriented knowledge available to them?
• Has convenience displaced credibility in this process?

More broadly, in a public sphere saturated with knowledge-producers of various kinds, who is the dominant “policy expert” in America today? Is it the bearer of scientific knowledge, or the expert whose forte is lending the stamp of scientific credence to policy ideas that originate in the minds of political and economic decision-makers?

Thomas Medvetz is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. He has published widely on think tanks and is the author of the 2012 book “Think Tanks in America”.

More than 20 Think Tanks Join to Promote Transparency

Several think tanks worldwide have now agreed to promote transparency by putting more information on their funding online. Transparify has tried to directly contact all of the over 160 think tanks we are rating, and by now, many of them have gotten back to us. To date, more than 20 think tanks have already committed themselves to achieving a five star transparency rating over the coming weeks by publishing details on who funds them on their websites.

In total, think tanks from more than 12 countries have decided to embrace transparency. The ranks of transparent research institutions worldwide has to date grown by five think tanks in Africa, at least three in Asia, at least eight in Europe, and currently five in North America. (We will release the names of all leading institutions later this month, when we have the completed our data set.)

The large geographical spread shows that financial transparency is possible in a wide range of political, legal and administrative contexts, leaving few excuses for opacity by those think tanks that still lag behind. At the same time, think tank critics should note that several think tanks immediately responded positively to our request, showing that many – though not all – institutions are very open to constructive engagement on this issue and feel that they have confidence in the integrity of their work.

Note that the figures above do not include the (small minority) of think tanks that were already highly transparent when we initially assessed them.

Transparify hopes that more think tanks will boost the credibility of their research by committing themselves to transparency before Transparify releases its complete rating results later this month and honours the leaders in the field.

Think Tank Transparency in the UK

Guest blogger Paul Evans describes his experiences with encouraging UK think tanks to become more transparent about their finances. Transparify does not edit the content of guest blogs; the views expressed in this blog are those of the author alone, and may not reflect the views of Transparify.

At their best, think tanks and public policy campaigns make a valuable contribution to political life, generating new ideas and producing important research. At their worst, they can provide a neutral front while actually working on behalf of vested interests. As organisations that exert influence on public life, it is right that we call think tanks to account and ask for a basic level of transparency. 

We established Who Funds You? in 2012 to encourage think tanks in the UK to become more transparent about who funds them.  We wrote to 20 leading British think tanks and political campaigns with a strong public policy or research focus and asked them to disclose their major funders. Several think tanks responded positively and agreed to improvements to their disclosures about funding in order to improve their rating on our website.

Who Funds You? then rated and ranked 20 organisations in total. Six were rated as highly transparent, and two (the Adam Smith Institute and the Tax Payers’ Alliance) disclosed no financial information whatsoever; the remaining twelve lay somewhere in between. Since then, we have issued an open invitation to policy institutions to voluntarily participate in our ratings. Eight organisations have already taken up this invitation and have been added to the list of winners of our transparency award, which recognises organisations that voluntarily declare all funders who gave £5,000 or more (and the amounts given) during the last reported year.

Some think tanks told us that they had given historical assurances about privacy to their funders. We have urged these organisations to encourage their funders to be more open and we are hoping to see future improvements in our rankings as a result. We recognise that some funders are themselves organisations that are opaque, though some of the criticism of this (particularly from think tanks that offered no disclosure of any kind) had an element of misdirection about it.

Think tanks matter. They have grown in influence over the past four decades, and they often provide a valuable asset to Britain’s lobbying industry. In addition to this, journalists are increasingly reliant upon external research, as their own research budgets have collapsed. It is important that journalists can understand the provenance of the findings that they report.

Where think tanks conduct research is, in itself, a matter of public interest. It shows the public the priorities of the funders. It has been argued that a think tank with a known ideological bent is hardly going to change its politics to chase funding. However, it is important to know which material interests are prepared to fund ideological ones – and why.

Paul Evans is a member of the steering group of Who Funds You?

War and Peace - and Numerous Conflicts of Interest

Guest blogger Gin Armstrong laments that the media often fails to mention ties between the defense industry and think tanks in the context of national security debates. Transparify does not edit the content of guest blogs; the views expressed in this blog are those of the author alone, and may not reflect the views of Transparify.

During the course of only one month in summer 2013, seven prominent think tanks were cited 144 times in major US publications in the context of ongoing debates about whether the US should intervene in Syria.

My colleagues and I at the Public Accountability Initiative found that the media was dominated by defense industry-backed individuals and institutions, the majority of whom either did not disclose their industry ties or, in the case of analysts from think tanks, did not disclose funding their institutions received from the industry.

The Brookings Institution, Center for Strategic and International Studies, and The Institute for the Study of War were the most cited think tanks from our dataset:

• Experts with The Brookings Institution were cited in 31 articles on Syria in our dataset, more than any other think tank. Brookings is an influential think tank that is presented in the media as an independent authority, yet it receives millions in funding from the defense industry, including USD 1-2.5 million from Booz Allen Hamilton and USD 50,000-100,000 from Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Palantir Technologies. Brookings Executive Education’s Advisory Council Chair, Ronald Sanders, is a Vice President and Senior Fellow at Booz Allen Hamilton.

• The Center for Strategic and International Studies was cited in 30 articles on Syria. CSIS has ample individual connections to the defense industry through its advisors and trustees, including CSIS Senior Advisor Margaret Sidney Ashworth, who is Corporate Vice President for Government Relations at Northrop Grumman, and CSIS Advisor Thomas Culligan, who is Senior Vice President at Raytheon. CSIS President and CEO John Hamre is a Director for defense contractor SAIC. 

• Analysts representing The Institute for the Study of War were cited in 22 articles on Syria in our dataset. A Wall Street Journal op-ed by former ISW Senior Research Analyst Elizabeth O’Bagy was cited by Secretary John Kerry and Senator John McCain during congressional hearings in their effort to justify intervention. ISW’s “Corporate Council” represents a who’s who of the defense industry and includes Raytheon, SAIC, Palantir, General Dynamics, CACI, Northrop Grumman, DynCorp, and L-3 Communication. ISW’s ties to these companies were not disclosed in O’Bagy’s article.

We found that a think tank’s level of transparency did not affect its analysts’ inclusion in and influence over debates on military intervention in Syria. Notably the controversy that eventually surrounded Elizabeth O’Bagy’s influential Wall Street Journal op-ed did not include criticism of The Institute for the Study of War or the newspaper for not disclosing the think tank’s extensive ties to the defense industry.

When it comes to important debates on national security, defense, and conflict intervention, transparency and disclosure must be demanded as a matter of public interest. 

Gin Armstrong is a research analyst at the Public Accountability Initiative. A complete review of all the think tanks profiled is provided in PAI’s October 2013 report on “Conflicts of Interest in the Syria Debate”.

Does It Matter Who Funds You?

What do the American IRS and British parliament have in common? Both are beginning to look closely at think tanks amid concerns that hidden political financing and clandestine lobbying sometimes cloak themselves in the mantle of non-partisan policy research. Our new bibliography on think tank funding released today shows that think tanks’ non-profit status and associated tax and donor confidentiality privileges may have attracted a few sharks to the pool – and the pool wardens are following in their wake.

Most commentators focus on the influence of ‘big money’ on the policy landscape. However, our compilation of media stories shows that government bodies and trade unions are also thought to have vested interests that may influence the policy recommendations provided by the think tanks they fund. Some governments have apparently formed proxy “phantom think tanks” that are independent only in name.

To what extent do think tanks play the tunes ordered by their paymasters? Do some think tanks really sell policy prescriptions for cash? Or are there more subtle influences at work, like self-censorship by individual policy wonks who want to hold on to their jobs? Or is there in fact no problem at all, because donors throw coins only into the hats of those pipers whose tunes they like listening to anyway? At least one think tanker claims that donors tend to choose think tanks that hold views similar to their own, effectively arguing that their influence is limited to amplifying some of the music already being played – the musicians need not compromise.

Some observers worry especially about funders that are based abroad. If some Americans raise the alarm about the influence that donations to think tanks from foreign governments might buy inside the mighty US, what about the influence that US money could buy overseas? It’s worth remembering that in many developing countries much – if not most – think tank funding comes from foreign sources. For example, think tanks in poor landlocked Nepal are so heavily dependent on foreign donors that they reportedly “find themselves compromising their goals” in order to survive financially. But are domestic donors really preferable to foreign ones? Some Latin American think tanks reportedly feel that embracing foreign money leaves them with more independence than accepting funds from their own governments would do…

What do you think? Does it matter who funds your work? Or are other factors more important in safeguarding the independence and quality of think tanks’ policy analysis? Post a comment below. 

For your reference, our summary of the debate on think tank funding is here.

Voluntary Disclosure Can Restore Trust in Think Tanks

Guest blogger Patrick Gilroy warns that think tanks are in danger of losing their credibility. Transparify does not edit the content of guest blogs; the views expressed in this blog are those of the author alone, and may not reflect the views of Transparify.

The ‘think tank’ label still evokes notions of independence and the scholarly pursuit of knowledge, and journalists frequently cite think tanks as independent experts without simultaneously disclosing who funds them (a recent online petition laments the practices of the BBC in this regard). Yet in Washington D.C., one can observe a veritable politicization of think tanks, as avowedly ideological institutes now outnumber the more centrist or scholarly ones. With mandatory contributor disclosure not in sight, think tanks with clearly ideological purposes can still grant hidden sponsors full tax deductibility of donations under tax code section 501(c)(3).

For example, in the US it became publicly known in 2010 to what extent the billionaire Koch Brothers fund conservative think tanks. In Europe too, anecdotes of secret corporate funding of institutes staging a sort of counter-expertise are accumulating. For instance, the oil and gas firm Exxon Mobil funded London- and Brussels-based think tanks to deny climate change and depict EU policies as being based on “junk science”. Think tank networks like the Stockholm Network seem to essentially cater to interested business clients. Such stories add to a profound uncertainty about think tanks’ credibility.

Non- or under-reporting of financial details has led to widespread cynicism. Media pundits worry that “secretive think tanks are crushing our democracy”, lumping together all think tanks in the process. But not (fully) disclosing financial details does not necessarily imply malicious intent. Most balanced think tanks may just shy away from the reporting burden, or do not recognize that beyond being a democratic principle, transparency boosts their primary asset: namely, the perception of key audiences that they are intellectually independent and trustworthy. Voluntary disclosure therefore is the single best tool we have for creating a level playing field.

Because think tanks ultimately depend on this to survive and thrive they should lead by example. Annually disclosing details on who exactly funds their work is not just a sign of professionalism. It must become a strategic priority for think tank leaders worldwide to make such information available on their websites, and within initiatives such as the European Commission and European Parliament’s joint Transparency Register (where over 300 think tanks have registered so far, thereby endorsing its code of conduct). Of course, voluntary disclosure is no perfect remedy, as it is vulnerable to gaming (selective disclosure) or donor capture (anticipatory obedience) in practice.

With think tanks’ rising influence come higher expectations for responsibility. As with Odysseus binding himself to his ship’s mast, think tanks only stand to gain from transparency. Voluntary disclosure is a small step for a think tank, but one giant leap for the credibility of the craft.

Patrick Gilroy is a PhD candidate at the Hertie School of Governance within the Berlin Graduate School for Transnational Studies (BTS). In his empirical research project, situated at the nexus of international relations and organizational sociology, he researches EU-focused think tanks’ influence in European and global governance. 

Who Is Who in Thinktankistan?

Who cares about think tanks? More people than we expected! So many, in fact, that we have drawn up a list of organizations involved in researching, investigating, strengthening, monitoring, representing, rating, blogging and commenting on think tanks.

At least six blogs/sites are exclusively devoted to think tanks:

• On Think Tanks 
• The High Horse
• Think Tank Watch
• Think Tanked [discontinued – but strong archive]
• L’Observatori dels Think Tanks [Catalan/Spanish]
• Observatoire des think tanks [French ]

In case that makes you think that there can be nothing new under the think tank sun, visit the Think Twice Think Tank Review Project, which strives to provide a kind of quality review process for think tank publications, or Muckety, which uses maps to locate selected think tanks within larger webs of political and economic influence.

Also of interest are the Philanthropy Roundtable and its ACR project, who both argue against greater transparency in think tank funding.

One thing that really struck us in compiling our little ‘Who is Who’ is the extent to which US organizations traditionally focusing on lobbying and campaign finance have now begun monitoring think tanks. It may come as a surprise to most think tank professionals how often their sector is discussed in the same breath as “deceptive PR”, “front groups”, and even “institutional corruption”.

Our recently published bibliography on think tank transparency illustrates some of the issues involved. Over the coming weeks this blog will explore the darker sides of hidden think tank funding, as well as illuminate some brighter aspects of transparency.

What do you think? What lines divide think tanks from lobbyists or partisan political campaigners? And how should regulators deal with think tanks that cross these lines? Contact us if you want to submit a guest blog, or post a comment below.

(Again, for your convenience, our Who is Who is here.)