Garce, A., Uña G. (2010) Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America
Edited by Adolfo Garc and Gerardo Ua
This publication reports on a research project financed by Canada's International Development Research Centre (www.idrc.ca).
Garc, Adolfo and Gerardo Ua: Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America, Fundacin Siena and CIPPEC, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010.
Graphic design: sarapaoletti.blogspot.com Translation: Patricia Draper and Debbie Gonzlez Canada (Introduction) Edition: Luciano Strazza and Dolores Arrieta
INDEX PART I. Methodological and Conceptual Aspects on the Relationship between Think Tanks and Governments ABELSON, D., Is Anybody Listening? Assessing the Influence of Think Tanks Page 11 BAIER, G. y BAKVIS, H., Think Tanks and Political Parties in Canada: Competitors or Collaborators? Page 33 DATTA, A., JONES, N., MENDIZBAL, E., Think Tanks and the Rise of the Knowledge Economy Their Linkages with National Politics and External Donors. Page 46 PART II. Think Tanks in Latin America BRAUN, M., CHUDNOVSKY, M., DUCOT, N. y WEYRAUCH, V., Far away from Thinktankland: Policy Research Institutes in Developing Countries. Page 74 BELLETTINI, O., The Role of Public Policy Centers in Public Reforms Implemented in Latin America. Page 106 UA, G., LUPICA, C., STRAZZA, L., Think Tanks and Poverty in Latin America: The Role of Thinkers in the Marketplace of Social Policies in Argentina, Chile and Mexico. Page 127 LVAREZ RIVADULLA, J., MARKOFF, J. y MONTECINOS, V., The Trans American Market Advocacy Think Tank Movement. Page 172 PART III. Think Tanks in the Ro de la Plata CAMOU, A., Knowledge Behind the Throne. Expert Intellectuals, Think Tanks and Economic Policies in Argentina: between the Austral Plan and the Convertibility Crisis Page 209 UA, G., Think Tanks in Argentina: Overcoming the Tension between Participation and Permanence. Page 238 GARC, A., A Narrow and Unstable Interface. Think Tanks and Political Parties in Uruguay. Page 271 GALLARDO, J., GARC, A. y RAVECCA, P., Think Tanks and Experts in the Frente Amplios Government Page 290
Introduction.

BY ADOLFO GARC AND GERARDO UA
During the year 2005, the authors of this book agreed on promoting a workshop called Think tanks and public policies: Global Dynamics and Local Specifications, in the context of the First International Forum on the Social Science Policy Nexus, organized by the Management of Social Transformations Programme (MOST) that UNESCO was planning to carry out in Argentina and Uruguay. Convincing the Forum organizers of the pertinence of our proposal was not difficult. In fact, the area specialists admit that the complex connection between social research and public policies has an increasing participation of this diverse group of institutions so-called think tanks. After a long round of contacts, and with the support of the Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean of the International Development Research Center (IDRC) from Canada and the Argentinean office of the Konrad Adanauer Foundation, we finally achieved to confirm the participation of both national and international renowned academics and experts, as well as politicians and directors of the most important Argentine think tanks. The workshop took place on the 21st and 22nd of February, 2006, in Buenos Aires. As the different meetings took place and as the speakers presented their points of view, the idea of gathering their expositions in a book came up, so that politicians, specialists and citizens of the region could access to the most recent discussions about think tanks in the world and the region. We would like to thank, once again, the support of IDCR and the Konrad Adanauer Foundation for making this initiative real. A great number of the articles published in this English edition were part of the 2007 Spanish edition of Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America. Both of them gather edited versions of some of the articles presented in that Workshop. That is the case of the chapters written by Donald Abelson, Gerald Baier and Herman Bakvis, Antonio Camou, Adolfo Garc and Gerardo Ua. Together with these texts, the reader will also have access to a number of articles written in other contexts and times. The chapters signed by Orazio Bellettini, Miguel Braun, Mariana Chudnovsky, Nicols Ducot and Vanesa Weyrauch belong to this last category. Plus, four new unpublished chapters have been specially added for this English version: the first of them was written by Ajoy Datta, Nicola Jones and Enrique Mendizbal, members of the Overseas Development Institute (UK); the second, by Gerardo Ua, Carina Lupica and Luciano Strazza, members of Fundacin Siena (Argentina), was done with IDRCs support; the third one is the work of Mara Jos lvarez Rivadulla, John Markoff and Vernica Montecinos, from Pittsburg University (USA), and the fourth of them was developed by Javier Gallardo, Adolfo Garc and Paulo Ravecca, from Uruguay Republic University, whom also received IDRCs support. As it may be seen, this book is the result of a great communication effort between diverse
groups, all of which are interested in the influence of social research in public policies. This work brings together North American, Latin American and European academics. At the same time, this book also gathers both think tanks consultants and managers, with their own practical perspectives. So far, and just as an example, the splendid theoretical approach of Donald Abelson regarding think tanks had not yet been contacted to John Markoff and Vernica Montecinos contribution to the study of the influence of economists on public policies. At the same time, these two articles had not been contacted with ODIs Research and Policy in Development (RAPID), a crucial program that contributes to the promotion of the interface between research and policies. It is comforting to know that, from South America, from the Ro de la Plata, we were able to build a broad, qualified and innovative network on such a central topic for contemporary democracies. These new articles explore important dimensions of the development and operations of think tanks, such as the bonds with the institutional environment they are inserted in, the relationship with the donors, the exchange with similar organizations in developed countries and the dynamics with political parties. Furthermore, the increasing participation that Latin American think tanks are gaining in the social policies cycle is also studied. In this way, the new articles enrich the diversity of the book and provide new perspectives of analysis upon critical aspects that take part in these organizations institutional development and their ability to influence public policies. These new perspectives highlight the prominent role think tanks might have in the social policies arena, in a context where there is consensus on fighting poverty as one of the most central challenges of the region, challenge that will require active participation from both the State and civil society.
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So far, we have synthetically introduced the genesis of this book. Allow us, before we continue to present its content, to explicit a few a priori hypotheses that we considered to be particularly relevant. In the first place, as our reader has probably noticed, we have omitted to define precisely what kind of organizations are referred to as think tanks in recent literature. As it will be shown in the different chapters of the book, theres no agreement among specialists on the precise definition of this term. As a matter of fact, as the study cases grow, it becomes evident that a great range of institutions are called think tanks. In the United States, for instance, it is common practice to designate private organizations, financed by companies and specialized in public policies analysis, as think tanks. In other countries, the task of improving public policies quality through social research is done by governmental institutions or university centers. Like any other global phenomenon, the expansion of think tanks manifests itself in a specific way in every local context. Evidence provided by study cases and comparative research suggests that national and / or regional traditions shape in different ways this kind of organizations. Secondly, we would like to explain the way in which we understand the link between specialized knowledge and public policies or, in other words, between experts and politicians. It is imporThink Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America
tant to clarify this, since some recent political experiences in the region have given a negative connotation to the participation of experts in the Government. We are convinced that the development of the nations require that Governments support their work, amongst other sources, in inputs provided by social research. Neither Latin America nor the Ro de la Plata are exceptions to this rule. However, emphasizing the need of improving the nexus between social sciences and public policies in our countries does not imply the belief that technocracy should have supremacy over politics. It is not true that democracy and technocracy are necessarily opposite principles1. An active and growing civic participation is not incompatible with the incorporation of expert knowledge in public policies. Actually, it is not difficult to grasp that democracy fragility grows when elected Governments fail to solve, efficiently and effectively, the complex problems of economic and social development. Latin American political history during the 20th Century shows us that it is not possible to build stable democracies with the social and economic restrictions caused by underdevelopment and in the midst of the generalized poverty of the population. In the third place, we would to anticipate ourselves to another criticism. Saying that think tanks play an important role in modern societies does not necessarily imply questioning the role of political parties. In fact, it is true that think tanks often compete with parties, as Baier and Bakvis hold in their article. However, the most virtuous scenario is the cooperation between both of them. In fact, one of the main challenges for think tanks in Latin America is to help build strong political institutions and stable and competitive party systems. Latin America, since the times of the CEPAL (Comisin Econmica para Amrica Latina or Economic Commission for Latin America), has invested a lot of energy thinking on social and economic problems. It is essential to continue to make efforts to analyze and develop proposals that might help solving the institutional, political and social problems of our region. Lets go back to the content of the book, after these short but necessary comments. The reader will easily notice that the articles of this book have a particular approach. Actually, we could say that each one of them tackles the think tank topic from a different perspective. As editors of the book, we do not find this to be a problem. On the contrary, we trust this diversity will allow the reader to have a very broad overview of several dimensions and different theoretical and methodological approaches used by the authors in their researches. We have organized the content of the book in three relatively homogeneous parts, since we grouped the essays by common characteristics or approaches. The first part, Methodological and Conceptual Aspects on the Relationship between Think Tanks and Governments, gathers three important articles. On the first place, we include a chapter of Donald Abelsons last book, A Capitol Idea2. Abelson is one of the most renowned specialists and the author of some of the main reference materials in this field. In this chapter, Abelson offers an excellent approach on the problem of how to measure, with scientific rigor, combining quantitative data and a qualitative
1. The way democracy and technocracy complement each other has been carefully developped by Fernando Filgueira in La antiptica pero necesaria defensa poltica de la tecnocracia en Amrica Latina, in Vera, Miguel. Evaluacin para el desarrollo social: aportes para un debate abierto en Amrica Latina, Magna Terra Editores, Guatemala, 2006. 2. Abelson, Donald, A Capitol Idea: Think Tanks And US Foreign Policy, McGill-Queen's University Press (September 2006).
perspective, the effective influence of think tanks in the public policy cycle. We decided to include this article, precisely, because we consider that one of the most important challenges, both for academics and for think tanks, lies on improving the mechanisms to measure their influence. Like Carol H. Weiss and many other important specialists have stated, the influence of social research is generally gradual, indirect. For that same reason, it is difficult to measure. The second article is a relatively unknown work of Gerald Baier and Herman Bakvis, two Canadian scholars. It analyzes the relationship between think tanks and political parties in modern democracies. Including this article seemed essential to us because, no matter how important both institutions are in the present, there is very few written material about the relationship between think tanks and political parties3. Both chapters offer high quality methodological and conceptual tools that can be applied to the study of think tanks, regardless of the specific political context. The third chapter of this book belongs to Ajoy Datta, Nicola Jones and Enrique Mendizbal. It explores the common factors intervening in the development of think tanks influence on public policies, both in Latin America and other regions of the world. The article emphasizes two aspects: the way think tanks manage to enter national political processes, and the formal and informal bonds think tanks establish with local and foreign key actors. In the second part of the book, titled Think Tanks in Latin America, we decided to group four articles that give us a perspective of the reality of think tanks in Latin America. Like in the first part, the texts in this group do not overlap each other, but instead, they offer complementary perspectives. Miguel Braun, Mariana Chudnovsky, Nicols Ducot and Vanesa Weyrauchs article was prepared for the project Bridging Research and Policy from the Global Development Network. The document was written after a comparative study of different policy research institutes in Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe. The authors analyze the endogenous and exogenous factors that affect think tanks influential capability. This document is valuable for more than one reason. On the one hand, the empirical aspect allows us to have a comparative point of view of Latin American think tanks. On the other hand, in a theoretical aspect, it provides many useful ideas on organizational solutions and concrete practices to help maximize think tanks influence in public policies. The second article, by Orazio Belletini, goes over the formation process of think tanks in Latin America and illustrates the influence of this kind of organizations in public policies by providing recent examples of reforms in Latin America. In the third place, Gerardo Ua, Carina Lupica and Luciano Strazza analyze think tanks participation in social policies, taking into account that participation in the public policy cycle in
3. There has been a recent effort to develop that line of investigation. We recommend the reading of a book edited by Enrique Mendizbal and Kristen Sample, called Dme a quin escuchas. Think tanks y partidos polticos en Amrica Latina, IDEA-ODI, Lima, 2009. Available online in: http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/details.asp?id=4204&title=think-tanks-partidos-politicos.
three of the most important conditional cash transfer programs: Progresa - Oportunidades (Mexico), Plan Jefes y Jefas de Hogar Desocupados (Argentina) and Chile Solidario (Chile). The authors find that different levels and ways of think tanks participation might be affected by the political and institutional context where the programs emerge, the governments political will to create spaces for the interaction with think tanks and the proximity between knowledge centers and the public function. Finally, lvarez-Rivadulla, Markoff and Montecinos study the attention given by two traditional and influential American think tanks, Heritage Fundation and Cato Institute, to Latin American reality. From a transnational point of view, this research emphasizes the bond between American organizations and certain Latin American think tanks, trying to understand how these actors, who crate knowledge, work within the context of the relationship between the North and the South of the continent. Unlike the first three articles, this last one is not the result of the lessons of the daily management of think tanks, but the result of specific interrogatives that emerge from the academic world. Our path takes us from general aspects to more specific ones. The third part of the book is called Think Tanks in the Ro de la Plata and it gathers study cases from Argentina and Uruguay. Following a quantitative strategy (after Donald Abelsons methodological recommendations), Antonio Camou offers an exhaustive study on the relationship between think tanks and economic policies in Argentina, from 1985 to 2004, with a focus in the role of the experts. Gerardo Ua, on his part, introduces the determining factors that influence the development of think tanks in Argentina. His main argument is that, for these organizations, there is a tension created between their increasing participation in the process of public policies and their own permanence in time. The case of Uruguay is examined by the last two essays. In the first one, Adolfo Garc follows Gerald Baier and Herman Bakvis concepts and describes the relationship between think tanks and political parties in that country. He explains that, at least until the victory of the left in 2004, there was no stable and broad interaction with university centers institutions that have play the role of think tanks in Uruguay in the last 50 years. Despite lack of this kind of institutions, political parties were not able to create important think tanks of their own. The last chapter, by Javier Gallardo, Adolfo Garc and Paulo Ravecca, builds a broad map of think tanks in Uruguay which enables the authors to describe the sources of funding, the magnitude of human resources and the outreach strategies that think tanks follow in order to influence public policies decision making. They also analyze the dynamics of the bond between the studied think tanks and the Frente Amplio Government between 2005 and 2008, seeking to identify circumstantial and structural determining aspects of that bond. By doing so, this article complements the former one. ***
This book is, in a certain way, a culmination. A culmination of a process that started after the incentive provided by UNESCOs MOST Forum. At the same time, we would like to think of it as a new starting point, of a path already initiated. It is evident that it is absolutely necessary to learn more about the relationship between social research and public policies, especially about think tanks. Many areas need a deeper look. What are the differences and similarities between think tanks in Latin American and in other parts of the world? Which are the main differences between the various national traditions inside Latin America? Which are the most successful examples of influence and which are the endogenous and exogenous factors that might explain those good performances? Which topics are prioritized by think tanks in the region? Which issues have been less studied? In our region, what is the place, in the agenda of the main think tanks, of programs that fight poverty and inequality? What are the main fundraising strategies? To what epistemic community do members of the technical teams of the think tanks of the region belong to? What are their professional profiles and their level of academic formation? What do political parties think of think tanks? Do they see them as allies or as adversaries? On the other hand, what do think tanks think of political parties? What do they do to strengthen political parties and institutions? Of course, this is not an exhaustive list. It is just an attempt to show the volume of the pending research ahead of us.
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We would like to finish this Introduction expressing our sincere gratitude towards IDRC and all the people that have cooperated with the publication of this book. To Federico Burone, from IDRCs Regional Office, as well as Antonio Ciccioni, Andrea Puppo, Andrs Rius and Mara Scherschener. The financial assistance of this institution made our publication possible. A very special thank to Miguel Braun and Laura Zommer, from CIPPEC, who had an active participation in this new version. To Patricia Draper, who translated several materials included in this book, and to Luciano Strazza and Dolores Arrieta, an essential support for the making and the edition of this project. And of course, our greatest gratitude to those who enriched with their ideas and experiences the edition of the book, and to those who wrote its different chapters.
PART I. Methodological and Conceptual Aspects on the Relationship between Think Tanks and Governments
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1. Is Anybody Listening? Assessing the Influence of Think Tanks

DONALD E. ABELSON
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The purpose of this chapter is to consider how scholars can better assess the influence or impact of think tanks at different stages of the policymaking process. Although the behavior of think tanks has been subjected to increased scrutiny in recent years, little progress has been made in evaluating the nature and extent of their contribution to public policy. Indeed, rather than discussing how different methodological approaches can be used to study think tank influence, journalists and scholars have for the most part been content to make sweeping and often unfounded observations about their policy impact. Needless to say, these have done little to advance our knowledge of how think tanks engage with the public and with policymakers to influence the political agenda. To address what is clearly a significant shortcoming in the literature, this chapter will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of relying on quantitative and qualitative approaches to evaluating think tank performance. By so doing, we can begin to think more critically about how to overcome some of the many methodological obstacles that limit our ability to make informed observations about the influence of think tanks. Although the concept of influence is ambiguous and difficult to grasp, it is central to any discussion about politics and policymaking. It is also central to any discussion about think tanks and their efforts to become entrenched in the policymaking process. As students in introductory political science courses are reminded, politics is about the struggle for power and the ability of various individuals and organizations to achieve desirable outcomes. But it is also about ideas, the ambition of leaders, and the goals and aspirations of citizens. In short, it is about competing visions of the national interest and the many forces that shape the fate of nations. It is for these reasons that we need to explore more fully how think tanks contribute to policy development. The American political system is the ideal environment for think tanks to inhabit. As organizations competing in the free and open marketplace of ideas, they have innumerable opportunities to share and discuss their ideas with the public, with the media, and with policymakers. However, as in any business, they must be able to monitor the quality and appeal of their products. Unfortunately, unlike that of Fortune 500 companies and the millions of small businesses across the United States, the success of think tanks cannot be measured in terms of
1. Donald Abelson is Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science and Director, Centre for American Studies, at The University of Western Ontario where he specializes in American Politics and U.S. Foreign Policy. Dr. Abelson is the author of several books including, Do Think Tanks Matter? Assessing the Impact of Public Policy Institutes: Second Edition (2009) and A Capitol Idea: Think Tanks and U.S. Foreign Policy (McGill-Queens University Press, 2006). He is currently writing a study on the relationship between think tanks and US presidents. His work has also appeared in several edited collections and academic journals, including: Global Society, Presidential Studies Quarterly, The Canadian Journal of Political Science and Canadian Public Administration.
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profits and losses. It can only be measured by assessing their ability to influence the views and attitudes of the public and policymakers. Before delving into the various ways to measure influence, we must first discuss what scholars mean by influence. As we will discover, although the process of wielding influence can be easily summarized using lines and arrows, understanding the nature of influence and how it is exercised is far more complicated. Influence is often treated in a linear fashion whereby two parties negotiate policy outcomes but, in reality, a more holistic approach may be required to comprehend how policy influence is achieved.
Easier Said than Done: the ABCs of Influence In one of the more serious treatments of influence in the literature on international relations, K.J. Holsti suggests that influence occurs when A convinces B to do X, convinces B not to do X, or persuades B to continue a course of action or policy that is useful to, or in the interests of, A. (Holsti, 1988: 142). As inability to achieve any of these desired outcomes, which could be the result of a multitude of factors relating to either A or B, would suggest that under these circumstances, A was unable to exercise influence. For Holsti, influence, which he regards as an aspect of power, is essentially a means to an end. Some governments or statesmen may seek influence for its own sake, but for most it is instrumental, just like money. They use it primarily for achieving or defending other goals, which may include prestige, territory, souls, raw materials, security, or alliances (Holsti, 1988: 141). The easiest way to measure influence, according to Holsti, is to study the responses of those in the influence relationship. If A can get B to do X, but C cannot get B to do the same thing, then in that particular issue, A has more influence. If B does X despite the protestations of A, then we can assume that A, in this circumstance, did not enjoy much influence (Holsti, 1988: 150). In other words, influence is perceived to have taken place if B responds to or reacts in a manner acceptable to A. Conversely, influence has not taken place, according to Holstis model, if B does not abide by As wishes. In short, influence is tied directly to specific policy outcomes.
INFLUENCES
B
To do X Not to do X To maintain the status quo
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In studying the relationship between states in the international system, as Holsti does, it may make sense to employ a linear model of influence. After all, by understanding the power capabilities of two states engaged in conflict and the efforts undertaken by either or both parties to exercise influence, it might be possible to explain what factors may have helped or hindered As and Bs efforts to achieve their goals. Indeed, if scholars are interested in evaluating why some arms control negotiations between the United States and Russia succeeded and others failed, this model could prove to be useful. However, relying on it to evaluate the influence or impact of think tanks and other non-governmental organizations in the policymaking process is problematic. To begin with, in studying the policymaking process and the various individuals and organizations that participate in it, it is critically important to understand the identities of A and B. In Holstis model, A and B are sovereign states that have considerable resources at their disposal to exercise influence. Now imagine that A is a resident scholar at a Washington-based think tank with expertise in foreign policy and security studies and B is the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. A has published a study on national missile defense and is asked to testify before this committee. According to Holstis model, if As recommendations are not followed by B and in fact are rejected (in other words, if As goal is not achieved), A would be perceived as having no influence. Alternatively, if As recommendations are embraced by B, A would be deemed to have had influence. Yet, as we will discover, both scenarios raise serious methodological problems. First, we cannot assume that if As recommendations are dismissed by B, A has had no influence in the policymaking process. Although A may not be able to take credit for influencing a specific policy decision, A could have played an important role in helping the public, policymakers, and the media to consider other approaches to resolving a potentially difficult policy problem. Indeed, as Peschek and others have argued, think tanks are most effective at framing the parameters of public policy debates. Second, A may be well positioned to share ideas with policymakers at different levels of government, who in turn could draw further attention to the issues A has flagged. As a result of suggesting that influence is tied directly to policy outcomes, scholars are ignoring the many access points that think tanks and other non-governmental organizations have to the policymaking process. Conversely, by presuming that A has had influence over B because As preferences are satisfied, Holsti allows himself to fall into a different trap. Even if the recommendations A has proposed closely resemble policies that are introduced, he should not take for granted that A has had influence over B. It is conceivable, as we will discuss, that A has only reinforced what was on Bs mind or that other domestic and external forces compelled B to act in a certain way. In reality, despite the perception of having considerable influence over B, A may have exercised very little. Holsti should also keep in mind that, given the vast number of individuals and organizations that compete in the marketplace of ideas, it is often difficult to identify the source and origin of an idea which could span several generations. As scholars of public policy are well aware, every successful idea has a hundred mothers and fathers. And since many ideas take years before they make their way onto the political agenda, it is also likely that they have grandmothers and grandfathers.
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Regardless of an ideas gestation period, one thing is certain: every bad policy idea is an orphan. Think tanks, as noted, have a vested interest in creating the impression that they exercise enormous influence. If this were not a concern, they would not devote so much time and resources to enhancing their profile. However, scholars must resist the temptation of drawing on anecdotal evidence to support or reject these claims. They must also resist the temptation of trying to simplify a process that is anything but simple and straightforward. Influence, like so many other aspects of politics, is far more complicated than the linear model suggests and cannot be reduced to two or three likely outcomes. In fact, contrary to Holstis model, it is not always possible to confirm when A has or has not had influence. As much as scholars would like to argue with some degree of confidence that A has been able or unable to exercise influence over B, it is increasingly difficult to do so because of the complexity and ad hoc nature of the policymaking process. Rather than concluding that individuals and organizations have or do not have influence, scholars may want to consider the likelihood that participants in policymaking enjoy different degrees or levels of influence at different stages of the policy cycle. In the following section, we will discuss how scholars can do so by embracing a more holistic approach to the study of policy influence. In addition to offering an alternative to examining influence in a linear fashion an approach that assumes that two players will rely on various strategies to achieve their desired goals this model compels scholars to think of the policymaking process as a series of conversations taking place (often simultaneously) between multiple actors in distinct policy environments. In this model, influence is not tied directly to specific policy outcomes but is achieved through the interaction and exchanges between various participants who are directly and indirectly involved in the policymaking process.
A Holistic Approach to Policymaking In reflecting on the influence of think tanks on the media, Congress and the Executive, Leslie Gelb, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations and Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent for the New York Times, commented that it is highly episodic, arbitrary, and difficult to predict.2 His remarks were limited to think tanks, but he could just as easily have been making an observation about the nature of the policymaking process in the United States. It is because policymaking is highly episodic, arbitrary, and difficult to predict that a holistic approach to studying policy influence may prove more useful. In some respects, this approach builds on the work of scholars who study policy or epistemic communities and issue networks in the United States (see, for instance: Heclo, 1978). Policy communities and issue networks are composed of individuals and organizations that, by virtue of their expertise in a particular policy area, are invited by policymakers to participate in various stages of the policymaking process. These communities, which are divided into two
2. Interview with Leslie Gelb, 22 February 2005.
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spheres the core (sub-government) and the periphery (the attentive public) seek to influence specific public policies.3 The approach that we are considering is similar to policy communities in so far as it focuses on different clusters or centers of knowledge and expertise. However, unlike policy communities, which are created in large part to influence one or more government policies (X), a holistic approach considers how multiple actors (represented by An, Bn, Cn, and Dn) attempt to influence the environment in which policy decisions are made. In other words, a holistic approach to policymaking assumes that while officials in the White House, on Capitol Hill, and in various government departments and agencies attend to the affairs of state, conversations are taking place between policy experts in universities, in think tanks, in interest groups, and in the private sector which, with the assistance of the media and other outlets, can help to enrich policy debates. While elected officials may prefer to insulate themselves from the discussions taking place in or between clusters An, Bn, Cn, and Dn, they cannot ignore how these conversations shape the political agenda
An
Dn
Bn
Cn
Among the many benefits of a holistic approach is that it compels scholars to think about policy influence, not in terms of how it is exercised between two players, A and B, but how it can be fostered over time by different individuals and organizations acting alone or working together or in concert with various policymakers. Such an approach also provides a broader and more sophisticated understanding of policy influence. Recall the example we used of a
3. A detailed discussion of policy communities is provided by Lindquist in Public Managers and Policy Communities. (Lindquist, 1992: 12759).
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resident scholar from a Washington-based think tank who was asked to testify on national missile defense to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Using Holstis linear model of influence, we suggested two possible outcomes, given As preference that the recommendations put forward be adopted: A convinces the chair of the committee (B) to endorse the recommendations, in which case As influence is achieved, or B rejects As recommendations, in which case A exercises no influence. The linear model provides an all-or nothing proposition A either has or does not have influence. A holistic model which acknowledges that influence can occur in different ways and at different stages of the policy cycle presents a more realistic pic-ture of how A might achieve influence. Even though A might not be able to convince B to endorse the proposed recommendations, As testimony may spark a debate in the media, in academic circles, in the Oval Office, at other think tanks, and in countless other places where public policy is discussed and analyzed. The fact that A may not have altered Bs position regarding national missile defense does not mean that A lacks influence; nor does it mean that in the medium or long term, As recommendations will be ignored. Rather, Bs unwillingness to fulfill As wishes suggests simply that in this instance, B is unable and/or unwilling to follow As advice. The timeframe over which influence occurs is also an important consideration, particularly with respect to matters of war and peace. Although Holsti does not specify what he considers a reasonable time frame for A to influence B, it is clear from the linear model he presents that once B makes a decision, A is no longer in a position to exercise further influence. Unable to convince B to act according to As preferences, A may seek influence through other channels. This was certainly the case when the Bush administration decided to deploy troops to Iraq after it became clear that the United Nations Security Council would not endorse the invasion. Decisions such as the one leading to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein reinforce why it is important to look beyond the narrowly defined parameters of a linear model of influence; a holistic model encourages scholars to pay attention to what takes place after a decision is made, a period in which residual influence may surface. Let me explain. If B does not act according to As wishes, as the example mentioned above illustrates, it does not necessarily mean that in the short, medium, or long term A will be denied influence. Moreover, if B does act according to As wishes, it does not mean that A will immediately move on to the next issue. Indeed, Bs accommodation of A may provide A with an incentive to influence other decisionmakers and stakeholders. In some respects, residual influence can be regarded as goodwill which develops over time between individuals and organizations that have reaped tangible benefits through cooperation. This goodwill in turn could, as early functionalists such as David Mitrany predicted, spill over into more sensitive areas of negotiation (Mitrany, 1996).4 Unlike a linear model, a holistic approach does not try to reduce influence to an all-or-nothing proposition; as noted, it acknowledges that there are degrees and levels of influence. It also acknowledges that there are individuals and organizations which, by virtue of their expertise and
4. On theories of functionalism and integration and how they can be used to explain the success of interstate cooperation, see Mitrany, A Working Peace System.
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connections to key policymakers, are well equipped and positioned to influence both the policymaking environment and specific policy decisions. In a holistic approach, it matters if A is a scholar at a think tank, the editor of a newspaper, the head of an interest group, a professor at one of the nations leading universities, a CEO of a major corporation, or a former cabinet secretary. In the final analysis, it is important to recognize that with any important policy issue, whether it is strategic defense or the war on terror, there are literally hundreds of organizations, including think tanks, which try to convey their ideas to policymakers. And as scholars interested in how policy agendas are shaped, it is our responsibility to determine the most effective ways to evaluate their contribution to public policy. A holistic approach to studying policy influence is not neat and tidy, but neither is the process by which public policy is made and implemented. The efforts of think tanks to influence public policy cannot be explained by limiting our discussion to two players trying to negotiate favorable outcomes; nor can it be explained through computer-generated flow charts. The process by which think tanks and other non-governmental organizations try to assert influence, like the process of making policy decisions, is, as Gelb reminds us, highly episodic, arbitrary, and difficult to predict. Ironically, this is what makes the study of public policy interesting. Understanding who exercises influence and under what conditions it is achieved is a constant challenge for scholars in the field. Part of the challenge, in addition to developing an appropriate model to study influence, is determining the most effective ways to measure policy influence. In the following section, we shift our attention to how scholars can use both quantitative and qualitative indicators to assess or evaluate the influence of think tanks. How useful these criteria are for assessing the influence of think tanks on public opinion and public policy is a question that will undoubtedly lead to a lively exchange in academic circles. In the interests of promoting such an exchange, we will begin by focusing on what think tanks seem to value most making the headlines.
Can Policy Influence be Measured? A Quantitative Approach The Media On any given day, you can pick up a newspaper, turn on the radio, watch the news or a current affairs program, or scan the thousands of political Web sites on the Internet to find out what is on the minds of policy experts at Americas leading think tanks. And if that is not enough, you can subscribe to Think Tank Watch, a weekly e-mail newsletter prepared and distributed by the Canadian embassy in Washington which summarizes the research activities of Washington-based think tanks. The Canadian high commission in London has recently begun a similar newsletter to monitor the work of British think tanks. For twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the print and electronic media in the United States and around the world look to policy experts to shed light on important and controversial political issues, and think tanks are only too willing to oblige. Often referred to as talking
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heads, scholars from think tanks appear with great regularity on the network news and on political talk shows to comment on a wide range of domestic and foreign policy issues. They become particularly visible in the hours and days following historic events such as the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, when journalists and media executives scramble to make sense of what has transpired. When they are not on television or on radio, policy experts from think tanks share their insights on the Op-Ed pages of major American newspapers. In short, think tanks understand the demands placed on the media and respond by providing them with a steady stream of timely and relevant information. Think tanks, like corporations involved in the entertainment and advertising industries, appreciate the impact the media have on shaping our perceptions of what and who is important. That is why, as discussed in the previous chapter, they devote so much time and resources to strengthening their ties to various media outlets. Few think tank directors need to be reminded of the potential benefits of generating substantial media exposure; positive exposure not only enhances the credibility of think tanks, but even more importantly, it creates the impression that they wield enormous influence, a valuable currency that can be used to achieve desirable outcomes. Having influence is something all think tanks covet, but in reality, most settle for the perception of exercising influence. And what better way to create the perception of influence than to capture the attention of the media. As the marketplace of ideas has become increasingly competitive, several think tanks have closely monitored their media exposure relative to their rivals. What is at stake is more than bragging rights; it is the opportunity to trans-late heightened exposure into additional philanthropic, corporate, and private funding. In the following section, we will examine the amount of media exposure a select group of think tanks with expertise in foreign and defense policy generated in leading American newspapers and on the television networks between 2001 and 2005. The purpose of compiling these data is not to confirm which think tanks do or do not have influence but to demon-strate how this indicator of influence may be used in quantitative evaluations of think tank performance.
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Table 1. Print Media Coverage of Selected Think Tanks, January 2001 - January 2005: Totals of all Media Sampled
SUBJECT Think tank PNAC Hudson Center for Security Policy Hoover Cato Institute Carnegie Endowment Foundation AEI Heritage RAND CSIS Council on Foreign Relations Brookings Total
Note: Because of similarity of search criteria, there is likely some article overlap in the numbers. Source: LexisNexis
Irak 60 104 147 324 258 398 633 544 391 742 853 1,054
Afganistn 28 50 31 125 121 187 181 245 260 327 358 495
11/9 37 97 81 211 272 204 401 386 528 362 469 786
Al-Qaeda 20 32 47 84 87 114 146 150 232 231 288 271
Terrorism 52 158 191 354 437 409 629 685 691 754 846 1,270
Anti missile defense 12 30 66 38 31 115 61 119 63 73 71 169
Total 209 471 563 1,136 1,206 1,427 2,051 2,129 2,165 2,489 2,885 4,045 20,776
% 1.01 2.27 2.71 5.47 5.80 6.87 9.87 10.25 10.42 11.98 13.89 19.47
Using the database Lexis/Nexis, we recorded the number of times a select group of think tanks the Project for the New American Century, the Centre for Security Policy, the Hudson Institute, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution, the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the American Enterprise Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, and rand were mentioned in six major newspapers the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, USA Today, and the New York Times in relation to six important events or issues Iraq, Afghanistan, 9/11, al-Qaeda, terrorism, and missile defense between January 2001 and January 2005 (see table 1 and tables A4.1 to A4.6).5 The number of references to each think tank may be inflated since more than one of these terms could appear in a newspaper article, but our purpose here is to simply demonstrate a general pattern in think tank exposure.
5. These think tanks were selected because of their interest and expertise in for-eign and defense policy. I also selected six major newspapers that cover American politics inside the Beltway very closely. The issues and events that were chosen represent some of the most important challenges confronting American decision-makers in the last four years. In the area of domestic politics, other critical issues, such as health care, energy, and education, could have been identified. As noted, the purpose in compiling these data was to demonstrate a pattern in think tank exposure and to identify one indicator that could be used by scholars interested in using quantitative approaches to study think tank influence.
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Table 2. Total Television Exposure of Selected Think Tanks, January 2001 January 2005: Totals of all Media Sampled
SUBJECT Think tank Hudson PNAC Hoover Center for Security Policy Hoover Cato Institute Carnegie Endowment Foundation AEI Heritage RAND CSIS Council on Foreign Relations Brookings Total
Source: Vanderbilt Television News Archive.
Irak 0 1 1 4 4 2 17 11 42 65 30 152
Afganistn 0 0 1 1 0 3 2 3 7 8 7 31
11/9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 4 6 7 17
Al-Qaeda 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 10 7 33 23
Terrorism 0 0 1 4 4 6 6 10 25 36 51 68
Anti missile defense 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 8 1 1 5
Total 0 1 3 10 9 12 26 31 96 123 129 296
% 0,00 0.14 0.41 1.36 1.22 1.63 3.53 4.21 13.04 16.71 17.53 40.22
736
The exact number of citations is not as important as how scholars might use these figures to determine the extent of think tank influence. A think tank receives one media hit for each reference made to the events and issues selected. Of the twelve think tanks sampled, the Brookings Institution ranked first, receiving over four thousand citations, or 19.48% of all print media references, almost twice the share of exposure generated by AEI, Heritage, and Rand. Other think tanks that attracted considerable exposure included CSIS and the Council on Foreign Relations. The Project for the New American Century, the think tank credited with influencing the Bush doctrine, ranked last, attracting only 1% of media exposure. There was tremendous variation in the exposure think tanks generated across newspapers and issue areas. For example, Brookingss exposure ranged from a low of 10.26% in the more conservative Washington Times to a high of 26.17% in the more liberal Washington Post. By contrast, the Heritage Foundation, known for its conservative leanings, attracted the most coverage, 21.57%, in the Washington Times and the least coverage, 4.49%, in what many would regard as the more liberal New York Times. Brookings was quoted most often with respect to Iraq and terrorism, whereas RAND, for instance, was cited most for its views on issues relating to terrorism and 9/11. The results were similar for the broadcast media (see table 2 and tables A4.7 to A4.10). ABC, and CNN called on experts from the Brookings Institution or cited one of its studies far more
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often than from any other think tank: it received 40.22% of all broadcast media citations in this sample, more than twice the share recorded by its closest competitor, the Council on Foreign Relations (16.71%), and almost ten times the exposure generated by the Heritage Foundation (4.21%). The exception was CBS, which relied equally on RAND and Brookings (both received 25.44% of the networks coverage). Once again, PNAC attracted very little attention (0.14%), a step up from the Hudson Institute, which was not the subject of any discussion by the four networks. In our review of these figures, an obvious question to ask is, why do some think tanks attract more exposure than others? While there are several factors, including the size of a think tanks budget, size of staff, area of research, ideological orientation, and geographic location, which could help to explain why some think tanks are cited more than others (Abelson, 2002: 90:106), our concern is less with how and why think tanks attract media coverage and more with what these figures tell us or do not tell us about the extent of their influence. Scholars interested in using quantitative approaches to studying think tank influence tend to focus on media coverage because it is relatively easy to measure. Although it is time-consuming, scholars can draw on different databases, including the one used in this chapter, to compile information on how much exposure think tanks attract in the print and broadcast media. In so doing, they can record how many times think tanks are quoted, the policy issues they comment on most often, and the period of time over which they appear to enjoy the most visibility. Scholars may also elect to undertake rigorous content analyses of newspaper coverage so that they can measure the number of column inches devoted to think tanks. Moreover, should they be so inclined, they can keep track of whether the ideological leanings of think tanks are identified liberal, conservative, Marxist, libertarian and if the institutes are described in a positive or negative manner. All of this information can then make its way into studies evaluating the impact of think tanks. The major advantage of tracking media exposure is that it enables scholars to identify those institutes that are most active or relevant in framing the parameters of important public policy debates. For those interested in how think tanks become involved at the initial stages of the policy cycle, when ideas from multiple sources are being articulated, assembling a list of organizations making the headlines is critical. By following think tanks that are making the news and the issues that they are addressing, scholars can begin to examine more closely what additional steps they might take to promote their ideas. While some think tanks may be content to have one of their scholars or studies mentioned in a newspaper, others will try to use the media to garner public support for a new policy idea or initiative. As momentum for an idea builds, think tanks can then rely on many of the channels described to capture the attention of policymakers. In short, for many think tanks, being in the spotlight is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for exercising influence. Unfortunately, other than providing some initial information on which organizations are at the forefront of policy debates, media exposure tells us very little about the nature and extent of think tank influence. Indeed, contrary to what is said in the annual reports issued by various
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think tanks and their directors to their boards of directors, media visibility should not be equated with policy influence. The fact that a think tank study or report is referred to in the Washington Post, for example, does not mean that the public or policymakers will be swayed by its contents. To suggest otherwise, we would have to be confident that the report was read and understood by a sufficiently large cross-section of Americans. Even if it could be established, through a public opinion survey, that a significant percentage of the American people were aware of a specific think tank report mentioned in the Washington Post, it would be difficult to demonstrate, for the reasons stated earlier in the chapter, that there report influenced either public attitudes toward a particular issue or the views of policymakers. Moreover, even if it could be confirmed that public opinion had shifted as a result of this report, we would still have to contend with the many methodological obstacles limiting our ability to trace the origins of an idea to a policy outcome. It is for all these reasons that, as previously discussed, a more holistic approach to studying policy influence could prove more useful. Rather than trying to equate media visibility with policy influence, we should explore how policy issues discussed in the media, in the academic community, in the private sector, and in think tanks eventually make their way to policymakers. It is also important to keep in mind that our data on media visibility ignore vital information necessary to make informed observations about think tank influence. What the Lexis/Nexis database search provides is raw numbers on think tank citations. What is left out is the context in which comments by think tank scholars or references to think tank studies are made. Furthermore, the figures included in our charts do not reveal the type and scope of coverage think tanks receive. For instance, we do not know how many of the four thousand citations Brookings recorded in the print media were on the front or back page of newspapers. For obvious reasons, this factor could have a profound impact on the number of potential readers who come across references to this and other institutions. Moreover, we do not know which, if any, articles about the work of think tanks generated the most interest. Using Nielsen ratings, television networks can determine roughly how many viewers watched a particular program, a system that may help scholars study the exposure of think tanks in the broadcast media. However, it would be of little use to those looking at think tanks and the print media. Put simply, tracking the media visibility of think tanks may provide scholars with an important piece of the puzzle, but it is still only a piece. The entire puzzle can only be completed when more information about the involvement of think tanks is known.
Congressional Testimony In addition to monitoring how much media coverage they receive, think tanks pay close attention to how often their scholars are invited to testify before congressional committees. A list of scholars who have given testi-mony as well as the full text of their remarks is often available on think tank Web sites. The reason for this practice is obvious. Think tanks want to convey the impression that they are credible and important actors in the policymaking community, and what better way to do this then to advertise their accomplishments? Although there are several factors, according to Andrew Rich and Kent Weaver, that could account for why some
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think tanks appear before legislative committees more than others6, we need to consider how data on congressional testimony can be used to further our understanding of the involvement and impact of think tanks in the policymaking process. Between January 1st 2001 and January 1st 2005, the same time frame used to track media exposure, policy experts from the think tanks sampled in our study testified 120 times before seven Senate and House committees with responsibility in the areas of foreign and defense policy (see Table 3 and figures A4.1 to A4.6).7 Ranking first in number of appearances made was the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a veritable whos who in the foreign policymaking establishment. Experts from CSIS appeared before legislative committees on 33 separate occasions, or 27.5% of the time, well ahead of its closest competitors, the Brookings Institution (22), AEI (14), and RAND (10). Only a handful of appearances were made by experts at Cato (1), the Hoover Institution (2), PNAC (3), the Hudson Institute (4), the Center for Security Policy (5), and Heritage (8). According to our data, CSIS was most visible in the Senate, where its scholars appeared 20 times. Most of the testimonies were made before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee where CSIS experts discussed issues ranging from bio-terrorism and the threat of infectious diseases to the crisis in Iraq and negotiations with North Korea. In the House of Representatives, CSIS maintained a strong presence (13 appearances), but fell slightly behind the first-ranked Brookings Institution, whose scholars testified 14 times, mostly before the House Committee on International Relations. AEI and Heritage put in strong showings with 10 and 8 appearances respectively.
6. Rich and Weaver argue that think tanks located inside the Beltway and those that are ideologically compatible with the majority party in Congress are more likely to be called upon to testify before legislative committees. See their study Think Tanks, the Media and the Policy Process, and Rich, Think Tanks as Sources of Expertise for Congress. 7. The study looked at the total number of appearances by scholars from twelve think tanks before the following committees: Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senate Intelligence Committee, Senate Armed Services Committee, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, House Committee on Armed Services, House Committee on International Relations, and House Committee on Homeland Security.
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Table 3. Combined Testimony before US Senate and House of Representatives Committees by Selected Think Tanks, January 2001 - January 2005
Think tank Cato Institute Hoover PNAC Hudson Center for Security Policy Heritage Carnegie Endowment Foundation Council on Foreign Relations RAND AEI Brookings CSIS Total
Source: Source:LexisNexis.
Number of testimonies 1 2 3 4 5 8 9 9 10 14 22 33 120
Percentage 0.83 1.67 2.50 3.33 4.17 6.67 7.50 7.50 8.33 11.67 18.33 27.50
The data on congressional testimony raise similar methodological problems to that compiled on media exposure. What we are presented with is information that may help us to identify think tanks deemed to be credible (at least in the eyes of some policymakers) but scarcely any insight into which presentation or presentations given by think tank scholars were considered useful and relevant. Once again, the figures revealed in the charts do not speak to the issue of influence but merely address the frequency with which think tanks are called upon to testify before Congress. And as Rich and Weaver point out, there are several factors that could explain why some think tanks appear more regularly before legislative committees than others. Without paying close attention to the committee proceedings in which scholars from think tanks testified, it is virtually impossible to predict how much or little influence they exercised. Indeed, in the absence of detailed information about the inner workings of individual committees and the policy preferences and goals of its members, one could reasonably conclude that data on think tank testimony have limited utility. However, if one compares such data to that on media exposure, it becomes clear that this approach to assessing policy influence may prove more promising. In fact, by comparing the visibility of think tanks before Congress and in the media, we can observe that they enjoy different levels of recognition at different stages of the policy cycle. For example, while the Brookings Institution received 40.22% and 19.47% coverage respectively in our sample of the broadcast and print media, its scholars appeared 18.3 % of the time before Congress. In contrast, while CSIS enjoyed the strongest presence
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before Congress (27.50%), its exposure in the broadcast (1.63%) and print (11.98%) media was far less significant. By keeping track of where in the policy cycle some think tanks appear to be most active, we can then explore in more detail the nature of their contributions to specific policy debates. In short, in assessing policy influence, what is important to highlight is not which think tanks ranked first, second, or last in such categories as media exposure and congressional testimony, but which think tanks, relative to other institutes and organizations involved at the same stage of the policy cycle, were best equipped and positioned to influence public policy. We cannot determine this by focusing solely on quantitative indicators of policy influence. Media exposure, congressional testimony, and other measurements such as number of publications produced and size of staff and budgetary resources can only take scholars so far. Although data on these and other aspects of think tank activity can be useful in documenting patterns and trends in the institutes behavior, a more comprehensive understanding of their influence is required to probe more deeply into their involvement in the policymaking process.
The Invisible Cloak: Think Tanks, Public Policy, and Qualitative Indicators of Influence Studying public policy and the efforts of non-governmental organizations to shape it would be so much simpler if political scientists could magically transform their academic robes into invisible cloaks. By becoming invisible, they could make their way around the White House, Capitol Hill, and doens of government departments and agencies as easily as Harry Potter did in the cavernous hallways and staircases of Hogwarts, the fictional school where he and his friends were sent to learn the arts of witchcraft and wizardry. And like the bespectacled wizard whose presence went undetected as long as he remained under his invisible blanket, political scientists could travel effortlessly inside the corridors of power. With their cloaks around them, there is little scholars could not ascertain about who and what was influencing the behavior of policymakers. They could observe meetings between high-level officials in the Oval Office, overhear phone conversations between key members of Congress, and gain access to confidential documents. The mysterious and complex world of policymaking would suddenly become open and transparent. But the world at Hogwarts is very different from the one that policymakers in Washington inhabit. At Hogwarts it is outsiders such as Harry Potter who can draw on extraordinary powers to uncover what is taking place behind closed doors. By contrast, in Washington, insiders use their authority as elected and appointed leaders to conceal the inner workings of the policymaking process. It is they, not the scholars who study them, who hide behind their invisible cloaks. There are wizards in Washington the Washington Wizards but they play in the National Basketball Association; they are not members of ancient societies hoping to uncover the States most highly guarded secrets. Since scholars cannot hide behind imaginary cloaks to observe first-hand why certain policy decisions were made, they must find other ways to shed light on the policymaking process.
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We have already considered some quantitative indicators that may be employed to assess the contribution of think tanks to policymaking. Among other things, we discovered that numbers reflecting the amount of media exposure think tanks generate and/or the frequency with which their experts appear before legislative committees often leave us with more questions than answers. To remedy this problem, we may want to consider how qualitative approaches can be used to provide further insight into how think tanks become involved in policymaking and the nature and extent of their influence. When scholars refer to qualitative approaches to the study of policymaking, what exactly do they mean? Generally, they are referring to non-statistical methods of analysis, including archival research and interviews, which enable them to reveal the inner workings of the policymaking process. Those employing this approach maintain that while quantitative indicators may be useful in evaluating policy influence, so too are intangibles such as personal contacts with high-level officials who may have a profound impact on shaping policy decisions. For example, in looking at how often experts from think tanks testified before congressional committees, we focused primarily on which institutes logged the most and fewest number of appearances. No consideration was given to the reputation and standing of the experts who testified or to the composition of the congressional committees. Why is this aspect important? It is important because in the policymaking process, it matters who is providing advice and to whom the advice is directed. It makes a difference if testimony is being presented by a former cabinet secretary or a relatively unknown academic from a Washington-based think tank who was called upon at the last minute to fill in for a more seasoned scholar. It also makes a difference whether policy experts are testifying before high-profile or relatively obscure committees, and it makes a difference whether the topic being discussed is a priority for Congress and the Administration or an issue that, like so many others, is forgotten overnight. As we will discuss in some detail in our case studies, the relationships and contacts that develop between think tanks and policymakers can often explain why some think tanks are able to enjoy considerable access to various stages of the policymaking process. Heritage president Edwin Feulners friendship with key members of the Reagan transition team in 1981 certainly played an important role in allowing the foundation to make its Mandate for Leadership study known to the incoming administration. The same can be said for PNAC, which relied on several of its more prominent members, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice-President Dick Cheney, to communicate the recommendations outlined in its much publicized report Rebuilding Americas Defenses to President Bush. However, while personal contacts and connections to decision-makers may help facilitate access to various levels of government, they do not guarantee that policy experts from think tanks and other organizations will be able to exercise policy influence. As Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Carter, recently acknowledged, different communities of scholars and former policymakers in Washington attempt to influence public policy. There are some communities that do not have much influence, except perhaps in shaping public attitudes to some extent through Op-Eds, television and so forth (...) and there are other communities [of policy experts who] have acquired a certain degree of public recognition [and] have
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some degree of influence, not excessive, but some (...). [They have] influence because of their natural access to policymakers.8 According to Brzezinski, experts who fall into the latter category can enjoy a great deal of influence when government policy gets into deep trouble. Take Vietnam, for example, if things are not going well, all of a sudden viewpoints which are divergent from the standard policy gain a great deal of circulation and are listened to much more carefully.9 Although there may be an incentive for policymakers to listen to more diverse points of view when their policy gets into deep trouble, there are several other factors that may explain why some administrations would be more inclined to turn to outside policy experts, a subject that we will explore in the next two chapters. The importance of qualitative analyses to the study of think tanks cannot be overemphasized. If done properly, archival research and interviews can produce volumes of information that can document in great detail the critical factors which shape public policy. But quantitative methods should not be overlooked or ignored. On the contrary, qualitative approaches can offer scholars something that raw data cannot the historical and political context in which policy decisions were made. In chapters 8 and 9 we will draw on both qualitative and quantitative approaches in order to evaluate the extent to which a select group of think tanks were able or unable to exercise influence at different stages of the policy cycle. In so doing, we will remain cognizant of the many methodological barriers often encountered in studying policy influence. Assessing policy influence is inherently difficult, but it is necessary if we are to make any progress in studying the involvement of think tanks and other non-governmental organizations in the policymaking process. The alternative to rely on anecdotal information or data that tell us little about whether policymakers and the public are listening to the steady stream of information being distributed by think tanks is not an option.
8. Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, 20 May 2004. 9. Ibid.
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Appendix
Table A4.2 Print Media Coverage of Selected Think Tanks: New York Times
SUBJECT Think tank Center for Security Policy Hudson PNAC Cato Institute Hoover Heritage Carnegie Endowment Foundation RAND AEI CSIS Council on Foreign Relations Brookings Total
Note: Because of similarity of search criteria, there is likely some article overlap in the numbers. Source: LexisNexis.
Irak 3 8 17 24 42 53 60 104 119 124 246 247
Afganistn 0 1 6 12 11 17 22 64 34 60 102 106
11/9 0 7 9 41 28 35 39 137 76 58 140 164
Al-Qaeda 0 2 4 10 11 6 17 45 29 29 72 66
Terrorism Anti missile defense 1 10 10 44 41 60 68 179 120 136 262 291 4 2 4 5 6 4 26 26 8 18 24 43
Total 8 30 50 136 139 175 232 555 386 425 846 917 3,899
% 0.21 0.77 1.28 3.49 3.57 4.49 5.95 14.23 9.90 10.90 21.70 23.52
Table A4.3 Print Media Coverage of Selected Think Tanks: USA Today
SUBJECT Think tank PNAC Center for Security Policy Hudson Hoover Carnegie Endowment Foundation RAND Cato Institute AEI Heritage CSIS Council on Foreign Relations Brookings Total
Irak 1 5 9 16 37 25 34 71 48 104 104 138
Afganistn 2 1 6 11 17 20 27 20 29 46 49 75
11/9 2 1 7 14 22 37 29 44 45 39 50 106
Al-Qaeda 0 0 3 5 13 15 16 14 20 26 37 28
Total 9 12 39 76 135 155 162 222 230 314 338 526 2,218
% 0.41 0.54 1.76 3.43 6.09 6.99 7.30 10.01 10.37 14.16 15.24 23.72
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Table A4.4 Print Media Coverage of Selected Think Tanks: Wall Street Journal
SUBJECT Think tank PNAC Center for Security Policy Hudson Carnegie Endowment Foundation Cato Institute Heritage Hoover Brookings CSIS AEI Council on Foreign Relations RAND Total
Irak 2 5 12 12 25 25 38 51 60 62 64 41
Afganistn 0 0 4 12 6 12 18 15 25 18 16 23
11/9 1 2 9 10 21 22 25 37 33 43 42 98
Al-Qaeda 1 1 2 7 3 6 13 12 12 18 25 13
Total 5 16 41 69 81 100 127 164 193 208 212 251 1,467
% 0.34 1.09 2.79 4.70 5.52 6.82 8.66 11.18 13.16 14.18 14.45 17.11
Table A4.5 Print Media Coverage of Selected Think Tanks: Washington Post
SUBJECT Think tank Center for Security Policy Hudson PNAC Hoover Cato Institute Heritage Carnegie Endowment Foundation AEI RAND CSIS Council on Foreign Relations Brookings Total
Irak 6 21 26 33 43 66 167 190 107 188 213 342
Afganistn 3 10 11 10 21 28 77 44 75 90 92 188
11/9 8 19 14 21 50 60 80 111 132 104 124 298
Al-Qaeda 3 4 11 8 14 10 38 40 68 79 76 94
Total 33 90 93 110 215 280 558 563 598 688 742 1,407 5,377
% 0.61 1.67 1.73 2.05 4.00 5.21 10.38 10.47 11.12 12.80 13.80 26.17
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Table A4.6 Print Media Coverage of Selected Think Tanks: Washington Times
SUBJECT Think tank PNAC Carnegie Endowment Foundation Hudson RAND Council on Foreign Relations Cato Institute Center for Security Policy AEI CSIS Brookings Hoover Heritage Total
Irak 9 47 42 55 118 90 122 142 164 133 179 295
Afganistn 7 27 26 28 49 35 25 54 69 64 72 136
11/9 8 23 36 49 56 99 69 97 77 102 114 186
Al-Qaeda 3 13 16 23 37 28 42 33 48 38 44 92
Total 38 184 208 252 396 452 478 520 550 559 635 1,175 5,447
% 0.70 3.38 3.82 4.63 7.27 8.30 8.78 9.55 10.10 10.26 11.66 21.57
Table A4.7 Television Exposure of Selected Think Tanks: ABC

SUBJECT Think tank CSIS Hudson Hoover Cato Institute PNAC Heritage Center for Security Policy AEI Carnegie Endowment Foundation RAND Council on Foreign Relations Brookings Total
Irak 0 0 0 1 1 1 2 9 17 15 33 57
Afganistn 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 4 15
11/9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 7
Al-Qaeda 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 4 3 6
Total 0 0 0 1 1 2 2 13 25 35 57 109 245
% 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.41 0.41 0.82 0.82 5.31 10.20 14.29 23.27 44.49
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Table A4.8 Television Exposure of Selected Think Tanks: CBS

SUBJECT Think tank CSIS PNAC Hudson Hoover AEI Cato Institute Center for Security Policy Heritage Council on Foreign Relations Carnegie Endowment Foundation Brookings RAND Total
Irak 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 4 6 9 16 5
Afganistn 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 3 1
11/9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 3 1 2
Al-Qaeda 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 2 2 9
Total 0 0 0 0 1 2 4 10 15 24 29 29 114
% 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.88 1.75 3.51 8.77 13.16 21.05 25.44 25.44
Table A4.9 Television Exposure of Selected Think Tanks: CNN

SUBJECT Think tank PNAC Hudson Hoover AEI Cato Institute Center for Security Policy CSIS Heritage Council on Foreign Relations Carnegie Endowment Foundation RAND Brookings Total
Irak 0 0 0 3 1 1 2 5 11 12 5 38
Afganistn 0 0 1 0 0 0 3 2 1 7 3 6
11/9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 1 1 4
Al-Qaeda 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 4 14 6
Total 0 0 1 3 3 4 12 16 19 37 40 68 203
% 0.00 0.00 0.49 1.48 1.48 1.97 5.91 7.88 9.36 18.23 19.70 33.50
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Table A4.10 Television Exposure of Selected Think Tanks: NBC

SUBJECT Think tank Center for Security Policy CSIS PNAC Hudson Hoover Heritage Cato Institute AEI Carnegie Endowment Foundation RAND Council on Foreign Relations Brookings Total
Irak 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 4 4 5 15 41
Afganistn 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 2 7
11/9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 2 5
Al-Qaeda 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 3 6 1 9
Total 0 0 0 0 2 3 3 7 10 25 32 90 172
% 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1.16 1.74 1.74 4.07 5.81 14.53 18.60 52.33
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Bibliography
Abelson, Donald E. Do Think Tanks Matter? Assessing the Impact of Public Policy Institutes. Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2002. Heclo, Hugh. Issue Networks and the Executive Establishment. In Anthony King, ed., The New American Political System. Washington, DC: The American Enterprise Institute, 1978. Holsti, K.J. International Politics: A Framework for Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1988. Lindquist, Evert A. Public Managers and Policy Communities: Learning to Meet New Challenges. Canadian Public Administration 35, no. 2 (1992): 12759. Mitrany, David. A Working Peace System. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1996. Rich, Andrew, and R. Kent Weaver. Think Tanks, the Media and the Policy Process. Paper presented at the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, August 1997.
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2. Think Tanks and Political Parties in Canada: Competitors or Collaborators?

GERALD BAIER1 (University of British Columbia) and HERMAN BAKVIS2 (University of Victoria)
In Canada, the role of political parties and perceptions about their utility to Canadian democracy are long standing preoccupations. The last two decades have seen substantial tumult in the Canadian party system. The Progressive Conservative party, the traditional alternative to the oft-governing Liberal Party of Canada, has effectively undergone a split and reconstitution, forming a minority government in the early months of 2006. The Quebec nationalist Bloc Quebecois party continues to hold sway over large parts of that province, and with the second minority in parliament since 2004, parties are playing as important a role as they ever have in Canadas political system. That said, there is still substantial doubt about what Canadas parliamentary system gets from its political parties outside of electing and organizing governing. This doubt was well expressed in the immediate aftermath of the 2006 parliamentary elections when a Liberal cabinet minister from Vancouver, David Emerson, elected as a Liberal in the election, re-emerged two weeks later as a part of the new Conservative ministry. Emersons move was met by considerable anger from his constituents and former colleagues, but was not unusual enough to suggest that his former party was falling apart. Contentions that party labels mean much in the way of ideology or organization of anything but the spoils of electoral politics dont stand up to such behavior. The last major governmental effort to examine the role of political parties in Canadian society, the 1991 Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing (or Lortie Commission after its chairman Pierre Lortie), emphasized the need to rejuvenate Canadas parties as primary political organizations. (Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing, 1991). To this end, the Commission urged that Canadas electoral law be changed to encourage the creation of party foundations. These foundations, or internal think tanks, would, it was hoped, bring a degree of policy depth to the parties which have long been criticized for their shortcomings in
1. Gerald Baier (PhD, Dalhousie) is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Political Science of the University of British Columbia. He joined the department in 2003. His teaching and research interests are in Canadian politics with a focus on the Constitution, federalism and public law. He is a regular commentator on federal politics in national and local media. His past research has explored the role of judicial decision-making in the shaping of federalism in Canada, Australia and the United States. He has recently completed a co-authored book on federalism and intergovernmental relations in Canada. He is presently conducting a comprehensive study of the Supreme Court of Canada's institutional character and processes. 2. Herman Bakvis (PhD in Political Science, University of British Columbia, 1978; MA in Political Science, University of British Columbia, 1972; BA Honours in Political Studies, Queen's University, 1971) joined the School of Public Administration at UVic as a Professor in July 2005, after 26 years at Dalhousie University in both the Department of Political Science and School of Public Administration. He was Director of the School at Dalhousie from 2000 to 2004. He has also held visiting appointments at the Australian National University, Queens University and the University of Saskatchewan. In addition to his academic research interests (see below), he has been involved in applied policy research for departments and agencies such Human Resources Development Canada, Transport Canada, and Treasury Board Secretariat, as well Royal Commissions such as the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing.
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this regard. The exhortations of the Lortie Commission have had little effect. Neither the Conservative government to which it reported nor the subsequent Liberal government chose to act on its recommendations. When the Liberals did undertake some important changes to the laws governing political parties in 2003, the reforms were focused almost wholly on electoral competition, the selection of candidates and funding of the parties as electoral machines. The parties themselves have done little to increase their ability to think about policies independently of electoral competition. In this article we explore the failure of Canadian parties to develop internal think tanks and offer some reasons why parties should revisit this issue. We argue that the potential and actual role of think tanks, both within and outside parties, has been misunderstood. Internal think tanks should not be thought of as a restricting force on the necessary pragmatism of Canadian political parties. Neither should they necessarily be considered competitors, eating up the resources and talent necessary for fighting elections. Think tanks often have less to do with policy development and much more to do with the promotion and popularization of new ideas and the creation of political networks. At the same time, party foundations are not an unmixed blessing. Institutes and foundations, if not properly monitored, can become a conduit for questionable political and electoral spending.
Think Tanks as Competitors In Canada, think tanks are generally not associated directly or even indirectly with political parties. Think tanks and policy organizations like to emphasize their status as independent observers and purveyors of information to the public marketplace of ideas. Unlike parties whose main goal is to fill public office, and interest groups who seek to directly influence those officers, think tanks and institutes seem to have one primary goal: to influence the policy agenda. They seek to shape public opinion and the intellectual climate in which decision makers operate. Their tools often include one-pagers and backgrounders for the media and well-publicized conferences and seminars drawing together intellectuals and practitioners around important public questions. Unlike lobbyists, think tanks tend to be prolific publishers, printing up a range of newsletters and briefing papers as well as monographs and edited collections of essays on particular topics. They can also be seen as brokers of information and ideas or, as Evert Lindquist puts it, a third community of professional intellectuals (Lindquist, 1990: 73-95). Canadian think tanks may attempt to capture the ear of key decision makers when the opportunity presents itself. However, they generally pursue their goals more publicly through clever packaging and promotion of ideas and policy solutions. Unencumbered by the compromises of office, think tanks primarily present their policy and ideological alternatives to the general public. So while think tanks do try to trade in the currency of ideas with more determination than parties, their audience is often the same. In this sense, think tanks weaken political parties, by competing directly with them in the shaping of public views. An excellent illustration of how traditional think tanks perform this function can be found in the public discourse over deficit reduction in Canada in the 1990s. Think tanks such as the C.D. Howe Institute and the Fraser Institute, on the right, and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the Caledon Institute, on the left, effectively pre-empted much of the policy space normally occupied by political parties on this issue. The Fraser Institute was particularly good at targeting public opinion
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with clever devices like Tax Freedom Day, the first day of the year in which the average tax payer had completed paying the portion of their annual income that would be collected by governments as tax. As Allan Tupper has argued, much of this analysis is shallow, even specious, and very little of it is new (Tupper, n.d.: 530-546). Yet, the success of those championing fiscal restraint at getting their message heard and shaping the priorities of Canadians and of their provincial and federal governments during the 1990s is undeniable. Provincial and federal governments across the full range of political parties have all bought into the need for fiscal discipline as a basic component of governing. Similarly, with the arrival of fiscal surpluses, the same institutes have helped put tax cuts onto the political agenda. On the other side of the spectrum, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has promoted an annual alternative budget, one which typically puts much less emphasis on expenditure reduction. Likewise, the Caledon Institute has succeeded in focusing public attention on the issue of child poverty. Its president Ken Battle has even claimed credit for federal government innovations in seniors benefits and child poverty legislation, a claim with which a number of observers concur (Valpy, 1996; Greenspon, 1998). Jousting over issues such as changes to the Canada Pension Plan or Employment Insurance more often seems to take place among institutes of the left and right than between political parties in Parliament. Similarly, arguments that erupt in the media upon the annual release by the Finance Minister of the governments budget are more than often between these institutes. Overall, the diversity of Canadas think tanks is most encouraging. If they are going to compete with the political parties for the engaged publics attention and the skills of the best policy analysts and innovators, it is heartening to see them add some pluralism to the public conversation. Indeed, one senses that there is much greater diversity among think tanks than among political parties. And while there are some think tanks that have larger budgets and command more attention than others, there is still remarkable variety. Murray Campbell has estimated that there are probably about 50 think tanks in Canada, with a collective budget of around $77 million. Of this total, only 15 to 20 think tanks have sufficiently substantial budgets and personnel to have a public profile of much significance.3 On the whole, the policy community tends to be weighted to the right of the political spectrum, but this is equally true of Canadas interest groups and political parties. The critical question for political parties then is: should they develop links with think tanks or form their own in-house think tanks in order to tap into this rich array of political talent and energy?
Think Tanks as Collaborators With some minor exceptions, neither parties nor think tanks have attempted to develop linkages with each other in Canada. Nor have Canadian parties made much genuine effort to develop in-house think tanks. Canada, however, is something of an exception in this regard. As stated at the outset, Canadas political parties serve few purposes outside of electoral competition and government formation. They do little to organize political socialization or organize
3. These range in size from the Conference Board of Canada (with a $23 million annual budget) to the more modest Pearson-Shoyama Institute (with an annual budget of $150,000). See Wonks by Murray Campbell (1995: d1,d2).
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community life in the country. In other countries parties tend to have more links, both formal and informal, with think tanks, ranging from official party foundations in Germany to foundations linked directly to individual politicians in the United States (see Figure 1).
Also rarely associated with a party. Some links do occur, and personnel will work in Government or parties.
Set up to endorse candidates for office or leadership. Personnel often indistinguishable from electoral or political staff.
CANADA
USA (Brookings model)
UK
USA (Vanity model)
GERMAN/ DUTCH
Rarely associated with a party. Infrequent, but occasional exchange of personnel.
Known links to parties, often not formal. Exchange of personnel common and regular.
Formal ties to parties, legally separated for funding and tax purposes. Provide advice and personnel directly to party when needed.
The United Kingdom lies somewhere nearer the middle, with mutually beneficial relationships between parties and external think tanks. The current Labour government has benefited from informal associations with a number of think tanks. The Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR), the Fabian Society, the Social Market Foundation, the European Policy Forum and the post-modernist Demos have all produced studies that have found their way into the hands of Prime Minister Tony Blair. At the same time, with both the party and the various institutes retaining their independence, Labour is not considered especially beholden to any of the institutes. The Prime Minister, on the other hand, has had at his disposal an almost inexhaustible supply of ideas, yet still maintains strong control over how those ideas are to be used and incorporated into his partys, and ultimately his governments, policy agenda. Think tanks have
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a sympathetic ear in government and thereby perhaps a greater incentive to research and recommend policy. In many respects, the important role presently played by think tanks in relation to parties in the United Kingdom can be credited to Margaret Thatcher. The Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), founded by Margaret Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph in the 1970s was the primary vehicle for changing the course of the Conservative party. Furthermore, the CPS and other conservatively oriented think tanks for example, the Institute of Economic Affairs provided doses of rejuvenation when the Thatcher cabinet appeared to falter, especially after the general elections of 1983 and 1987. So called neo-conservative think tanks in the United States served a similar role in the reorientation of the Republican Party, providing outlets for conservative ideas and homes for conservative intellectuals who were out of office during the Clinton years. George W. Bush has been able to call upon the policy capacity of these organi-zations when attempting domestic reforms in areas like Medicare and social security, but has also been inspired in much of his foreign policy by the ministrations of these independent groups. Sharing the middle ground with these largely independent institutes is a more nefarious sort. So-called vanity think tanks are built around particular individuals and leaders to repackage their ideology, communicate campaign style messages and, perhaps most importantly, circumvent increasingly strict campaign finance laws. Although this sort of think tank is found mainly in the United States, they have popped up elsewhere. In the United Kingdom, John Redwood, challenger to then Prime Minister John Majors leadership of the Conservative party, became involved in the founding of the Conservative 2000 Foundation, headed by his political adviser and leadership campaign organizer. The independence of these think tanks from politicians is certainly questionable, and their policy and research capacity is similarly suspect. They do demonstrate, however, the potential for abuse that is inherent in close relations between parties and think tanks. In some countries, mostly in continental Europe, political parties regularly adopt or establish internal think tanks or party foundations. Germany in particular has a very strong tradition of party foundations not only developing policy but also engaging in numerous other activities under the official auspices of their associated parties. Germany can be seen as the polar opposite of Canada in this regard. Subsequently, independent think tanks appear to have less sway over the direction of public policy. It is the in-house party foundations that take on many of the roles associated with think tanks. German party foundations also disburse foreign aid money and play a critical role in the training and education of party members.
The Potential of Think Tanks According to Robert Young, Canadas political parties desperately need a stronger capacity to formulate policy (...) In a self-reinforcing cycle, people with genuine policy concerns seek out interest groups to advance their causes, and the parties degenerate further into domination by leaders and their personal entourages, who play the politics of image and strategic vagueness (Young, 1991: 77). Concerns about the excessive concentration of political power in the Canadian Executive tend to blame political parties, which are dominated by their
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leadership both formally and informally. Parties are seen as part of the problem, rather than the solution to reforming Executive Power in Canada. Think tanks, particularly internal ones, could certainly help solve the idea problem, as well as supply the personnel to put together cohesive policy packages. But developing policy, however broadly defined, is not the only or even perhaps most valuable role that party linked think tanks could perform. Indeed, one can identify at least four main functions that think tanks could perform. Think Tank as Policy Legitimator The most obvious function of a think tank is still the ability to provide policy advice. The think in think tank is supposed to be about policy and how to handle the challenges of the complex modern State. In many countries, think tanks do exactly this and have had measurable success in making an impact on policy. In both the British and American cases, think tanks are often used selectively by the government of the day to provide intellectual or scientific justification for the policies that a committed government or leader may wish to pursue. As most political parties can not often be relied upon to provide learned advice or strong ideological commitments, those leaders who do wish to pursue a strong ideological course often find ready support and policy resources in think tanks. The success of conservative think tanks in the 1980s serves as an ideal example. Both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan drew heavily, albeit selectively, from policy institutes when undertaking their general assault on the welfare State. Given the antipathy that both governments had to the civil service, it was not surprising to see them turn to outside advice rather than rely on senior bureaucrats to implement the downsizing or program cuts that the politicians desired. Only likeminded think tanks could provide the policy resources and some of the credibility necessary to change the course of government. Think Tank as Retreat and Sounding Board Think tanks can also serve less direct policy purposes. Instead of prescribing specific policies or options, they can provide a congenial environment for decision makers to reflect, propose and experiment with new ideas, getting feedback from receptive and critical audiences. Think tanks rarely close their doors to the outside world. On the contrary, the publication and research programs of most think tanks are just a part of their activities. Conferences, retreats and receptions are prominent weapons in their arsenal. Washingtons Brookings Institution is known for Friday luncheons where Brookings researchers and associates meet informally with policy makers to discuss issues of the day. Other institutes go so far as to provide quasi-formal training to political staff and interested public servants. The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) runs a Washington School to educate government officials on domestic and foreign policy topics. While these events can directly impact a policy makers ideas, they also serve the more modest role of helping policy makers think through their own ideas. Cabinet ministers may feel less threatened thinking out loud with think tank staff than in the Cabinet room or even in front of their officials. An over-dependence on civil servants policy advice is another danger. To have a forum for discussing ideas removed from the cutthroat environment of a Cabinet, or the influence of civil servants, can give a politician a chance to see the bigger picture and develop innovative ideas.
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Think Tanks as a Money Pipeline Think tanks have proven themselves useful for less noble purposes as well. The costs of election and reelection have escalated dramatically in Western democracies. With increased costs has come an increased need for campaign resources. While attempts have been made to regulate campaign finance, reforms have met with varying success, and have spawned an almost fervent pursuit for loopholes that can help funnel money to parties and candidates and the personnel that they wan to keep employed between elections. In this shady ground lurk those who are willing to exploit the generally tax-free status and lack of expenditure controls enjoyed by most think tanks and foundations. Americans have had notable difficulties in this regard. Such high profile politicians as Republicans Robert Dole and Newt Gingrich, or Democrats such as Jesse Jackson and Gary Hart, have used think tanks and charitable foundations to funnel political donations to their campaign efforts. These vanity think tanks, serve the dual purpose of spinning the candidates message or ideology and jetting the candidate around the country on a tax-subsidized expense account. One study of think tanks used by presidential hopefuls in 1988 showed the majority of potential candidates had some affiliation with a think tank or charitable foundation. These organizations were used to spend donations not subject to the same restrictions as campaign dollars. While serving their reputed purpose by providing policy notes and background for the potential candidate, the degree to which these think tanks actually attract gifted policy analysts or produce the kinds of serious studies that come from more independent think tanks is still suspect. Foundation as a Policy Network Perhaps the most overlooked benefit of think tanks is their capacity to network individuals as well as ideas. A foundation or think tank can provide a ready-made web of contacts that will provide almost instant access to expertise. This may be especially useful to parties, as control remains unquestionably in their hands. Experts are not foisted upon decision makers but are called upon when needed. The policy agenda remains the preserve of the decision makers themselves. For example, party foundations in Germany provide an important anchor for networks of experts who have a partisan affiliation to the Executive or executive in waiting. These networks can become quite important in the provision of outside expertise. While policy networks of concerned actors, decision makers and experts undoubtedly would exist without party foundations, changes in public policy are often initiated by those interest groups that stand to gain the most from policies or changes in policy. Although a party foundation or think tank network is still partisan, less overt interests may be at stake. By channeling this sort of activity through the parties or their adjuncts, networks are built both inside and outside of government, increasing the expertise available to party leaders. Equally important, a network or set of networks can help build support for a partys position within critical constituencies and help draw interested and well-qualified people into the political process who might otherwise not participate.
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Canadian Think Tanks and Parties Canadas think tanks really occupy unique territory. Unlike think tanks in most countries, they are almost all without formal or even informal ties to political parties. Canadian think tanks are much more likely to work as independent policy entrepreneurs, influencing the agenda of public policy from the outside. While institutes have occasionally organized conferences or public meetings on behalf of government, think tanks do not regularly leave an imprint on a partys election platform or even have key figures move into a prime ministers or ministers policy entourage. Efforts by Canadas political parties to create or engage think tanks have largely met with failure. The institutes that do have a profile in this country have few or no connections at all to political parties. Party foundations have popped up, but they have never been of much consequence. Often these organizations appear after a particularly demoralizing defeat in the polls, or after a change of party leadership. They are usually an attempt to revitalize or reinvent a party in the short term rather than a genuine effort at party education and continuing capacity to analyze ideas or propose policy. The Liberal Party of Canada has had the least party foundation activity. Part of the explanation for this drought of policy thinking may be the access that the Liberals, as the so-called natural governing party have had to the instruments of the State. Liberals have been comfortable with the permanent bureaucracy and have unhesitatingly relied upon it for policy advice. Conservatives have been more likely to express open hostility to the permanent staff of the Canadian State, notably in the Diefenbaker and Mulroney years. The Liberal Party did distinguish itself in 1993 with an election policy document known as the Red Book, the end result of a lengthy soul-searching campaign by the Liberals beginning with the election of a new leader in 1991. In November of that year, the party organized a modest policy conference in Aylmer, Quebec. Journalists were quick to draw parallels to a similar conference 30 years prior in Kingston, Ontario, a much more robust exercise which, combined with a national party rally in 1961, created the Liberal Program for the 1962 and 1963 elections. Much of this Program was made a reality; indeed it was in part the blueprint for the prime ministership of Lester Pearson, a time which saw the last stages of development in Canadas modern welfare State.4 A sequel to the 1993 Red Book was prepared for the 1997 and 2000 elections, and rainbow of other policy agendas were released by the Liberals competitors in both those elections. In the subsequent iterations of the Red Book the consultative process within the Liberal party was much less vigorous; not even the Prime Ministers regular policy advisers had much opportunity to take part in the creation of the 1997 version of the book it was left almost solely to the prime ministers top electoral strategists. The Progressive Conservative party found itself in a different situation in the 1990s. Given its stunning defeat in the 1993 election, the party was forced to re-invent itself to maintain both public support and the loyalty of its activists. Like the chastened Conservatives of former prime min-
4. Mitchell Sharp, who chaired the conference, provides an economical summary of its activities in his memoir, Which Reminds Me...: A Political Memoir (Sharp, 1994: 85-93). Similarly, Tom Kent (1988), in his book, A Public Purpose: An Experience of Liberal Opposition and Canadian Government, describes the critical role of the Kingston Conference in shaping the Liberal Partys social welfare policy for the subsequent decade. Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America
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ister Joe Clarks first reign as party leader in the late 1970s, Jean Charests generation of the Progressive Conservatives resorted to a quasi-foundation, the Presidents Council, as a site for policy consultation and party renewal. Despite this intended purpose, it is not clear that the council was able to have any effect on party policy in the 1997 election. Borrowing a page from the Liberals, the party created a book of policy proposals for the 1997 election, Let the Future Begin, but like the Liberals, the document was the product of electoral strategists not policy thinkers. Despite having generated some of the internal capacity to create informed policy through its Presidents Council, the partys leadership handed the policy platform over to election specialists. The subsequent merger of the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance into the Conservative Party of Canada has seen the disappearance of both the Presidents Council and the more populist policy making practices of the Alliance party which allowed delegates to its annual convention to help create the partys platform. The success of the 2006 Conservative election campaign has already been credited to stricter control of the partys platform and message by the leaders core entourage of advisers and strategists.5 The one party that does currently operate a European style foundation is the New Democratic Party (NDP). The maintenance of its Douglas-Coldwell foundation would appear to be in tune with the intellectual heritage of the party. The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), the precursor to the NDP, had its origins in the League for Social Reconstruction (LSR), a group of socialist and left-leaning academics and intellectuals. The LSR was dissolved after the creation of the party, but its initial involvement gave the CCF a rich source of policy ideas and orientations. In striving for electoral success, however, the party has moved away from the ideological commitments originating in the LSR. The current status of the partys foundation is indicative more of this trend than of its ideological heritage. The DouglasColdwell foundation has been kept at a considerable arms length from the party. The Lortie Commission reported that the leadership of the NDP had difficulty engaging the institute. This it believed was emblematic of the inability of the Canadian party system to establish a strong institutional basis that develops and presents cogent long-term and well-developed policy alternatives to Canadian voters (Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing, 1991: 297). The NDPs links with organized labour has given the party access to policy research. The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), an umbrella group for Canadian unions, was a partner in the creation of the NDP when it merged with the CCF. The CLC has a research branch, which produces a large number of policy studies in fields like employment and social equity. The NDP, which has been officially supported by the CLC, has always been able to draw on this material. The precursor to the Canadian Alliance (the party that is now merged with the Progressive Conservatives to form the Conservative Party) was known as the Reform Party. In many ways the Reform party tried to break the mould of Canadian party behavior. Reforms think tank relationships, while still informal, were arguably stronger than those of its competitors. For example, the party had notable connections with conservative movements and institutes in the western provinces. There was frequent movement of personnel between the party and conservative quasi-think tanks like the
5. The final document was almost exclusively the work of John Rae and Eddie Goldenberg, with little involvement from the partys policy advisory group or the party at large. See Edward Greenspon, Wanted: a national agenda (1997: d1,d2).
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National Citizens Coalition (NCC) a group once led by current Prime Minister Stephen Harper. In addition, some of the partys elected members have worked in various capacities for the Fraser Institute, another prominent conservative organization. Two of the partys stalwart Calgary MPs had previously been directly in the employ conservative think tanks. Upon his retirement as party leader, Preston Manning joined the Fraser Institute as a senior fellow. Along with Michael Harris, another senior fellow and the former premier of the province of Ontario, Manning has written a manifesto for improving Canadian party democracy which again calls on the parties to more formally engage the policy, socialization and networking capacity of think tanks and institutes.
Are there any Prospects for Change? Unfortunately, in the years since the Lortie Commission delivered its report there is even less evidence than before of efforts by Canadas political parties to institutionalize their networking, policy discussion and educational activities into something that is connected yet separate from the party itself. The obstacles to achieving the kind of change proposed by the Lortie Commission are both concrete and attitudinal. Concrete obstacles exist largely in the way in which Canadas tax laws treat foundations and institutes. The political party foundations that do exist are extremely cautious about maintaining their independence from their affiliated parties for they risk losing their tax exemption status. Foundations are free to pursue research on areas of concern to the party or its membership, but they cannot be seen to be providing direct research work for the party. Canadas electoral laws also strictly control the degree to which non-party actors can spend funds during election campaigns. Again, foundations and institutes are hesitant to offer endorsements or be too closely tied to parties or their risk breaking those rules. Canadian authorities are much stricter about the connections between these organizations than their American or German counterparts. These and other distinct obstacles in the way of parties interested in creating foundations have not helped matters. Equally critical, however, is a fundamental attitudinal problem within the parties themselves, namely an aversion to policy-oriented bodies within their ranks. Parties may erroneously see party foundations solely as policymaking bodies that might compromise electoral strategies considered essential to winning a broad base of support. The experience of party foundations outside and even within North America suggests that this perception is misplaced; foundations meet several needs other than policy creation. In fact, in many respects they may be much better suited to networking, political education and political recruitment than to policy development work as such. Furthermore, party-linked think tanks typically take a longer term view of policy, canvassing different possibilities and scenarios as opposed to developing specific policies suitable for immediate implementation. Critically, party foundations can help elicit the involvement of talented individuals who might not otherwise become involved in political parties by providing a setting that is low key rather than charged with partisanship or intra-party competition. They can also provide opportunities for politicians to float new ideas with less likelihood of being held hostage to them by political opponents. In brief, getting the parties to see past some of their prejudices against policy clarity and to perceive some of the other benefits may be one way to convince them of the merits of party foundations.
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To be sure, party foundations are not a panacea for the various ills that can befall pragmatic political parties in any system. Furthermore, if the design of a foundation and the relationship between a party and a foundation is not handled correctly, things can backfire. First and foremost, the financing of such foundations ought to be as transparent as possible and safeguards must be put in place that would prevent these entities from being used to channel funding, directly or indirectly, to the parties or to specific candidates. Secondly, there should be a clear arms-length relationship. With long term policy issues, where diverging debate is highly desirable, the function of think tanks would be severely compromised by being tied too closely to the party. Ideally, legislation modeled on the recommendations of the Lortie Commission where foundations would be treated similar to charities for tax purposes but allowed to become more politically involved would provide a direct incentive for parties to create foundations or expand existing ones. The likelihood of such legislation being passed in the near future may be slim, but the absence of such legislation should not prevent parties from taking initiatives on their own. In considering the possible benefits of foundations, political parties may wish to look at the wide variety of independent think tanks that are presently involved in the various political debates over health care, free trade, deficit reduction and, more recently, whether to allocate the fiscal surplus to tax cuts or new spending. Political parties may wish to ponder how they too might take advantage of the obvious energy generated by these enterprises. Parties can never pursue as narrow a perspective as most independent think tanks are wont to, but there are still many aspects of think tanks and their modus operandi that parties may wish to emulate, particularly in what regards to their capacity to present and debate interesting ideas. Political parties need to be exposed to the ideas produced by think tanks, as well as to the people who become involved with them. Think tanks, in turn, need to engage politicians more. It is the latter, after all, who have the final say over what ideas are ultimately enshrined in public policy.
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Bibliography
Campbell, Murray. Wonks, The Globe and Mail, December 2, 1995: d1,d2. Conference Board of Canada, Annual Report 1999. Greenspon, Edward. Tearing down Canadas welfare wall, The Globe and Mail (June 19, 1998): a6. Greenspon, Edward. Wanted: a national agenda, The Globe and Mail (July 5, 1997): d1,d2. Kent, Tom. A Public Purpose: An Experience of Liberal Opposition and Canadian Government. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1988. Lindquist, Evert. The Third Community, Policy Inquiry and Social Scientists in S. Brooks and A-G. Gagnon (eds.). Social Scientists and the State. New York: Praeger, 1990: 73-95. Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing. Reforming Electoral Democracy, Vol. 1. Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services, 1991. Sharp, Mitchell. Which Reminds Me: A Political Memoir. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994: 85-93. Tupper, Alan. Think tanks, public debt and the politics of expertise in Canada. Canadian Public Administration Vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 530-546. Valpy, Michael. Poor, and being kept poor, The Globe and Mail (December 12, 1996): a23 Young, Robert A. Effecting Change: Do We Have the Political System to Get Us Where We Want to Go? in Doern, G. Bruce and Bryne B. Purchase (eds.), Canada at Risk? Canadian Public Policy in the 1990s. Toronto: C.D. Howe Institute, 1991: 77.
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3. Think Tanks and the Rise of the Knowledge Economy

Their Linkages with National Politics and External Donors
AJOY DATTA , NICOLA JONES and ENRIQUE MENDIZABAL
Introduction Background The term think tank is used to describe a wide range of research organizations which undertake public policy research and analysis and intend to influence policy dialogues and advocate policy solutions. Some are strictly non-partisan, researching policy issues without regard to partisan political outcomes, while others see one of their main functions as providing intellectual support to political parties and legislators. For most of the 20th Century, think tanks were primarily found in the United States; with a much smaller number in Canada, Australasia and Western Europe. However, there has been a proliferation of think tanks across the globe (since the 1970s). According to McGann, there are over 5000 think tanks worldwide
1 2 3
1. Ajoy Datta joined ODIs RAPID group as a research officer in April 2008. He is responsible for improving the institutions understanding of the contribution of evidence to policy-making. Before this, he worked in ODIs Centre for Public Expenditure (CAPE) as an associate, where he helped with two aid projects aimed at enhancing Southern voices in aid policy-making. In addition, Ajoy was the Ghana Programme Coordinator at the Tropical Health and Education Trust (THET), an organisation that strives to improve health services in developing countries. Ajoy has also spent over three years living and working in Zambia as a VSO development worker. He graduated from Durham University with an MEng in Manufacturing Engineering and from SOAS with an MSc in Development Studies. 2. Nicola Jones has a PhD in political science and leads a programme on knowledge, policy and power at ODI. Given a particular interest in social policy issues, she also works closely with the social development and social protection programmes at the institute. Nicola has been with ODI since January 2007 and has worked during that time with AusAID, DFID, IDRC, Plan, UNICEF, UNDP, among other funders, and with developing country partners in Vietnam, Ghana, East Africa, Nepal, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Her research interests include the knowledge-policy interface, and the politics of gender, childhood and youth in developing country contexts. She has worked in diverse contexts, including East, South-East and South Asia, East and West Africa, as well as Latin America, and has published extensively for a range of academic and policy audiences. Before joining ODI, she managed a number of multi-country policy research initiatives in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and worked with government and non-government agencies on gender and childhood policy issues. 3. Enrique Mendizbal joined RAPID in October 2004. As a Research Fellow, his responsibilities include the development of ODI's research on networks and think tanks. Enrique manages the Outcome Mapping Learning Community (www.outcomemapping.ca) and the Evidence-based Policy in Development Network (www.ebpdn.org). In RAPID he leads the partnership building and capacity development initiatives of the group. He has helped develop the RAPID Outcome Mapping Approach (ROMA) for developing strategies for policy influence and is an experienced workshop facilitator and trainer on policy influence, research communications and networks development. Enrique also chairs the Latin American and Caribbean Group at ODI a cross-cutting group that aims to study and promote debate and solutions for pro-poor policies in the region. Enrique has over 10 years of experience in the development sector and has worked in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Enrique is a Peruvian national who studied a BA in Economics at the Universidad del Pacfico and an MSc in Social Policy and Planning at the London School of Economics. After completing his economic degree, Enrique spent two years working at the Research Centre of the Universidad del Pacfico (CIUP) on a number of research projects focusing on child poverty and public policy. A key aspect of his worked involved developing a strategy to promote a clearer 'visualisation' of children in the national budget and more evidence-based policies focused on children and other vulnerable groups (Los nios primero).
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(2007).4 In line with current research trends which are increasingly focussed on think tank development beyond members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the aim of this chapter is to explore a number of hypotheses that explain think tank development in different regional and national contexts in the developing world. In so doing, we assess the linkages think tanks have with national (and local) political processes and actors, including their donors; and consider the implications of these on their research priorities, policy messages and policy influencing channels. We also explore the extent to which the supply of policy research at the national level is satisfying demand for knowledge from policymakers. A number of authors have explored ways in which think tanks can be defined and classified (see Garc and Ua, 2007; Abelson, 2002; Rich, 2004; Smith, 1991; McGann, 2007; McGann and Weaver, 2000; Stone et al, 1998; Stone and Denham, 2004), ranging from their politicoinstitutional location (for example, those which are independent, civil society, party affiliated or embedded within the state) to the emphasis they place on research, policy advice and advocacy functions. There is an emerging consensus, however, about the challenges inherent in defining think tanks as many do not fit neatly into particular categories but share attributes of several types of organizations. Definitional problems are exacerbated when describing think tanks in societies as contrasting as the United States, Uganda, Indonesia and South Korea. For the purpose of this chapter, we define think tanks as organizations that (1) produce research products, which inform decision making on specific policy issues at various levels of political authority, and (2) influence policy content. Hence we include in our analysis policy research centres associated with academic institutions and research focused NonGovernmental Organizations (NGOs), as well as party and state-affiliated institutes. This suggests a significant departure from the somewhat structural definition popularly associated with think tanks which emphasise their non-profit, non-governmental independent status, instead focussing on those organizations with knowledge generation and translation functions. For this chapter, we have undertaken a review of selected literature of think tanks in developing countries. In addition, structured interviews (administered face-to-face, by telephone and through email), each lasting between 60 to 90 minutes, were then carried out with key informants from organizations pursuing policy research, analysis and influence5 in Central and Eastern Europe (the Czech Republic), Africa (Uganda, Ghana, South Africa) and Asia (India, Indonesia and South Korea). The report is organised geographically. We begin with Central and Eastern Europe, followed by sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Northeast Asia. In each Section we draw on both existing literature and empirical evidence. In summary, we want to address the extent to which think tank traditions can be usefully clustered according to regional political, economic and socio-historical trends. The concluding section draws together common threads and provides a comparative analysis.
4. McGann uses the more traditional definition of a think tank that does not include University research centers. 5. All of these fit our broad definition of think tanks even if the organisations themselves do not necessarily self-identify as think tanks.
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Think Tanks in Different Contexts There is a growing body of analysis seeking to explain think tank development in different contexts. For instance, Stone and Denham (2004) suggest that different institutional and cultural environments affect think tank modes of operation and their capacity or opportunities for policy input and influence. Since think tanks are seen as key actors in what the World Bank describes as the new knowledge economy and help to bridge research and policy, we use the RAPID framework produced to better understand the uptake of research findings in policy decisions and outcomes (Court et al., 2005) to understand the role of think tanks. The framework (illustrated in the figure below) identifies four broad interlinked areas: (1) context (including politics and institutions); (2) evidence (research quality, researcher credibility and the framing of messages); (3) links (between researcher and policy maker communities either formal or informal, the role of intermediaries, networks and campaigning strategies); and (4) external influences (including the role of donors, international discourses, global political or economic shocks; but also socioeconomic and cultural influences). Figure 1. The RAPID Framework
EXTERNAL INFLUENCES Socio-economics & cultural influences, donor policies
POLITICAL CONTEXT Politics & Polymaking
LINKS Media, Lobbying Networking
EVIDENCE Research, Learning & Thinking
Source: RAPID Policy Impact Toolkit.
Regarding the context, we assess the factors which have shaped the emergence of think tanks in different regions. The rise of think tanks has been associated with (re)emergence of political democracy across many parts of the world and the increasing recognition of the importance of civil society in promoting democratic consolidation and good governance (Tembo and Wells, 2007). Related to this, improvements in relations between governments and civil society have led to the perceived democratisation of knowledge.
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External influences include the globalisation of think tank funding, especially from advanced industrial countries to support the development of civil society in developing and transitional economies. We identity and assess (1) think tank funders and (2) the implications this funding has on think tank research agendas; findings and channels for influence. Regarding the links, we identify (1) channels that think tanks use to influence policy and (2) the linkages they have developed with other think tanks and NGOs, nationally, regionally and internationally. The growth of nation states, the related need for more technical and complex evidence and a perceived failure in policymaking in major capitals of the western world, is assumed to have needed the development of think tanks to generate better knowledge for effective policy development. Our analysis identifies (1) where policymakers source their evidence from and (2) to what extent policy research supply matches demand or not. Pertinent to all four of these areas is the issue of power dynamics amongst and between different actors, which shapes knowledge generation, translation and uptake processes. In each of the following sections, think tank development in different regions is assessed in relation to the RAPID framework.
Latin America Unlike the western tradition, we assume that Latin American think tanks share similar characteristics with their peers in the regions that we study in this chapter. The region provides a series of hypothesis related to the research challenges to be addressed.6 The emergence of think tanks in the region is tightly linked to the historical context in which they developed. We suggest that think tanks in Latin America emerged as vehicles for personal or political propaganda (for example in Colombia and Uruguay), in opposition to current regimes (for example, in Chile, first to the right-wing dictatorship; then to the centre-left democracy), with the availability of funding (for example, in Peru, from external or internal sources), in response to decentralisation processes and power dynamics (for example, decentralisation in Argentina) and as a result of the collapse of political systems (for example, in Bolivia, and the emergence of think tank NGOs). The funding of think tanks and the support they receive is equally eclectic and related to local contexts. In more developed political systems, funding often comes from political parties (such as in Chile and Colombia); while in less developed political systems, funding comes from international NGOs and other external donors (for example Bolivia). The private sector plays an important role in Argentina and Chile; while in Peru, research relies on foreign institutional donors. The type of funding these think tanks receive varies from core to project based commitments with stronger political systems showing longer term institutional and financial relations between think tanks and their founders.
6. This section is taken from an unpublished book commissioned by ODI on Think Tanks and Political Parties and draws from chapters written by Adolfo Garc, Sergio Toro, Carlos Toranzo, Orazio Bellettini and Juan Fernando Londoo.
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Among those not linked to political parties or private founders, it is not clear what effect these relations may have on think tank agendas, findings and channels of influence. If anything, founders seem to focus on policy influence rather than academic standards in think tanks activities. In Latin America, policymakers use evidence from a range of sources. Unlike other regions in the developing world, Latin America has a long and well established academic tradition with qualified researchers, it has experienced diverse policy regimes and civil society-public sector relations and the role of think tanks has been played by several types of organizations since the beginning of the twentieth century. These different public policy traditions are reflected in policymakers engagement with think tanks and a wider range of policy research institutions. What seems to be clear is that informal relations often provide initial linkages that are often institutionalised by political parties or social movements and then governments (not necessarily by the parliamentary groups). Presidents and their governments can be easily associated with one or two policy research institutions. Along side think tanks and their supporters and audiences, collaborative mechanisms have development in the region. Several Latin American think tank and research networks exist and the studies in this book reflect this dense network of relations. At the national level, collaboration is limited by funding, though. National networks such as CIES in Peru are the best mechanisms to facilitate this collaboration. However, it is not rare to find that members of the consortium compete with each other for project funds. Collaboration is also limited by the strong role that informal but singular relations play in defining the relations between think tanks and policymakers.
Think tanks in Central and Eastern Europe Political Context Kimball (2000) suggested that the dramatic change in the structure of policy decisions and policy formulation throughout Central and Eastern Europe resulted in the emergence of a large array of local policy analysts (spurred on by western experts) from either former academies of science, ministries or other state institutions or from democratic revolutionary groups. Amidst the turmoil of the collapse of communism they formed NGOs with the aim of influencing public policies of the newly formed governments in the region in search of western ideals of liberal democracy and economic growth (Kimball, 2000). This analysis suggested that think tank growth was a function of democratisation and marketisation across the region. However, Krastev (2000) argued that think tank development was more contingent on the post-communist situation, with the communist legacy significantly shaping organizational structures, values and outlooks of post-communist think tanks even if only as a conscious rejection of what came before. According to Sandle (2004), there were three key factors that led to the growth of think tanks: funding, competition and complexity. With huge cuts in pubThink Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America
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lic funding and deteriorating economic conditions, many researchers from formerly state funded institutions left to create their own research centres and independent policy research institutes. This growth in think tanks was largely funded by various western foundations and aid agencies see below. The previous monopoly that the state had on expertise gave way to a more competitive environment where various parties and new political institutions fragmented expertise along political/ideological lines. Finally, the increased complexity of governing public institutions and the problems facing each state in the region generated a demand for expertise that many governments were unable to meet internally (Sandle, 2004). Sandle (2004) also suggested that various ways of categorising think tanks in Central and Eastern Europe have been defined by outsiders; for instance, Freedom House (1997 and 1999) and Struyk (1999). Kimball (2000) uses a simpler means of categorisation arguing that the think tanks which emerged were either associated with a university created before the fall of communism or developed in the post-communist system. University-based think tanks, such as the Centre for Economic Research and Graduate Education (CERGE) of Charles University in the Czech Republic, were reluctant to enter the policy arena, limiting themselves to academic research and post-graduate education. Such research institutions feared that a critical attitude towards public policy processes may thwart their access to public funds and threaten their accreditation by the state, upon which many are dependent (Schneider, 2002). On the other hand, think tanks that developed in the post-communist system were primarily seen as drivers of economic and political reform. Largely funded by foreign donors, they were often centred on ideas or the personality of a key figure, and undertook a combination of advocacy work and contract research for national governmental and international institutions. For instance, in the Czech Republic, the first think tanks that set up immediately after the Velvet Revolution included the Civic Institute, which promoted liberal conservative ideas for a free society with close ties with the Civic Democratic Alliance (Ob_ansk Demokratick Aliance, ODA) a political party; and the Liberal Institute, which promoted the libertarian ideas of Friedrich Hayek and the Mont Pelerin Society (Schneider, 2002). External influences: as noted above, western foundations and aid agencies were instrumental in providing funding to the new post-communist think tanks. They were eager to promote democratic institutions and a healthy civil society. Krastev (2000) argued that the US (the regions largest governmental donor since the fall of communism) was eager to export a specific process of policymaking. In fact, foreign funding had an enormous effect in professionalising a number of prominent think tanks. However, they also had negative consequences, including the erosion of their institutional identity and capacity. Lovitt (2006) argued that donors slowed the development of local capacity by hiring foreign experts, rather than training local actors from the very beginning. As a result, despite the subsequent training of local staff, policy analysis undertaken by several think tanks was very weak (Krastev, 2000). Furthermore, Kimball (2000) argued that training sessions offered by Western organizations targeted think tank leaders hence concentrating skills at the very top of the organization and limiting institutional development.
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After the initial funding began to decline in the late 1990s, think tanks struggled to find substitutes in a domestic environment with little or no philanthropic culture. Dependent on foreign funding, they have become overly vulnerable to changing donor priorities (ibid). According to Kimball (2000) think tanks in the region have had to undertake consulting contracts with ministries or private businesses or align themselves closely with political parties, often with tension-ridden or even negative consequences (Petr Lebeda, 2008 interview). Because donors in the region have mainly focussed on project support instead of institution building (Telgarsky, 2002 and Lovitt, 2006), personnel working for think tanks often had to affiliate themselves with academic or for-profit institutions to supplement their income. Several think tanks were linked with networks of researchers who were hired on a project-by-project basis and, while some think tanks were managed largely by volunteers, others had a limited number of salaried management and support staff (Schneider, 2002). Project support also led to organizations often departing from their mission and core expertise in search of funding for core costs.7 However, it can be argued that this was a common response of think tanks with little or no core funding across all regions. Research reports and studies funded were often not designed to meet the needs of local policymakers, but those of donors. It was thus possible to argue that funding organizations have had a significant effect on think tank research agendas. Kimble (2000) suggested that, although the lack of left-wing think tanks in the policy process could be partly explained by the failure of communism and its socialist ideology, it could also be argued that they did not emerge as western funding had been almost exclusively targeted towards think tanks that promoted free market principles as well as political democracy (despite the rise of populist political parties in countries such as Bulgaria in the late 1990s). Links: Schneider (2002) suggested that political affiliation as a strategy for policy influence was one of the most sensitive factors that shaped the image of a particular think tank. Politicians often used think tanks as a tool to promote their opinions and policies. For example, Vaclav Klaus, soon after taking up leadership of the opposition Freedom Union party in the Czech Republic in 1998, established the Center for Economics and Politics (CEP), a pro-market think tank based in Prague. This was, in effect, a propaganda machine that helped him win the Czech presidency in 2003 and is now used to back his own policy ideas (Schneider, 2008 interview). In another example, Slovakias community of reform-minded think tanks is one of the most politicised. However, this alliance turned into an uneasy relationship with the appointment of some think tank experts to government (Schneider, 2002). Since many policymakers sourced much of their information and analysis from the media, policy oriented think tanks developed strong links with the key media personnel, with their popularity in the media often seen as proxy for their influence. However Kimball (2000) and Krastev (2000) argued that policy analysts that appeared in the media often lacked substance and did not always help their think tanks to foster a strong institutional identity, with their outputs often resembling high quality journalism rather than scientific research.
7. For example, a Hungarian think tank whose mission was to spur the economic transition in Hungary through research and advocacy, secured funding from the Open Society Institute to examine the role of NGOs in the care of Hungarys elderly (Kimball, 2000).
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As in other regions, think tank analysts often relied on informal links with policymakers (Krastev, 2000). As one Czech lobbyist stated everyone knows each other and calls his or her mobile if needed (in Schneider, 2002). Good relationships with policymakers were not only useful for influencing policy but also for obtaining future consulting contracts. Unfortunately, good relationships between think tanks and policymaking did not prevent policymakers from manipulating research findings or disciplining researchers to use appropriate language and convey suitable messages in order to have their policy positions supported by so-called credible and independent research.8 Donors, such as the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) and Freedom House, also encouraged organizations in the region to network across national borders. Networking is assumed to have helped to share knowledge, transfer skills, and promote the implementation of economic reforms throughout the region. The concept was initially met with scepticism and an unwillingness to cooperate, but eventually resulted in overlapping networks which emerged in the late 1990s, including the Balkan Network of public policy institutes,9 and the Network of Emerging European Economies (3ENet).10 In summary, think tank development in the post-communist era in Central and Eastern Europe was largely shaped by a lack of funding for research institutes, political competition over policy ideas and the increased complexity of governance and policymaking. These think tanks were largely funded by Western foundations and aid agencies. Short term, project based funding has largely led to the erosion of institutional capacity and identity, with several advocacy oriented think tanks often having had to depart from their organizational mission. Strategies to influence policy have included affiliating with a political party and working closely with the media (partly influenced by donor requirements). However, in a largely closed policy environment, most think tanks rely on informal links with policymakers. Finally, after some reluctance and at the request of donors, some think tanks formed alliances with other think tanks in the region.
Think Tanks in Sub-Saharan Africa Political context The process of economic and political liberalisation in the 1980s and 1990s played a significant role in think tank growth in Africa. The struggle for civil rights promoted the creation of think tanks in apartheid South Africa: the South Africa Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) appears to be the oldest one in Africa and, together with the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA), it provided a platform for the African National Congress (ANC) and the ruling
8. For example the Prague Global Policy Institute (Glopolis) provided the government with some analysis only to find out from a third party that their messages were altered, with the resultant analysis likely to be adopted as policy. 9. The Balkan network aimed to study fragmented capital and finance markets, quasi-fiscal subsidies and informal labour markets, impacts of different crisis situations and embargoes, and disseminate ideas for regional cooperation and exchange. 10. This is a joint venture of seventeen policy institutes from eleven countries in the region to advocate market reforms.
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National Party to negotiate a settlement to prevent a potential civil war. In the years preceding the collapse of the Apartheid regime, groups of experts, such as the ANC-sanctioned Macroeconomic Research Group (MERG) were set up to formulate public policy for a future democratic South Africa. Further South African think tanks emerged in the post-apartheid era, with new policymakers demanding policy ideas (Johnson, 2000; Streak, 2008 interview). Multi-party elections in many parts of Africa in the 1990s opened up spaces for think tank formation, focussing mainly on governance issues. For example, the Centre for Research and Studies of Democracy, Economic and Social Development (CERDES) was established in Mali to promote newly established democratic principles; the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) was set up in Kenya to provide advice to the incumbent government; and the Forum for Social Studies (FSS) was set up in Ethiopia to help generate locally specific policy solutions (Johnson, 2000). In Ghana, democratisation encouraged the emergence of critical civil society organizations (including think tanks) which helped to stabilise and enhance democratic institutions. For example, the Ghana Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) contributed to the formation of the inter-party advisory committee which helped to build public trust in the electoral process (Kuyole, 2008 interview). At the same time, with the rise of neo-liberal policies in the 1990s across the continent, many think tanks, such as the South Africa Foundation and the Centre for Development and Enterprise, sprung up or restructured themselves as platforms promoting neo-liberal development policies (Johnson, 2000). The implementation of neo-liberal policies also had direct implications for the growth of NGOs, and the evolution of think tanks. The implementation of Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) in the 1980s and 1990s saw service delivery contracted out to the private and NGO sector. Several NGOs (such as the Uganda Land Alliance and the Community Empowerment for Rural Development in Uganda) while delivering services, documented experiences and lessons, using them for advocacy directed towards both government and international agencies regarding mainly socioeconomic issues such as land rights and community participation in decision making. Some of these organizations evolved into think tanks, which were often managed by university professors (Lwanta-Ntale, 2008 interview). Furthermore, while the state is re-establishing itself after shedding many of its functions in the 1980s and 1990s, gaps remain in policy research and analysis (Lwanga-Ntale, 2008 interview). A number of think tanks were created to fill these gaps and build policymaking capacity. For example, think tanks in Botswana, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania received substantial funding from the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF), an affiliate of the World Bank, to provide governments with economic policy analysis (Johnson, 2000). However, Ayuk and Jones (2007) argued that Economic Research Institutions (including those funded by the ACBF) had a long way to go before they could contribute their expertise and apply sound economic policies in their respective countries and regions. The importance of think tanks in the policy process often depended largely on who the key policy makers were and what sector was being referred to. In post Apartheid South Africa, as a number of professionals from think tanks were absorbed by government agencies, think tank
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capacity and hence their importance in the policy process declined (Streak, 2008 interview). For example the South African Child Grant, a government department governing income support programmes for children, absorbed former civil society experts, and were very proactive, enacting legislation without calls from civil society organizations. Furthermore, the main challenge to policy is often not formulation but its implementation. For example, the South African Childrens Act has taken ten years to become legislation. Universal access to ARV drugs for those with HIV and AIDS has also taken a long time. Research has often been more useful in pushing the pace of implementation, rather than in providing new ideas. External influences: most think tanks in Africa have benefited from financial assistance from aid agencies and foreign foundations.11 Governments have provided limited funding for local think tanks, but this has tended to be contract based.12 However, South Africa does provide substantial funding to university research units as well as research councils. Researchers here perceive there to be sufficient funding (both external and internal) to support good development research but with continuous monitoring and evaluation (Judith Streak, 2008 interview). While this development is viewed by some to have increased think tank efficiency and effectiveness, others argue that it has increased donor influence over think tank research agendas (ibid). Throughout Africa, there was an increasing tendency for donors to provide think tanks with project funding at the expense of institutional support. As a result, many think tanks (especially the smaller ones) were pressured into applying for funds which departed from their organizational mission (Lwanga-Ntale; Kuyole 2008 interviews). A multi donor funded initiative13 in Ghana, established in 2008, is addressing this issue by providing a number of civil society knowledge producers with long term institutional support. Nevertheless, the funding restricts beneficiary organizations to engaging with the Ghanaian Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and the Multi Donor Budget Support (MDBS), which a number of civil society organizations have expressed as explicitly oriented towards donor policy processes. Foreign funding has also tended to skew think tank priorities towards those of donors. Marouani and Ayuk (2007) argued that African think tanks were often used as channels for donors to strengthen their influence on research agendas and policy making in Africa. As a consequence, think tanks became dependent on foreign donors not only for financial aid, but also for ideas. This was highlighted by the EPRC in Uganda which was unlikely to generate research findings which departed significantly from those promoted by the World Bank, which established it in the 1990s (Lwanga-Ntale, 2008 interview). Few African think tanks generated local knowledge that provided an alternative to what was produced by the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and often restated by governments. However, the Ghanaian Centre for Economic Transformation in Africa (CETA) and the Forum for Social Studies in Ethiopia are two think tanks which are challenging the status quo and generating new and locally relevant policy ideas (Kuyole, 2008 interview).
11. In many cases, foreign funding has made up between 80 and 100 percent of think tank income (Johnson, 2000). 12. But in both Ghana and Uganda, which are considered as aid dependent, much of the state funding for think tanks in effect comes from donors, often earmarked for contract research. 13. The Ghana Research and Advocacy Programme (G-RAP).
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Links: given the centralised nature of many African governments today, formal opportunities to influence policy are limited (Johnson, 2000). However, many think tanks have used spaces opened up by governments under pressure from donors and civil society to contribute to various policy processes. In Ghana, the Economic Forum provides opportunities for civil society input to the national budget. Unfortunately, think tank engagement is often based on poor analysis and their participation is in effect instrumental, only helping governments to highlight the participatory nature of the policy process (Kuyole, 2008 interview). Moreover, some think tanks have tended to take a critical rather than constructive approach to dialogue with their government, often not providing a range of policy options for policymakers to draw from (Streak, 2008 interview). Think tanks often competed with policy advice generated by more influential International Institutions, such as the World Bank and the IMF, and had to target them in addition to national governments when communicating research findings. A notable example were the seminars targeting government, donors and civil society organised by the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection (JCTR) in the early 2000s highlighting the disastrous consequences of structural adjustment programmes and associated lending behaviour of the World Bank. Some think tanks inserted themselves into the legislative process, seeking to influence politicians with, say, short memos. An interviewee stated that think tank representatives have occasionally been called to testify at parliamentary committee hearings or meeting on specific issues (Kuyole, 2008 interview). However, multi-party democracy in most African countries is in its infancy, and parliaments lack the power they have been given constitutionally (Jones and Tembo, 2008). The media has played a key role in channelling public opinion to policymakers with many think tanks prioritising television appearances and newspaper articles as key tools to shape their public image and credibility. They have often carved out a niche for journalists. However, the quality of engagement (and the capacity of the media) is still relatively weak (Kuyole, 2008 interview). Activist organizations have often made requests from think tanks for relevant research and conversely think tanks have often transmitted research findings through activist organizations. One such example of the former was the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), an AIDS activist organization in South Africa, which asked the School of Economics at University of Cape Town in South Africa to undertake a cost-benefit analysis of a government proposal to roll out ARV in a limited number of districts, as opposed to more widely. The research findings, in addition to other tools, helped TAC convince the government to distribute ARVs more widely. In Uganda, think tanks often have links with advocacy NGOs through key national CSO networks, such as the Uganda Debt Network and the NGO forum. These networks/forums provide opportunities for think tanks to download information and analysis for other advocacy NGOs to pick up and use to advocate for policy change. In summary, the creation of think tanks in sub-Saharan Africa was promoted, on the one hand, by political liberalisation, which saw the collapse of the Apartheid regime in South Africa, and multi-party elections elsewhere; and, on the other, by economic liberalisation resulting in
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reduction of state capacity in policymaking, and the proliferation of NGOs. Think tanks promoted by the former tended to focus more on governance issues, while those promoted by the latter often focussed more on socioeconomic issues. Most think tanks in Africa benefited from financial assistance from international aid agencies and foundations. An increasing donor tendency to provide projects rather than institutional support has seen many think tanks depart from their organizational mission to seek core funding. Many think tanks in aid dependent countries have been reliant on donors, not only for aid, but also for ideas, with few locally generated policy ideas. Due to their influence, some think tanks have targeted IFIs, in addition to national policymakers such as ministers and legislators. At the national level, governments have often opened up formal spaces for think tanks to contribute to policy processes. Other key channels used by think tanks to influence policy have included the media as well as advocacy/activist NGOs.
Think Tanks in South Asia Political Context The emergence of think tanks in South Asia (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal) is a fairly contemporary phenomenon. Very few think tanks were established before independence, when most policy oriented research and thinking originated in academic establishments. Think tanks began emerging in the1950s and 1960s and included the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and the Institute of Economic Growth (IEG) both in Delhi, India. India has had a tradition in which successive governments have accepted the idea of independent think tanks and have invested public funds in such ventures. Following independence in 1947, the Congress Party dominated the political system and enjoyed considerable support from the Indian public. This, coupled with an international settlement conducive to the national ownership of development policy, enabled the Nehru government to formulate often unconventional and experimental policies to suit the needs of the Indian public. During this period, the Indian government established think tanks at both the national and state levels, including the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in 1956 and the Center for Development Studies in Kerala, in 1971. Since the 1970s, the decline of the hegemonic position of the Congress Party coincided with a perceived crisis in good policy development and the emergence of a partisan political culture. This period saw the ascendance of the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), which led the Government of India between 1998 and 2004 in alliance with several others. The BJP with its focus on conservative Hindu ideology and cultural politics has potentially diluted the focus on socioeconomic issues (Shah, 2004). The BJPs ascendancy also came at a time when the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) became increasingly influential in Indian policymaking circles, partly as a result of the fall of the Soviet Union, whose socialist model was partly adopted by the Nehruvian state (Anand, interview, July 2008).
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With increased inter-party competition, the main political parties sought affiliations with think tanks to ensure a supply of policy ideas. For instance, the Congress Party drew on advice from the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation (RGF); the Communist Party from the Institute of Social Sciences (ISS) and the BJP sought advice from a number of its research centres throughout the country. At the state level, while political parties do not on the whole have systematic links with think tanks, they do engage with sociologists and political scientists to help them prepare for elections (Anand, interview, July 2008). The late 1990s and early 2000s saw popular demonstrations around issues of human rights, gender, caste and the environment largely explaining the rise in social movements and non governmental organizations (NGOs). Lack of action and expertise at a national/state level, in addition to pressure from internationally ratified charters, have helped to develop these organizations. Several NGOs, mainly funded by foreign donors, combined research and advocacy functions to localise public policy and programmes and hold government to account for their actions (McGann, 2005 ). In India, publicly funded think tanks have largely managed to preserve their autonomy. Some think tanks reliant on public funds at the federal government level, such as the Centre for Developing Societies (CDS) in New Delhi, have been highly critical of the Indian Government. The use of funding from the Indian Social Science Research Council (ISSRC) a quasi governmental body has helped to preserve the autonomy of such institutions. The Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), which has built itself up into one of the worlds leading facilities for applied statistical research, largely underwritten by the Indian government, was able to maintain its autonomy by placing eminent and independent minded people on its board. Moreover state funded think tanks such as the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) and the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) in New Delhi have been more comfortable in their role as critics of a remote central government though state policies have not always been immune to criticism. However, while these think tanks are respected for credible research, they have been cautious about how they frame their critiques of the State (Anand, 2008 interview). External influences: many of Indias mainly state funded think tanks have diversified their sources of funding to include the private sector as well as foreign donors. Although there is a degree of public cynicism of internationally funded research projects, funding from United Nations agencies, philanthropic foundations from the US and large international NGOs are broadly respected by local researchers. However, funding from bilateral donors, International Financial Institutions (IFIs), religious and politically partisan organizations (who may for example have a pro-liberalisation or anti-communist agenda) are viewed with caution, if not suspicion. For instance some think tanks have complained about the indirect conditionalities of World Bank research funds (Anand, 2008 interview). Links: Indian think tanks have used a number of channels and interfaces to influence policymakers. Academics with links to senior government officials and/or politicians have often been viewed as key intermediaries. Think tanks have also established alliances with advocacy oriented NGOs to communicate research findings. For example, the Haq Foundation in Delhi, focussing on
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people centred budget analysis and monitoring has partnered with public expenditure experts at several Delhi-based think tanks. The partnership has seen think tanks undertaking rigorous research, while the Haq Foundation has led on related advocacy and media work. Evidence: the Indian Planning Commission is the central body which generates and processes data for the federal government. In addition, every ministry has funding to commission research. However, there is a general mistrust of university-based researchers, since they are deemed too critical, and the planning commission tends not to draw on internationally funded studies due to reservations about their neutrality. In response, authorities commission nationwide state-funded research institutes to undertake key policy research projects. However, these institutes are also increasingly carrying out international donor funded research, creating some tensions. The Centre for Economic and Social Studies in Hyderabad, for example, generated a significant percentage of its research income from the World Bank and the Department for International Development (DfID). There is also a tension, as in all other regions, between the time needed for long run rigorous research and the time that policymakers have to assess a problem and take action. This is exacerbated by the short terms that ministers tend to serve, and the pace at which policy problems develop. In summary, since its independence in 1947, India has had a think tank tradition in which successive governments have invested substantially in think tanks and have largely tolerated their critiques of public policy. However, the weakening of the dominant Congress party, an increasingly partisan political culture, the rising influence of IFIs and popular mobilisations around human rights, created space for further growth of think tanks since the 1970s, particularly those which were non-governmental. Established (government funded) think tanks, which tend to provide government with most if not all of the evidence they require for policymaking, are diversifying their funding sources to include foreign and private sector donors. Relatively new think tanks, meanwhile, are almost totally dependent on foreign funding. These think tanks have often channelled their research through influential academics and activist/advocacy oriented NGOs.
Think tanks in Southeast Asia Political History Up until the 1990s, think tanks in Southeast Asia were generally subject to controls of the State (Stone, 2000).14 Many were either initiated by national governments or tied into structures of power (ibid). Despite their formal legal autonomy, the role of most think tanks was to provide information and act as a sounding board for government (Stone, 2005). They were generally supportive or uncritical of incumbent regimes (ibid, 2000).
14. Here, Southeast Asia includes Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, the Philippines, Cambodia and Vietnam.
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Two think tank cultures existed in Southeast Asia. In one, think tanks were dependent on political patronage for establishment and continued existence and, in the other, think tanks were professional and technocratic in orientation, and seek to provide substantive research and analysis for policy development. Institutions which filled the role of the latter included the Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI) and the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research (MIER). They tended to provide technical services to solve economic problems rather than provide policy advice (Stone, 2000). Furthermore, while some think tanks were linked to political leaders, few had a long tradition of being affiliated with political parties. Malaysia had a few institutes that were linked to political leaders and political parties, but these were not large organizations like the continental European model of party institutes. Moreover, some governments deployed strategies to prevent the emergence of opposition political parties altogether. For instance, the Suharto regime in Indonesia successfully restricted political parties to activity around election time (Stone, 2005). However, the last two decades have seen several changes which have altered the political and economic trajectories of most countries in the region.15 These changes have been country specific. Due to the diversity in this region we divide countries into three clusters based on broadly common political and economic trajectories. The first cluster includes Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia, which have all undergone similar anti-dictatorship struggles and now have fledgling but not consolidated democracies. The fall of repressive regimes saw some attempts to export the American tradition of think tanks (Stone, 2005). The Ford Foundation, for instance, provided core support for the establishment of the Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI) (ibid). There is some freedom of expression and critiques of the state by the intellectual class are often tolerated. For instance, there are a number of outspoken people on gender and sociocultural policy issues. In the second cluster, Laos and Vietnam remain socialist controlled countries, but with widely differing effects. The collapse of the Soviet Union saw cut-backs in funding for state backed think tank institutions coinciding with the emergence of several western style think tanks. While western analysts equate think tank growth with the transition towards democratic institutions, the communist legacy persists in the organizational structures, values and research ethos of leading research institutes. Vietnams growing interest in research is more related to rising complexities of the policy process and a desire for the Communist Party to maintain the citizenrys support for its overall policy direction, than to democratisation. The third and final cluster includes Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, where economic development has flourished (especially in the latter two cases) but presidential strongmen have sought to curb full political democracy. Only in Singapore is there a high concentration of think tanks proportionate to the population. Singapore has a highly developed economy, an established civil society, strong state support for knowledge and research and in particular their role in promoting economic development and a well-educated populace providing a good human resource pool to support think tank communities (Stone, 2000). However, there are strong limits to policy critiques that the government will tolerate with the government, in effect, practising a form of soft-authoritarianism (Stone, 2005).
15. Burma is the exception, as it continues to be ruled by a repressive military regime.
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External influences: bilateral aid agencies such as USAID and NORAD, international organizations such as the World Bank and UNDP and philanthropic foundations such as Ford Foundation and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung have taken considerable interest in think tanks in the region over the past decade. The think tanks they supported have often provided them with country specific analyses that have required. However, think tanks have also been regarded as vehicles for building national capacity in policy analysis (Stone, 2005). As the number of think tanks increase, there are more organizations competing for funding and staff. Corporate philanthropy and private support is underdeveloped. With the currency crisis hitting southeast as well as northeast Asia in the late 1990s, the funding environment over the last decade became even tighter. International foundations and government moving from institutional to project funding has also caused disruption to think tanks. The Institute for Economic Studies, Research and Development (IESRD) in Indonesia, for instance, had to change from an academic oriented institute to an organization with a much stronger NGO advocacy dimension when its donor, a German foundation, was restructured and stopped core support (Stone, 2000). Links: regionalisation was a key dynamic behind think tank interaction in the region. Many think tanks focussed on regional cooperation in security, including the formation of a new regional multilateral security association, and economic development issues such as debates concerning the Asian Free Trade Area (AFTA). Stone (2000) pointed out the intensity of regional networking amongst think tanks through arrangements for second track diplomacy such as ASEAN ISIS (Institutes of Strategic and International Studies) and CSCAP (Council for Security Co-operation in the AsiaPacific), which represented venues for policy discussion on security issues. ASEAN-ISIS was one of the most sophisticated and politically influential informal arrangements connecting institutes, university centres, and official actors in Southeast Asia. Think tanks often had extensive involvement in informal diplomacy with involvement in this network giving them a high level of political access. However, networking requires resources and accordingly not all think tanks in the region were able to participate in global and regional think tank interactions. By contrast, and perhaps due to the restrictions of the political environment discussed above, Southeast Asian institutes have focussed less on issues of regime transition, democratisation, or civil society development. In summary, while countries in the region have experienced differing political and economic trajectories, the first think tanks in the region were established by the state before political democratisation, to provide information and/or backing for public policy. Since political democracy swept across the region in the 1990s, a number of independent think tanks have emerged together with some space, to differing extents, for critiques of the state. The downturn in the economy during the late 1990s and changes in donor practices created a challenging funding environment for think tanks. Finally, regionalisation of the ASEAN group of countries was a key driver behind enhanced think tank interaction in the region, particularly around security and trade issues.
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Think Tanks in Northeast Asia A small number of think tanks with strong government ties played an important role in the development of the Northeast Asia region (Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan) and its unprecedented economic growth over the last half century. Northeast Asian think tanks on the whole were used by national governments in the region to promote economic growth and to inform development plans. For instance, the Korean Development Institute and the Korean Institute of Science and Technology were established by the Park Chung Hee government in the 1960s to provide the knowledge base necessary to promote industrial development following the Korean War and decades of highly repressive Japanese colonial rule. In addition to these large national academies, governments in the region also supported the development of more narrowly focused research institutes affiliated with specific ministries (initially at the national level but later also at the sub-national level), such as public health and social welfare, which were charged with carrying out research on relevant policy issues. In general, these institutes enjoyed less independence than the so-called state think tanks, discussed above, and had only limited scope to shape their own research agendas. Not surprisingly given its development trajectory, Japan was quicker than other Asian countries in adopting the concept of the non-state think tank. In the 1970s the business sector created think tanks that focussed on industrial policy and economic development, while in the 1980s large banks and financial institutions established profit-making research institutions to develop and enhance corporate and financial strategies. A similar trend emerged a decade later in Korea with the establishment of chaebol (family managed financial and industrial conglomerates such as Hyundai, Samsung, LG and Daewoo) affiliated think tanks in the 1980s to carry out economic and industrial forecasting. This coincided with the growing independence of chaebols from the State and an interest by their owners to support their positions in policy dialogues with independently generated economic knowledge. Autonomous, non-governmental think tanks in the Western sense are relatively new in most northeast Asian countries. Ueno (2000) attributed this to a Confucian-based value system, which respected social and political hierarchy and their general historical reluctance to question authority. However, while this may be true in Japan, it bears little resemblance to the reality of the tumultuous twentieth century political histories of Korea, Taiwan and China, and ignores the long history starting from the early 1900s of civil society organising against Japanese colonial rule in Korea. In Korea and Taiwan, the emergence of independent think tanks coincided with the democratisation process of the 1990s. This period saw a flourishing of civil society organizations (many of which had been limited to underground activities during the 1970s and 1980s) and the advent of advocacy think tanks, such as the People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) and Citizen's Coalition for Economic Justice (CCEJ), in South Korea, and the Awakening Foundation, in Taiwan, which focused on generating alternative policy options on an array of social, economic, political and cultural rights issues. Many benefited from close alliances with well-respected scholars from prestigious national universities as well as alliances
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with researchers from international institutes, who often provided support on a pro-bono basis in recognition of the funding challenges that these new advocacy think tanks faced. In recognition of the growing specialisation of these think tanks, government actors from both the executive and legislative branches now increasingly seek out the advice of these independent experts while developing new policies, programs and bills (Datta and Jones, 2008). A similar trend, perhaps reflecting the growing strength of civil society vis--vis the state, emerged in Japan in the 1990s. Interestingly, the democratic consolidation process has also seen the emergence of political party-affiliated think tanks in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. This is to ensure access to an independent knowledge base while in opposition and also a reflection of the growing complexities of policy making in the context of globalisation and regional integration. In Taiwan, much of the background work is done by post-graduate students and overseen by senior university researchers, reflecting the strong respect that university knowledge production still commands in these Confucian political cultures. Although Chinas history and politics have hindered the creation of independent think tanks that conduct policy analysis and programme evaluation, new influential think tanks are developing within Chinese universities and are also being created by the return of western-trained students. Think tanks are also involved in experimental forms of democracy, leading public consultations, expert meetings and undertaking surveys - facilitating knowledge transmission from the grassroots up to regional and national decision making structures (Leonard, 2008). And interestingly, the recent submission of a report from CASS to the communist party, which argued for the strengthening of Chinas research and development capacity by forming a national structure for the knowledge industry, is receiving high attention from Chinas top leadership, indicative of the growing influence of think tanks in China. To sum up, the first think tanks in the Northeast Asia region were established by the state to inform development plans and promote economic growth. Businesses and banks, particularly those in South Korea and Japan, created think tanks to improve profits. Independent nongovernmental think tanks are relatively new in most northeast Asian countries, with those in South Korea and Taiwan emerging during the democratisation process of the 1990s. This process has also seen the rise of party affiliated think tanks. Different Traditions Returning to the aim of this chapter, we address the extent to which think tank traditions can be usefully clustered according to regional political, economic and socio-historical trends. Under the headings stated in the introduction, we now draw out similarities and differences between and within regions, concluding with recommendations for both think tanks and their founders.
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Context and Emergence of Think Tanks The Role of the State In South, Southeast and Northeast Asia (hence forth known as Asia) the growth of think tanks preceded political and economic reforms. They were often created by, and subject to controls of, the State. In Latin America, there has been less of a tradition of state-based think tanks (but with a thriving university culture), with advocacy and political party oriented think tanks having an important place in the policy process, particularly during military regimes in the 1970s and 1980s. In Africa there was no tradition of state based think tanks, and think tanks (mainly independent) have only emerged as a result of political and economic liberalisation across the continent. Political and Economic Liberalisation The 1980s and 1990s saw the spread of both political democracy and (neo-liberal) economic reforms, across all regions discussed, with varying effects on think tank growth. Central and Eastern Europe and Africa saw a complete change in both political and economic management of the State. This resulted both in a reduction of state policymaking capacity with many functions contracted out to newly formed NGOs (including think tanks) and democratisation of knowledge the supply of alternative viewpoints to inform policy dialogues and debates. This is the case even with state-affiliated think tanks in Asia, which in many cases are compelled to diversify their funding base due to a reduction in core funding and as part of a desire to be seen as the suppliers of credible (autonomous) knowledge. Independent/non-governmental think tank growth in Asia (South, Southeast and Northeast) and Latin America, on the other hand, was driven more by political than economic reforms. Think Tanks and Political Parties In Latin America and Central Europe, where think tank leaders have played leadership roles in politics, think tanks have played a central role in backing the policy position of certain powerful individuals just as they might do for political parties in the West. This is also the case in Northeast Asia, particularly in China, South Korea and Taiwan. However, Africas political parties, which are generally weaker, are largely without a research centre or think tank to generate policy ideas. This could be illustrative of the longer political engagement and experience of multi-party elections that countries in Latin America have generally had compared to African countries which have been independent for half a century at most. Funding and its Implications on Think Tank Operations State and Private Funding In most regions, reliance on state funding for institutional survival was seen to curb more critical policy research messages to varying degrees. However, India was an exception where several government funded think tanks were able to preserve their autonomy. While (local) private
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sector funded foundations play a major role in shaping the funding landscape for think tanks in the North, they are yet to emerge as significant players in transition countries, including those with middle income status such as those in Asia and Latin America. Foreign Funding Much of the impetus for the growth in think tanks and particular types of think tanks, in all regions has been the flow of funds both public and private from developed countries. Concerns about dependence on a single source of funding carrying the risk of undue influence on research agendas, whether it be public, donor, private or party funding, emerged in all regions. A diversified pool of funding sources is thus preferred as the ideal in terms of promoting research autonomy and institutional stability. Not surprisingly in regions which are considered aid dependent such as Sub-Saharan Africa and Central and Eastern Europe (particularly during the transition period) researchers paid more attention to the potential distortion of research agendas by donor interests. However, and with a larger economy, South Africa is a remarkable exception.
Linkages to Influence Policy In all cases, personal/informal linkages are a more important channel to influence policy than institutional linkages. Formal or informal meetings/workshops with policymakers appear as important as public meetings. The media has also emerged as an important player in Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America, but this is less so in Asia. Both formal and informal networks with other knowledge producers, such as prominent academics, appear to play an important role in claiming credibility for certain policy messages. These linkages have taken the form of formal pro-bono work or more informal connections through alumni associations, as well as the relative fluidity of people moving between state and non-state institutions. In Latin America, legitimacy is often gained from links with highly visible NGOs which claim to represent citizens voices. Although competition between different genres of think tanks for funding and influence emerged as an important issue historically, there appears to be a trend in a number of countries towards greater cooperation through issue-based alliances.
Evidence in Policymaking Processes Think tanks established by post colonial states in the 1950s through to the 1970s (mainly in Asia) aimed to provide technocratic expertise and contribute specialised knowledge in response to growing complexities of policy decision-making and a trend towards evidence based policy making. As a result, policy research is undertaken in several different areas. In Africa however, evidence-based policy, both supply and demand is a relatively a new phenomenon but growing rapidly. The importance attached to knowledge in the policy process in say, Northeast Asia, can be explained by higher levels of education, higher wealth levels and, in the case of Japan, Korea and Taiwan, by longer histories of civil societies.
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Key Lessons For Donors When donors consider supporting think tanks in developing/transition countries, we suggest that they should take into account political, economic, social and cultural relations that think tanks have had with their governments and other influential policy actors. They should also consider the impact that their policies and practices can have on think tanks and their modes of operation in particular their sustainability. For example, a reasonable proportion of core funding can help think tanks to hire qualified personnel and develop appropriate management systems to ensure their long term sustainability. Furthermore, research agendas in contexts where there is a high level of aid dependency (by the state and civil society organizations) are more vulnerable to external influence. Donors should tread carefully when selecting organizations and provide sufficient space for negotiation of parameters of engagement. Particularly important is that donors and funders should not contribute to undermining other legitimate and important political actors. The experience of Latin America shows how support to civil society can undermine the role of political parties and in the cases of Africa and Eastern Europe, it could explain the underdevelopment of political parties. For Think Tanks Advice for think tanks and other policy research institutions is more difficult to formulate. It is important that these institutions recognise their function in relation to other policy actors. Think tanks created to serve political parties interest require different organizational competencies and personal skills than independent institutions, for example. Short and long term strategies must reflect these relations. In recent years a great deal of attention has been given to think tanks and how to manage them successfully. Unfortunately, as this chapter shows, there are multiple layers to peel before fully understanding the factors that affect think tank functions. When assessing the development of strategic partnerships or seeking best practices think tanks would do well to explore the wide range of traditions described in this chapter and choose wisely.
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Appendix 1: List of Interviewees

COUNTRY 1. Czech Republic 2. Ghana 3. South Africa 4. Uganda 5. Indonesia 6. South Korea NAME OF INTERVIEWEE AND ORGANISATIONAL AFFILIATION PETR LEBEDA, Prague Global Policy Institute JIRI SCHNEIDER, Prague Security Studies Institute EMMANUEL KUYOLE, Integrated Social Development JUDITH STREAK, Human Science Research Council CHARLES LWANGA-NTALE, Development Research and Training SUDARNO SUMARTO, SMERU Research Institute ANDREW CHUN, Korea Institute for Development Strategy
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Rich, A. War of Ideas Why mainstream and liberal foundations and think tanks they support are losing in the war of ideas in American politics. Stanford Social Innovation review. N.p.: Stanford Graduate school of Business, 2005. Rich, A. Think Tanks, Public Policy and the Politics of Expertise. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Sandle, M. Think tanks, post communism and democracy in Russia and Central and Eastern Europe in Stone, D. and Denham, A. (eds). Think Tank Traditions: Policy research and the politics of ideas. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2004. Schneider, J. Think-tanks in Visegrad Countries (From policy research to advocacy), (2002). Final Research Paper. Center for Policy Studies, Central European University, Budapest. Funded by Open Society Institute. Shah, C. Hindu Fundamentalism in India: Ideology, Strategies, and the Experience of Gujarat, 2004. For Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML). Available at http://www.wluml.org/english/pubs/pdf/wsf/07.pdf. Sherrington, P. Shaping the Policy Agenda: Think Tank Activity in the European Union, Global Society, Volume 14, Issue 2 (April 2000):173 - 189. Skocpol, T. Voice and accountability: the transformation of American Civil Democracy. APSA Presidential Address, Voice and Inequality (March 2004 2 (1)). Skocpol, Theda (Review by Matt Harris). Diminished Democracy. N.p.: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003. Smith, J. A. The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite. New York: Free Press, 1991. Sobhan, R. Think Tanks in South Asia: An Overview in McGann, J. G. and Weaver, R. K. (eds). Think Tanks and Civil Societies: Catalysts for Ideas and Action. London and New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2000. Stone, D. Think Tanks and Policy Advice in Countries in Transition. Paper prepared for the Asian Development Bank Institute Symposium: How to Strengthen Policy Oriented Research and Training in Vietnam. Hanoi. 2005. Stone, D. and A. Denham, eds. Think Tank Traditions: Policy research and the politics of ideas. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2004. Stone, D. Think Tanks Across Nations: The New Networks of Knowledge. Policy Community, NIRA Review (Winter 2000).
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Stone, D. Dynamics of Think Tank Development in Southeast Asia, Australia New Zealand, and Papua New Guinea, in McGann, J. G. and R. K. Weaver, eds. Think Tanks and Civil Societies: Catalysts for Ideas and Action, London and New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction Publishers, 2000. Stone, D., A. Denham and M. Garnett, eds. Think tanks across nations: a comparative approach. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1998. Stone, Diane. Think Tanks across Nations: The New Networks of Knowledge, 1998. Nira review. Available at http://nira.go.jp/publ/review/2000winter/07stone.pdf. Struyk, R. Renewing the work program: Creating innovation, in Struyk, R. Managing Think tanks - Practical Guidance for Maturing Organisations. N.p.: Open Society Institute, 2002. Struyk, R. Reconstructive Critics: Think Tanks in Post-Soviet Bloc Democracies. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 1999. Telgarsky, Jeffrey. Financial management: Sustainability and accountability, in Struyk, Raymond. Managing think tanks - Practical Guidance for Maturing organisations, N.p.: Open Society Institute, Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative. 2002. Tembo, F. and A. Wells. Multi-donor Support to Civil Society and Engaging with Non-traditional Civil Society: A Light Touch Review of DFIDs Portfolio. ODI Project Report. London: ODI, 2007. The POLICY Project. Networking for Policy Change an Advocacy Training Manual, 1999. Ueno, M. Northeast Asian Think Tanks: Toward Building Capacity for More Democratic Societies, in McGann, J. G. and Weaver, R. K. (eds). Think Tanks and Civil Societies: Catalysts for Ideas and Action. London and New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2000. Ueno, M. Think Tanks in Japan: Towards a More Democratic Society, in Stone, D., Denham, A. and Garnett, M. (eds). Think tanks across nations: a comparative approach. Manchester and New York : Manchester University Press, 1998. World Bank. Knowledge for Development. Washington: World Bank, 1999. Yeo, S and E. Mendizabal. Secretariat for Institutional Support for Economic Research in Africa (SISERA). N.p.: 2004 www.cedpa.org/files/741_file_networking_english_all_pdf Society Institute, Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative.
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PART II. Think Tanks in Latin America
4. Far Away from Thinktankland: Policy Research Institutes in Developing Countries1

MIGUEL BRAUN2, MARIANA CHUDNOVSKY3, NICOLS DUCOT4 and VANESA WEYRAUCH5
Introduction In Thinktankland, policymakers are convinced about the need and value of research to guide their policy decisions and frequently consult with experts about different issues to assure they choose the best among potential policy options. Therefore, there are open, regular and public mechanisms for citizens and civil society organizations that produce or possess research and evidence to participate in policymaking processes. These get engaged in a fruitful dialogue with policymakers about pros and cons of policy decisions within a wide and diverse agenda of social, political and economical issues. Policymakers count with a given set of resources (time, money, knowledge, networks, technology, etc.) to tap into whenever a social problem emerges to ensure
1. This study was produced as part of the Global Research Project on Bridging Research and Policy organized by the Global Development Network. 2. Miguel Braun is Executive Director and Co-founder of CIPPEC; MA and PhD in Economics from Harvard University. Graduated in Economics from Universidad de San Andrs. He is associate professor of Public Finance at Universidad de Buenos Aires and has taught Macroeconomics, Public Finance and Political Economics at Universidad de San Andrs and Di Tella. He was panel member at Revista Economa de LACEA. He was consultant for BID, World Bank, CEPAL and UNICEF in several projects related to fiscal policy in Argentina and Latin America. He has co-authored the book Macroeconoma Argentina. 3. Mariana Chudnovsky is a professor (lecturer) of the Master organizacional Studies, Universidad de San Andrs and a Research Asciate of CIPPECs Social Protection Program. She holds a degree in Sociology from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and has completed two master degrees: an MA in Politics from New York University (NY, USA), and a Master in Business Administration and Public Policy at the Universidad de San Andrs(Pcs). She is currently doing a PhD in Political Science at Universidad Torcuato Di Te lla. Her research interests are comparative social policy and research methodology. She is a former Fulbright scholar and former Fellow CONICET. Previously, she served as Program Coordinator at CIPPECs Social Protection Program, and worked as a junior researcher both at th Researcher Center for Institutional Development (CEDI) and the Center for the Study of the State and Society (CEDES). She has published several articles and book chapters on topics linked to Latin American social policy and has done consulting work for the Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank. 4. Nicols Ducot is a Graduate in International Relations, Universidad de San Andrs; Master en Public Policy, Harvard University. Co-founder and CIPPEC Executive Director. In public life he was Director of Escuela Nacional de Gobierno, Director of Centro de Cooperacin Internacional en Administracin Pblica, and Board member of the Instituto Nacional de Administracin Pblica (INAP). As an international consultant, he has produced works for the United Nations, Transparency International, BID, CEPAL, World Bank and World Economic Forum. He has authored several articles in national journals on public policy, five works published abroad; appears more than 30 times in national and international press, including quotes in The Economist, CNN, BBC and The Washington Post, among others; has attended and lectured in more than 50 national and international conferences. He is a member of the Editorial Board of El Cronista Comercial, and belongs to the Executive Commissions of Club de Harvard de la Argentina, Universidad de San Andrs, Foro Social para la Transparencia, and in the Consulting Council of the Regional Office of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University; of the Civil Society Partnerships Programme of the Overseas Development Institute, and of the Consejo Consultivo para la Reforma de la Educacin Militar of the nations Ministry of Defense. He has been jury member in several federal and private sector awards. He is a volunteer consultant for several NGOs and associations with regards to institutional development and public management. 5. Vanesa Weyrrauch is Co-Director of CIPPECs Social Protection Program. She is a PhD candidate in Communications Sciences at Universidad Austral, focusing on civil organizations communications to impact public policy. Postgraduate studies in Administration and Management, Harvard University; graduated in Communications Sciences from Universidad Austral. She has been consultant and analyst of organizational communications for several companies and non-profit organizations. She presently teaches Organization Communications at Universidad Austral.
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that they will be able to identify and apply the right solution, backed with the consensus of all affected groups, after extensive debate and analysis have been carried out. Even though policy research institutions (PRIs) in Thinktankland have clear cut opportunities to set forth their proposals, and that they are often sought by decisionmakers to provide them with policy advice, this scenario is not that perfect for them. They still need to convince policymakers, donors and media that they produce and disseminate research that will yield a positive impact in policy. Thus they need to sharpen their internal capacities and focus their efforts on refining tools to enhance the quality and relevance of their research in order to come up with policy proposals that concretely address the problems faced by policymakers. PRIs also have the challenges of devising internal incentives to foster more interaction between their researchers and policymakers, as well as improving the way they disseminate research results through creative, convincing and attractive tools, and by addressing diverse audiences. With so many areas for improvement, are they really in Thinktankland? In fact, PRIs in developing countries would probably still believe so. A comparative study of PRIs in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe/CIS and Latin America performed by the authors with the support of GDN reveals the deep complexity of detecting what these organizations need to do to enhance their policy impact. Faced by contexts characterized by economic, political and social instability, high rotation of policymakers, lack of institutionalized mechanisms for the interaction between civil society and the State, corruption, low demand for research and scarce governmental capacity, they are also challenged by several internal constrains that demand their attention and energy. The need to constantly secure funding to sustain areas of work, the tension of working with the State without losing independence, and the challenge of outliving changing and unstable environments without losing focus and expertise, are some of the issues on the PRIs managers minds when trying to figure out how to improve the way the organization influences public policies. This chapter is organized as follows: in Section 1 we present the background of the study and explain the methodology applied and its limitations; next, we introduce the analytical framework used to study PRIs, including the endogenous and exogenous variables that affect the influence of PRIs on policy. In Section 2 we present the results of our comparative study divided into two sections: endogenous and exogenous variables.
Section I: Background of the Study Methodology This study was part of the Global Development Network (GDN) studies on Bridging Research and Policy.6 The aim of the project was to conduct an international study to detect which are the main factors that help policy research institutions (PRIs) influence policy making through the use of research. The goal was to first identify successful institutes and then to study their organiza6. For more information about these studies, please visit http://www.gdnet.org/middle.php?primary_link_id=3&secondary_link_id=13.
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tional performance in detail in order to detect which factors prove more important in the difficult, chaotic and long process of bridging the gap between research and policy. Based on a consultation with experts in the different regions, we selected 18 PRIs which were subjected to an in-depth study on how they conduct research and use research to influence policymaking, through personal interviews with PRIsmanagement and staff, and external stakeholders, review of documentary material and secondary sources, and examination of communications materials. In Latin America: Latin American Economic Research Foundation (FIEL) of Argentina, Group for the Analysis of Development (GRADE) of Per, Center of Public Studies (CEP) of Chile, Foundation for Higher Education and Development (Fedesarrollo) of Colombia, and Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS) of Argentina. In Africa: Economic and Social Research Foundation (ESRF) of Tanzania, Center for Policy Analysis (CEPA) of Ghana, Namibia Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) of Namibia, Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA) of Kenya7, and the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) of Ghana. In Asia: Institute of Social Sciences (ISS) of India, Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) of Pakistan, and Center for Policy Dialogue (CPD) of Bangladesh. IN Eastern Europe/CIS: International Center for Policy Studies (ICPS) of Ukraine, Centre for Policy Providus of Latvia, Institute for Privatization and Management (IPM) of Belarus, Institute of Urban Economics (IUE) of Russia, and Centre for Economic Research (CER) of Uzbekistan.
SHORT STORIES OF POLICY IMPACT (excerpts from case studies) GRADE and the Quality of Education in Per: Influencing Policy Content Since 1987, GRADEs researchers had been doing research on educational issues. Specifically, in 1998 they started working as an external advisor unit to the Ministry of Education of Peru. They decided to create a local team composed of national and international advisors and experts. The task was to help prepare a section on the new Law of Education. Data presented by GRADE convinced the Congressmen that one of the keys to the new Law should be the quality of education and equality of educational opportunities. The Law emphasizes that in order to improve the quality of educational results it was important to strive towards equality of opportunities for all children. The consultant (from GRADE) suggested that a new institute be created to evaluate several aspects related to this, which would recommend policies based on the data. As a result, the new proposal of Law included an article to create the National Institute for Evaluation and Accreditation.
7. These first four case studies were conducted by KIPPRA and due to budget restrictions did not follow the same methodology of all others: except the case on the own institute, they were produced without face to face interviews nor visiting the organization. These case studies are not as complete and rich as the rest; therefore, they were only partially used in the comparative analysis efforts.
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The influence exerted by GRADE on this field is the outcome of a whole corpus of research which achieved a legislation change. The research final report included specific proposals of reform that became part of the New Law of Education. In July 2003, the Law was passed under the name of Ley General de Educacin (Ley 28.044), and included measures for the establishment and distribution of responsibilities for the proposed Institute of Evaluation, Accreditation and Certification. Excerpt from Braun, M., Chudnovsky, M., Di Nucci, C., Ducot, N. and Weyrauch, V. (2004) Fundacin para la Educacin Superior y el Desarrollo [Fedesarrollo]: Colombias case study. Centro de Implementacin de Polticas Pblicas para la Equidad y el Crecimiento (CIPPEC), Buenos Aires, Argentina.
SDPI and its Impact on Policy Formulation: a New Act for Patenting and Proterty Rights in Pakistan SDPI initiated advocacy on problems concerning patenting and property rights under the TRIPs agreement of WTO. SDPI gave policy advice on Article 27.3(b) of the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), recommending the drafting of a new Act. Literature on TRIPS and IPR was provided to the Secretary of Agriculture, regarding the Basmati Rice Patent issue, which he especially appreciated in a letter to SDPI. Numerous meetings were held with the Ministry of Agriculture to discuss these issues in detail. The Ministry, subsequent to receiving SDPIs input, decided not to follow the Union for Protection of Plant Varieties lobby (which includes 37 developed countries to protect the interests of their plant breeders) and instead requested SDPIs input into the new draft Act with a focus on farmers rights. As a result, the position adopted by the Government of Pakistan on the issues of property rights and patenting was exactly what SDPI had advocated for. SDPI has even brought together a range of local civil society partners as well as partners from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, UK, and Philippines to compare and evaluate the drafts of regional PBR Acts. A workshop organized by SDPI for this purpose concluded with a joint press conference where the participants unanimously declared no patents on life forms. Excerpt from Ali, S.M. (2005) Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI): Pakistans case study.
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ISSER and its Enlightment on HIV/AIDS Policy Agenda Working through the Social Dimensions of HIV/AIDS Infection Project in the 1990s, ISSER pioneered work on HIV/AIDS in Ghana after the first official AIDS case was recorded in Ghana in 1986. Researchers at ISSER have conducted a number of researches into the socio-behavioural aspects of the disease in the country. The initial task of the project was to examine the feasibility of researching into sexuality in an African setting. At that time, there was the urgent need to understand the sexual behaviour of Africans including Ghanaians as there was very little literature about it. The finding of the research was that it was possible to research into sexual networking in Ghana and get reliable results. This was followed by a broader study out of which a broad picture of the attitudes, behaviour and practices of Ghanaians that could predispose them to contracting the disease emerged. Out of this study specific issues related to HIV/AIDS were researched into further. Some of the studies undertaken included the following: The control of Ghanaian women over their sexuality; The coping strategies of households with people with AIDS; Out-of-school/street youth and HIV/AIDS; Itinerant women traders and HIV/AIDS; Long distance truck drivers and HIV/AIDS; Migration and HIV/AIDS; Management of AIDS by Health Workers; Resistance/Under reaction to sexual behavioural change in the era of HIV/AIDS. Results from most of these studies have been published in international journals, and findings from these studies informed the preparation of a Strategic Plan and a Policy Document for HIV/AIDS in Ghana in the year 2000. Most of these researches were externally funded and some researchers were and are still called upon to play advisory and other roles relating to HIV/AIDS by government MDAs and other organisations. The Ghana HIV/AIDS Strategic Framework (2001-2005), which is informed by the GPRS, also had input from research at ISSER.This plan was formulated in recognition of the developmental relevance of the disease, and it provided for a multi sectoral and multi disciplinary response, providing broad guidelines for sector MDAs, district assemblies, the private sector, and the civil society at large to develop specific HIV/AIDS plans and activities as may be determined by their specific needs. Excerpt from Coleman, E. O. (2006) Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research: Ghanas case study.
Proposed Model We propose to observe two types of variables: 1) endogenous variables, which are those main internal characteristics that reflect the identity, management, goals and activities of the organization, and are under the direct control of the PRI; and 2) exogenous variables, meaning those external factors which PRIs cannot directly control but that can either hinder or facilitate their possibilities to impact policy. These contextual characteristics establish limits to the objectives that think tanks try to achieve and also assign differential probabilities for them to achieve their goals.
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Even though it may be arguable in some cases whether a variable is under direct control of the organization or not (i.e. funding), these ideal types will enable us to distinguish more clearly organizational features on which PRIs can have a direct impact in order to increase their capacities to influence policy from external contexts that they need to very clearly understand in order to set up realistic goals of policy impact, but which cannot immediately by altered by PRIs operations. Endogenous variables We have divided these endogenous variables into three main streams: 1) institutional management; 2) research management; and 3) communication strategies. 1) Institutional leadership and management The way PRIs founders and leaders define and redefine its purpose and manage the resources accordingly to achieve the established goals may have a direct link to their effectiveness in achieving long term influence in policies. How decisions are made and what decisions are made behind the creation and development of the institute, who and how main goals are established, and which internal policies, procedures and resources will enable an effective coordination for policy impact are all key questions for PRIs and they might have an effect in their capacity for policy impact. We will analyze three important aspects of institutional management: 1.1 Organizational governance. 1.2 Funding. 1.3 Human resources. 2) Research management Research was examined based on the characteristics of the research itself and how PRIs select, conduct and use research for different reasons and with diverse goals, not only according to policy stages, but also based on the way they evolve internally (changes in profiles of researchers, changes in funding, etc.). We have analyzed how PRIs manage research by looking at the following aspects: 2.1 Selection of research topics. 2.2 Research process. 2.3 Research characteristics. 3) Communication We tried to detect how communications help to bridge research and policies by analyzing the following variables: 3.1 Strategies and tools for institutional communications. 3.2 Strategies and tools for research dissemination. 3.3 Relationships with policymakers. 3.4 Relationships with other relevant actors.
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Exogenous variables Exogenous variables include all external factors that are beyond the direct control of the PRIs, and that affect their operating environment, either positively or negatively, in diverse levels and degrees. As stated by Court and Young (2003) findings from the literature and the comparison of 50 case studies on research and policy clearly signal that the political context is very important often the most important issue in affecting the degree to which research affects policy. The complexity and variety of contexts, along with the main focus of the project on making an institutional analysis of PRIs, have led us to synthetize context-related issues into these two types of variables: Structural, macro-political and economic variables, which set the "hard" limits to the objective PRIs may aspire to achieve. These contextual limits are the result of the social, economic and political reality of countries where think tanks act. Thus, these variables set the feasible limits to the goals that think tanks can pursue. An example is a federal system vs a unitary system. Political-institutional variables, which, within the above mentioned macro feasibility limits determine the possibility of having a greater or a lesser influence on policy, depending on the domestic political processes that led to the construction of the government agenda (representing certain preferences over others). That is, this set of variables assigns differential probabilities for think tanks to achieve their goals within the limits of what is feasible. The following were considered among key variables that might have a direct impact in how PRIs influence policies: Existence of political demand of research. Openness to citizen participation. Windows of opportunity for PRIs to make an impact on policies (economic, political or social crisis, new government, etc.). Degree of governmental capacity.
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Figure 1. The Analytical Framework
Exogenous variables
{ {
Examples of variables: Democracy vs authoritarian regime Academic and media freedom Economic growth, stagnation or depression, etc. Political demand of research Policy windows Openness to citizen participation Degree of governmental capacity
Success Type of influence Public Failure
PRIs
Research
Public policy
1. Agenda setting 2. Formulation of policy 3. Implementation of policy 4. Monitoring and
1. Institutional leadership and management: organizational governance, funding and human resources 2. Research management: research selection, process and characteristics 3. Communications: strategies and tools, relationships with policymakers and other relevant actors
Endogenous
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Section 2: Results of the Comparative Study of PRIs In Thinktankland, PRIs can establish and monitor the achievement of clear and defined goals regarding policy impact through the use of objective research results. In contrast, the performed case studies on PRIs in developing countries reveal that they function more as jugglers than strategists and planners. Operating within a complex and constantly changing environment, they are forced to constantly assess and reassess where and how to invest their resources (expertise and knowledge, reputation, time, funds, senior researchers and leadership) in order to detect the most appropriate entry points in a chaotic and unpredictable policymaking process. Furthermore, these resources are all hard to get and retain; hence the pressure to find the adequate balance so as to play the game without losing any of them and all this within a policy environment frequently characterized by non transparent and close processes. The comparative analysis of endogenous and exogenous variables in the 18 case studies allowed us to detect those that appeared more frequently as explaining factors that either facilitated or hindered the potential of successful policy impact for the PRIs. Endogenous Variables The capacity of PRIs to engage in policymaking efforts depends largely on some specific features of their organizational and institutional structure. Some features (origins, leadership, research process, human and financial resources, networks, among others) shape their organizational capacities and, as a result, their possibilities to have an impact on policy. Some features are crucial to understand how these institutes have managed to exert influence on policies. The first basic element shared by most of the PRIs that we have examined is how these organizations were set up. In fact, origins (who founded them and why) have both internal and external consequences. Internally, founders can provide these organizations with the needed financial and human resources, as well as expertise and know how, to help them design an institutional path to survive and grow in quite volatile environments that characterize developing countries. Externally, the backing of individuals and/or governmental and non governmental organizations with legitimacy or weight in the public realm helps PRIs position themselves as credible and solid institutions that attempt to enhance public policies. Founders with high reputation can also function as an endorsement and expression of an explicit need to promote systematic and independent research and policy analysis. Another crucial contribution of founders is, in many cases, that they very frequently bring their own contacts to the organization thus helping build and enrich a portfolio of policymakers and other relevant stakeholders to interact with. Related to this factor is the importance of building and sustaining a solid reputation of the institution itself, as well as its experts and research. This implies explicit and intentional efforts to communicate those organizational features that convey trustworthiness, neutrality, independence, non-partisanship and quality.
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A third relevant factor is that successful PRIs have ensured a close relationship with policymakers to increase their influence in policymaking. In most of the cases, their capacity to reach policymakers with research results and proposals is tightly linked to the ability to gain consensus on the institutes goals, activities and proposals among other key stakeholders that influence the policymaking processes. The degree of institutionalization of information flows between PRIs and policymakers varies among the selected cases. Many institutes have developed diverse institutionalized mechanisms to ensure a close relationship with government which imply the importance given to constantly reaching out policymakers such as the following: Incorporation of policymakers into research projects or researchers into government projects. Provision of policymakers with opportunities to extend their visibility: inviting policymakers to take part in events such as seminars, workshops, and debates has proven a very effective mechanism to develop and strengthen relationships. Personal meetings with policymakers who influence other groups. Development of specific communications tools such as policy briefs or synthesized documents with a use of non-technical language. The allocation of the responsibility to coordinate links with policymakers to a specific unit: for example, ESRF-Tanzania has an office of research coordination through which interaction with the government is managed. Detection of entry points at governmental structures: with an implicit knowledge of the relevance of policymakers perceptions on the role of research, some institutions have forged strong relationships with those agencies more receptive to research. Inclusion of former public officials as research staff: this is a common practice that ensures access to policymakers with whom current staff used to work with. Seizing rotations of policymakers: changes in governmental positions represent new opportunities of influence for PRIs. PRIs also build up lasting networks and exchange relations not only with significant social and political actors but also with key institutions. Participation at national and international networks is one of the most effective mechanisms to ensure wider reach and support. In fact, networks and alliances serve as multipliers for the institutes key messages. It is important to highlight that alliances that strengthen the organizations capacity to influence policymaking are thoroughly devised and developed. For instance, in matters of strategic alliances and partnerships, CELS-Argentina decision to work together with other civil society organizations on a specific project is closely related to its assessment of the possibility of augmenting its policy influence capabilities in that field. The protection of its public image helps CELS determine the organizations with which cooperation is possible. A fifth key element regarding PRIs lies in their boards weight and in the strategic role these play in the planning and orientation of the institutions. The boards are not merely formal instances included in the regulatory statutes; they are composed of key members, renowned in and representative of their respective countries. Likewise, members carry out a key leading
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role towards the inside of the institutes while they act as a bridge towards the outside: they open up and solidify avenues of influence for the institute, endorsing their actions with a certain degree of their own credibility or easing their access to policymakers or groups with economic and political weight. The board can also enhance the detection and selection of priority areas for research and other activities by helping the institutions better decipher future policy needs and promoting the institutionalization of the use of research in policymaking in general. In Latin American PRIs there is an important presence of businessmen on the boards (FIEL, CEP and FEDESARROLLO). It is they who contribute to establish general guidelines and priority activities for the institutions and, in some cases, request that specific studies be made. The boards of FIEL and CEP house the largest economic groups of their respective countries. Latin American PRIs also resemble one another in that their members (whether researchers or board executives at any one time) notably participate in different national governments, particularly in areas related to politics and economic planning. The detection of these factors lead us to highlight that the business class is a strategic actor in Latin American policy-making, and to state that the bond between PRIs and public office is not to be dissociated from the influence they exert on politics. Guidance and leadership of the board is generally complemented by a solid and committed management team. In fact, even though it was not always explicitly expressed by the organizations under study, it can be stated that effective management and leadership become the precondition for the attainment of other key endogenous factors such as diversified and institutional funding, selection of a strategic and policy relevant agenda, and ensuring knowledge of policymakersneeds and preferences as well as access to them. We cannot but underscore a seventh key factor about PRIs; namely, the importance of having solid and diversified funding sources, even better if with larger flexibility of application of those funds, to achieve political influence. It is visible that PRIs financial resources constitute a crucial aspect of their organizational capacity and of their possibilities to engage in policy advocacy since sustained funding is linked to survival and the development of expertise. Securement of funds to conduct projects and programmes has a tight link not only to organizational sustainability but also an impact on the degree of independence to select topics, the duration and scope of influence processes, motivation and retention of researchers, etc. Most PRIs seek to combine the institutes interest, researchers preferences and available funding when selecting research topics. Institutional funding presents several advantages: 1) it allows long term strategic planning and anticipation of future crucial topics; 2) it enables thematic continuity; 3) it allows to take advantage of junctural opportunities when windows of opportunity arise even though they do not belong to a planned project; 4) the institution can develop and sustain expertise on certain topics throughout time and ensure participation in long term policy processes; 5) it can be allocated to launch communications and advocacy efforts and sustain priodic publications expected by relevant actors.
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Diversified funding contributes to the effectiveness of the PRI to impact policy because it allows sustainability (and consequent continuous lines of research and expertise, and the capacity to adapt to volatile settings) and also helps to convey that the organization is independent and does not respond to one or two relevant stakeholders (this attribute is key to build the reputation of the PRI).
Alternative Mechanisms to Generate Discretionary Funds The ICPS-Ukraine has a combination of long and short-term contracts, being that most commercial assignments last for several months, while projects for international institutions can be long-term and can consist of several phases. Due to the revenues that it is able to procure, combined with an institutional grant provided by OSI, ICPS is not confronted with instability, time limitations, or the impossibility of pursuing research topics according to its interests. In line, IUE-Russia has built mechanisms into contracts with their clients that allow them to generate some overhead money for institutional development. This makes the institutions reserve or fund, from where, after careful consideration, money goes to financing various institutional needs, including research presenting potential interest for IUE future activities. Providus-Latvia complements funding deriving from core research projects with the revenues generated by consultancy projects commissioned by governmental and non-governmental institutions. Although it is largely financially dependent on its projects and consultancies, which are typically short-term financing sources, Providus currently also has a safety cushion: the Soros Foundation grant, which supports the medium-term activities of the institution.
Another endogenous factor to highlight is related to the profile of human resources who compose working teams. Even though counting with qualified researchers appears as a sine qua non for this type of organizations, what seems to help PRIs better achieve their policy goals in most cases is that many or some members of the staff have held governmental positions, participate or have participated in government commissions or task groups, are capable of conducting joint research with policymakers, or have a network of direct contacts in government. Another basic prerequisite for the very existence of PRIs is the quality of their research. This proves essential for PRIs to achieve an influence on politics. All of the institutes seek to establish quality control mechanisms for their research outcomes. Several factors taken together succeed in generating quality and credibility for research outcomes. The first to be considered is the policy relevance of the research. Differences appear in relation to what is defined as significant for every country and region, in accordance with specific domestic realities, the prospect of donors, government, researchers and stakeholders; but in every single case the issues researched are significant and relevant to the specific context of every policy research institute. A second factor is continuity and focus in research over time. The PRIs we examined developed a corpus of research throughout time, specializing in
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particular areas and feeling confident of their long or short term significance. Perceiving research as an unending process enlarges the potential that research produced and proposals based on this research incorporate policy-related aspects such as relevance, feasibility, etc. A third element regarding research we observed was the PRIs capacity to devise a strategic research agenda in which they managed to anticipate the issues that would gain importance in time. Thus they tackled an early development of prospective lines of research addressing the issue at stake.
The Link Between Funding and a Long Term Research Agenda Possibilities to work with a mid or long term scope depend on the availability of institutional funds that allow more flexibility in the establishment of the research agenda and sustainability of research lines until the window of opportunity opens up. One clear example is CEP-Chile, where selection of research topics is mainly done by the staff. Usually, the topics are defined on the basis of long-term criteria, trying to answer questions such as which are the most relevant problems in Chile, where should they head as a country, and what they need to achieve the desired goals. The same type of funding influences directly the way FIEL-Argentina organizes research activities. Long-term funding, coming from enterprises that belong to the Board, reduces the kind of temporary or thematic constraints that are external to the institution and related with funders own agendas or deadlines. Therefore, researchers have some degree of autonomy to set the institutes research agenda. They can choose to do research on topics that they are interested in or that they consider potentially important for the future, but that are not in the public agenda yet, as was the case of the effective influence of their studies on State reform.
A fourth element that stands as a key factor in influencing policy is that the research management reflects a balance between continuity and adaptation because while maintaining focus on their topics of specialization- PRIs also need to respond to the changing political and social environment to maintain their relevance and weight in the political and public arenas. Research projects should have operational outputs this is the kind of research that presents a clear proposal with specific policy options. Furthermore, PRIs that provide policy options seem more amenable to acceptance. And more so if the operational aspect of policy formulations are clearly explained and the implementation aspects considered. Mere generalized policy prescriptions tend not to be all that effective. All PRIs seem to be equipped to help translate broad objectives and policies into programs and specific projects as well as to carry out feasibility studies. Many PRIs undertake participatory approaches by engaging different stakeholders or key actors during the research process or when the research is over, for the dissemination stage. This
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strategy enables them to ensure the quality of the research and build consensus for their proposals; in one word, it helps to secure their position and be perceived as legitimate actors in the policy debates.
Participatory Approach as a Competitive Advantage CER-Uzbekistan has pioneered in the utilization of a participatory approach in the country, which has allowed the institution to distinguish itself from other PRIs. This approach implies that a specific research team is formed for each project, engaging specialists of other academic institutions, experts from public and private sectors, lawyers, and government officials. The involvement of the latter has turned into the principal know-how of the CER which distinguishes it from the standard team-building model of peer organizations. By this way, government officials can directly contribute to policy advice via consultations which then enable CER to produce better targeted and viable recommendations since the input of government officials has already been taken into account.
Last but not least regarding research, it is worth noting that research is usually well combined and integrated with other activities performed by the organization which increase the possibilities for this research to concretely inform policy discussions and decisions. Constant advocacy efforts such as the conduction of seminars and events, trainings targeted to public servants in order them to equip them with new knowledge and skills and the production of periodic publications about specific topics have become effective mechanisms to avoid the gap between research and evidence internally produced and policies designed and implemented outside the organization. Also, all the successful cases demonstrate that communications become an effective device to link research and policy. In fact, the analyzed PRIs clearly generate -either intentionally or unintentionally- positive perceptions and expectations among the different stakeholders they interact with. These positive perceptions are crucial for PRIs to foster social and political consensus both about the worth of their mission and the value of their concrete proposals. It is important to point out that we have detected that opportunities for research to inform policymaking increase when organizational and personal communications skills are well aligned. The cases show that the capacity of the organization to reach key actors public officials and politicians, businessmen, journalists, international organizations, etc.- are reinforced by individual efforts to build the credibility and legitimacy of their ideas. This paves the way for them to be listened by those who either make decisions or exert influence on those who decide. Besides, an effective strategy is to achieve a balance between a long-term and strategic approach based on communicating evidence-based proposals and the current and juncture debates on political, economic and social issues.
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Institutional communications across activities and projects are crucial, since they allow the institutes to more effectively convince other actors about the credibility of their research, ideas, and proposals. Many of these institutes also have an implicit or explicit investment in specialized human resources, managements time and/or financial resources to strengthen communications activities. Moreover, PRIs use a diverse mix of communications tools and channels to support dissemination of research: 1) private communications (face-to-face individual or small and midsized group interactions) to sound out some ideas or to gain supporters or promoters of their proposals; 2) semi-public communications such as events to foster interchange and multidirectional flow of information and; 3) public communications through access to journalists and media to influence public opinion and establish certain topics in the public agenda or become recognized sources of information when those issues are being discussed. Also, institutionalization of specific regular publications, as points of reference for policy discussions, opens up spaces for interaction with relevant stakeholders. Exogenous Variables All these endogenous variables increase PRIs organizational capacities of engaging in policy advocacy. However, PRIs operate within specific economic, political and institutional boundaries. Thus exogenous factors should also be carefully analyzed. These institutions are clearly constrained by their contexts. The success of a PRI is strongly related to its ability to adapt itself to the context and to understand the political logic of its country so as to learn where its real possibilities of influence lie. In most of the cases, the influence exerted is mainly on agenda setting. This is the kind of impact that PRIs usually achieve. In some cases, imposing certain issues on the official agenda is translated into a legislation change, but it does not always work this way. Expanding policy capacities and horizons appeared as the strengths of many sucessful PRIs. For example, the development of new talent has proven an effective strategy in Eastern Europe/CIS due to the need of knowledge and expertise among new policymakers. ICPSUkraine has been offering since 2000 technical assistance to Ukrainian governmental bodies. The organization has trained specialists inside the government to be able to develop government policy alternatives using policy analysis, strategic planning, coordination, and management of policy development and implementation processes. As a result, many public servants were provided with the required skills to conduct transparent and structured policy analysis. Incorporation of certain specific recommendations posed by PRIs in existing regulations or the drafting of new legislation is a less frequent type of impact that usually takes more time and also presents challenges regarding attribution. In those cases, what indeed changes among PRIs is their degree of participation in the formulation of those laws. For instance, GRADE-Per had a direct impact on a section on the new Law of Education. Data presented by GRADE convinced the Congressmen that one of the keys to the new Law should be the
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quality of education and equality of educational opportunities. The Law emphasized that in order to improve the quality of educational results it was important to strive towards equality of opportunities for all children. GRADE had suggested that a new institute be created to evaluate several aspects related to this, which would recommend policies based on the data. As a result of their influence, the new proposal of Law included an article to create the National Institute for Evaluation and Accreditation. Also, the follow-up and monitoring of laws vary. For instance, CEP-Chile ensured that the content of laws reflected their original points, while other PRIs did not supervise that the "pureness" of the original proposal was kept in the details of the laws they made an impact on. Clearly, PRIs are not involved in the potential enforcement of legislation, thus it is necessary to establish some differences between the analysis of the influence of ideas on politics and the analysis of the impact that these policies have had on social, political and economic realities. In fact, between the ideas promoted by the PRI and the ones finally adopted by a government or legislative body and their effective implementation, we find the following factors: i. The specific "architecture" that the State apparatus has in that topic area (health, education, etc.) and the existing openness to external agents in these implementation areas. ii. The filter and potential distortion of existing ideas when they are processed through traditional administrative bureaucracy. After the mediation and the potential distortion of ideas that the State structures and bureaucratics cultures have undergone, there is a new phase of analysis that is not considered in this paper: the real impact of adopted policies in terms of the effective modification of socioeconomic, cultural, and political indicators. Finally, another type of impact that is considered as a success by some PRIs and as an unavoidable but not desired outcome by other PRIs is the recruitment of researchers for government positions. For example, as a consequence of the study that CEPA-Ghana conducted on how to regain macroeconomic stability, some researchers were appointed as members of the governments Economic Management Team, and two senior researchers were appointed to serve on the Board of the Central Bank of Ghana. A key exogenous factor in policy impact of successful PRIs is the opening of a window of opportunity for impact. Whenever there is an economic, social or political crisis, a change in government, or any other factor beyond the control of these organizations, the need arises for a concrete solution to an urgent problem and the possibilities for a PRI to exert its influence through research is opened. However, at this point it is essential to emphasize that even in the face of the evidence that proves that all institutes profited from the opening of windows of opportunity, those that managed to influence decision making had long been doing research on that particular subject: they were not improvising on the spur of the moment. The factors mentioned above, such as continuity, quality of research and availability of institutional funds, among others, are necessary yet not always sufficient requirements for impact. The PRI needs to very quickly propose concrete solutions to problems that arise in the agenda.
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Specific impact stories demonstrate how a policy window has provided a clear channel for the research to influence a specific policy or establish a new issue in the political agenda. In Argentina, FIEL made an impact on the Law of Economic Emergency and State Reform in 1989, after a serious inflationary crisis in the country; in Chile, a corruption case in the highest spheres of the political power facilitated the influence of CEP-Chile on the Law of State Reform; in Russia, the shortage of housing for retired military officials in 1997 required the urgent development of a program which was demanded to IUE based on its previous experiencies and expertise; and in Ghana, the political pressures associated to the electoral cycle and the change in government in 2001 fostered a high level of optimism with respect to potential impact of policy recommendations and proposals aimed at attaining macroeconomic stability. Windows of opportunity may be the result of political, economic or social crises. They can also emerge from a special interest of a group of policymakers or governmental agency who are engaged in global or regional debates on certain topics. For example, the Special Advisor to the President of the United Republic of Tanzania on globalization issues was particularly instrumental in promoting the policy proposals posed by ESRF. In fact, by that time, the President of the Tanzania was the co-chair of the World Commission on Social Dimensions of Globalization. Constitutional mandates and new laws and regulations, as well as the creation of government instances to implement these, also represent a window of opportunity for PRIs impact which can fulfill a role in ensuring that all these are well implemented. For instance, ISS found promising opportunities to promote local governance issues in India based on a new Constitutional mandate: Panchayati Raj institutions8 were first given constitutional recognition through the 73rd Amendment in 1992 and raised hopes for them to become a stable feature of the Indian polity. By 1999, through the democratic process, over 3.3 million elected leaders held positions at different levels of the Panchayati Raj administration covering 227,678 village Panchayats, 5906 Panchayat Samitis and 474 Zilla Parishads. However, since the Panchayati Raj is constitutionally still kept under the complete control of the states under the Constitution, their diverse views and preferences on the role assigned to it hinder ISSs ability to pursue its policy proposals. At the same time, the recently founded Ministry of Panchayati Raj increases the organizations ability to promote its proposals at the national level, instead of solely focusing at the local one. Another of the key factors that increases the possibilities for the research produced by PRIs to make an impact is when research is demand and policy driven. When this happens, impact speeds up because certain issues related to research such as topic relevance, importance, solutions to specific problems, among others precede the beginning of it and thus avoid the imbalance between expectations and definitions of those who ask for research and the ones who offer it. In these cases, possibilities of influence increase because many of the research
8. Panchayati Raj institutions are the units of local governance that operate at sub-national level. India is a federal country, comprising of 30 states. These constitutionally enjoy autonomy in respect of certain financial and administrative decisions. Panchayati Raj institutions are composed by a three tier structure of governance: district, block and village.
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features identified as key for an institute to increase its organizational capability of being engaged in politics are externally predefined. This exogenous factor works efficiently as an external organizer of internal procedures (selection of research topic, problem to be solved, deadlines, feasibility, researchers' profiles, etc.). Within this category, key actors are both policymakers who ask for research and international credit organizations or other local policymaking actors. In these lines, ESRF-Tanzania highlights its ability to respond to external opportunities by carrying out timely research projects, which are demand driven. ESRF observes that supplydriven research is not as effective in influencing policy, because it requires the buy-in of all the diverse stakeholders, including grassroots organizations, and thus harmonizing different ideological opinions. Another successful story is how IPM-Belarus research findings were incorporated into policy within a project that was ordered and financed by the Central Bank of Russia. This project explored the issue of the Single Economic Space between Belarus and Russia and the economic impact on both countries. This work was both issue and demand driven, given that the topic was very urgent at the time the project was performed. Also the fact that the Central Bank of Russia turned to the IPM ensured receptivity of results. Demand of research emerges not only from policymakers but also from international agents such as credit organizations, and other local actors, i.e. business groups. For instance, the case of GRADE-Per shows how a specific request coming from the World Bank in an issue included in the incipient debate at the time of the so-called second generation reforms -the need to measure education quality- boosted specific research activities by the PRIs researchers. It also succeeded in defeating the political reluctance of the Peruvian Ministry of Education officials who, at the beginning, disagreed with the idea of adding a unit of quality measurement. An explicit demand of research also depends on the expectations and perceptions of policymakers and other actors around the value of research in general within the policymaking process. The social use and legitimacy attributed to research within the policymaking process represents a key factor in general receptivity of ideas and proposals. In Latin America and Asia, policymakers perceptions on the role of research are crucial to assess impact of PRIs on policies. In some cases, institutes worked with policymaking agencies which are used to incorporating research findings or commanding special studies to back up reforms and present new policy proposals to peers, other decision making bodies and the public opinion in general. For example, governmental structure in Chile is receptive to research, as some bureaucrats even have intellectual interests and publish articles through CEP, creating a climate of discussion and permanent dialogue among bureaucrats and academics. In Kenya, the NARC government elected in 2002 was perceived by KIPPRA as being highly supportive of research and welcoming objective policy advice. Government is open to stakeholders in the policymaking process and is engaging them in various forums.
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Nevertheless, in most of the cases PRIs have to make strong efforts to convince policymakers on the utility, relevance and need of more systematic knowledge to inform decision-making. This is coupled with the importance to also convince them on their institutional reputation as well as the credibility of their researchers, which belong to the endogenous factors analyzed above. Finally, impact of research on policymaking also took place when PRIs were able to overcome barriers and closeness of policymaking agencies in the use and dissemination of information that is relevant for decision making. Such is the case of FIEL: one of its first communications successes was to install in the public agenda the need by government to use statistics and the importance of enhancing quality of available data. This improved disclosure of information and contributed to the formation of a new and more open culture in certain government groups. Furthermore, the influence of PRIs increases when the specific political and institutional contexts with which they interact are (whether historically or juncturally) more open to participation of agents outside the government. Even though civil society engagement in public policy is an increasing trend in international policymaking processes as well as in local spaces in developing countries, the lack of openness in certain countries or policy sectors can significantly hamper PRIs potential to influence through research and evidence. This is clearly the case of Belarus, where authorities are extremely suspicious of civil society organizations and think tanks, especially if they are financed with foreign resources. This has led to a decrease in the number of NGOs in Belarus. Based on the belief that this type of organizations act in order to destabilize political situations and to promote changes that will lead to a revolution, both economic and political instruments are used to strengthen the power of government and suppress any thoughts that do not match the officially declared ones. Thus, although it avoids all partisan activities and politics, the IPM claims to be under constant State control pressure since its research findings and policy recommendations frequently do not reflect the official political and economic lines defended by the President. In this way, the Belarusian political context is the main factor that hinders policy related operations of the institution and significantly limits its influence; in such conditions it is extremely difficult to assess whether any PRI can have a say in the policymaking process at all. Within this environment, influence might be limited to raising public awareness of certain issues; i.e. by delivering the results of independent economic analysis such as IPM does. On the contrary, the legislation in Latvia explicitly establishes procedures and mechanisms to regulate how each individual and institution can influence policy decision making. Among these, the most important are the procedures of the Parliament. Such an enabling environment does not suffice: experts working at Providus have also developed a deep understanding of the legal processes involved in influencing policy process, based on the importance of being acquainted with the nuances of the system, i.e. when, how and in which form to submit a proposal for it to be reviewed, which requires in depth knowledge of the local law.
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PRIs also see their opportunities of impac increase when there is recognition among policymakers of a lack of capacity/knowledge/social consensus to design or implement certain policy reform. In Latin America, since the 1990s the creation of PRIs increased by 86% as compared to the existing number. A possible explanation for this growth might be the increasing weakness of the State in policymaking. Structural economic reforms carried out during the 1990s in the whole region reduced the size and the role of the State. This reduction process was paralleled with the decentralization of its functions. The former depleted many areas previously influenced by the State, and made them "vacant" for PRIs or other political actors, and the latter created more contact points with the government since the local levels were now open to them. In Eastern Europe, the fall of communist regimes, and the consequent need to build and develop a new State bureaucracy, also opened up opportunities to impact policies for PRIs based on a large demand of research, as well as expertise on certain topics. Lack of knowledge is extended even to the policymaking procedures themselves, such as the intervention of ICPS by providing technical assistance to Ukrainian governmental bodies. In fact, among key factors that explain the success of ICPS reside the lack of information and expertise among public servants on the public policy issues. The need to improve State capacity in this region is tightly linked to the incentives posed by the European Union. After ten years of independence of Latvia, there was the increasing awareness of the need to implement transparent public procedures and international standards of governance to be able to access the European Union that lead Ukrainian authorities to take ICPS recommendations into consideration. There are other exogenous factors that have been repeatedly signaled by the PRIs when identifying their threats and opportunities to impact policies, including the level of rotation in government and the lack of competitors. Regarding the former, several PRIs regard high rotation among government officials as an obstacle to achieve policy impact. SDPI-Pakistan is forced to re-establish relationships with government each time the administration experiences changes. This has been a frequent barrier for its influence in environmental policy: within the past thirteen years of its existence, SDPI has had to face the change of six governments, followed by drastic changes in the environmental policies arena. Competition also plays a role. By becoming the first PRI to investigate and present proposals in a specific policy area or generating unique information and evidence that was not available in the marketplace or affordable to government some organizations were able to develop and maintain niches of specialization that increased the need and/or support of them, or the opportunity to survive. For instance, the quite restrictive political context in Belarus -including the suppression of most PRIs and civil society organizations- has turned IPM into almost the only player in the field. Thus the institution faces no competition when applying for grants and other donor
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financed projects. Also, any foreign or international organization that desires to implement projects with independent organizations in Belarus is immediately directed to the IPM. When Fedesarrollo-Colombia was created, it was the only institution devoted to examine and evaluate public policies with both a rigorous and an academic approach. Because of this, it became the only interlocutor of the government on public policy evaluation. However, over time, the research tradition built by the institution has spread to other institutions, research centers, universities and consulting agencies and it has contributed to the development of the Colombian academic community and to the public policies debate. Finally, centralization of decision making can also enhance the playing filed for PRIs. When those who should make the policy decision or implement it are clearly and neatly defined or detected, it becomes easier for the PRI to concentrate its advocacy efforts and gain influence. As was mentioned above, the creation of the Ministry of Panchayati Raj in India has eased ISSs ability to advance its proposals regarding local governace promotion at the national level. Equally, Lima, the capital city of Peru, enjoyed much more power in the 90s than it had in the two previous decades. Its larger autonomy enabled GRADE to reach policymakers more easily, specifically those in the Ministry of Education.
Final Remarks After going through these diverse and complex set of internal and external factors that continuously interplay through dynamic relationships, we can state that PRIs in developing countries are far away from Thinktankland. However, this does not mean that they should not make efforts to detect how they can enhance their policy impact and leave it into fortunes hands. Their long term sustainability and social credibility depends on the degree that they can publicly demonstrate that they can generate valuable evidence and research that effectively influences policymakers and public policies. By reflecting upon which combination of these factors is more crucial for each organization at a given time of their institutional evolution, as well as examining how exogenous factors can be overcome or acknowledged in order to reshape influence goals, PRIs will be able to more effectively develop and invest their resources towards tangible results. This is tightly linked to their capacity to develop and sustain fruitful relationships with those stakeholders that can help them achieve their objectives, based on a clear understanding of their resouces and interests. The bridge between research and policy is not straight nor a one-way road. There are no well defined beginnings nor ends, but continuous, simultaneous and very frequently chaotic processes that demand PRIs to constantly assess where the best opportunities lie which can be effectively tackled by the available resources, in the short, mid and long term. Alignment between endogenous and exogenous factors does not always take place and when it happens, it is extremely difficult to maintain: awareness of these factors can certainly help PRIs to better understand when and how they can contribute so that research effectively nurtures policymaking.
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Case studies
Documents prepared in the framework of GDNs project Bridging Research and Policy, with some approval spending from EERC. Afontsev, S. Center for Economic Research: Uzbekistans case study. 2006 Ali, S.M. Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI): Pakistans case study. 2005 Bidolid, O. International Center for Policy Studies (ICPS): Ukraines Case Study. 2005 Braun, M., M. Chudnovsky, C. Di Nucci, N. Ducot and V. Weyrauch. Fundacin de Investigaciones Econmicas Latinoamericanas [FIEL]: Argentinas case study. Centro de Implementacin de Polticas Pblicas para la Equidad y el Crecimiento (CIPPEC). Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2004. Braun, M., M. Chudnovsky, C. Di Nucci, N. Ducot, and V. Weyrauch. Centro de Estudios Pblicos [CEP]: Chile's case study. Centro de Implementacin de Polticas Pblicas para la Equidad y el Crecimiento (CIPPEC). Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2004. Braun, M., M. Chudnovsky, C. Di Nucci, N. Ducot, and V. Weyrauch. Fundacin para la Educacin Superior y el Desarrollo [Fedesarrollo]: Colombias case study. Centro de Implementacin de Polticas Pblicas para la Equidad y el Crecimiento (CIPPEC). Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2004. Braun, M., M. Chudnovsky, C. Di Nucci, N. Ducot, and V. Weyrauch. Grupo de Anlisis para el Desarrollo [GRADE]: Perus case study. Centro de Implementacin de Polticas Pblicas para la Equidad y el Crecimiento (CIPPEC). Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2004. Chakrabarti, M. and A. Sarkar. Institute of Social Sciences [ISS]: India's case study. 2005. Coleman, E. O. Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research: Ghanas case study. 2006. Ghani, A. Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD): Bangladeshs Case Study. 2006. KIPPRA. Influencing policy through research: developing a revival strategy for the Kenyan ctton textile industry. The Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA). Kenya, 2004. KIPPRA. Influencing policy through research: globalization and East Africa. The Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA). Kenya, 2004. KIPPRA. Influencing policy through research: poverty reduction strategy and action plan. The Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA). Kenya, 2004.
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KIPPRA. Influencing policy through research: regaining macroeconomic stability in Ghana. The Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA). Kenya, 2004. Kolosnitsyna, T. Institute for Urban Economics: Russias case study. 2005. Labaqui, J. and V. Weyrauch. Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales [CELS]: Argentinas case study. Centro de Implementacin de Polticas Pblicas para la Equidad y el Crecimiento (CIPPEC). Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2005. Menkova, V. Institute for Privatization and Management (IPM), Research Center: Belarus case study. 2005. Uzulena, E. Providus: Latvias case study. 2005
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Appendix: Summary Table of Policy Research Institutes for Case

ASIA
Variables
EASTERN EUROPE
CER Uzbekistan 1999 -Government of the Republic of Uzbekistan (GoU) -United Nations Development Program (UNDP Providus Latvia 2002 -Researchers and analysts ICPS Ukraine 1994 -Government -International Non Governmental Organization IPM Belarus 1999 -Central European University Fund -Government (Ministry of Managing State Property and Privatization) -Center for Privatization (Poland) IUE Russia 1995 -Russian specialists in the fields of housing policy, housing finance, municipal and regional development
ISS India 1985 -Social workers (private sector) -Academia
SDPI Pakistan 1992 -International Union for the Conservation of Nature - Significant support from Canadian International Development Agency
CPD Bangladesh 1993 -Academics/ professionals -Heads of leading Bangladshi NGOs -Retired civil servants
Year of foundation Founders
Board or staff held

Government
positions Budget (USD)
Yes +1.000.000
Yes 500.000-750.000
Yes N/A
Yes N/A
Yes N/A
Yes 1.000.000
No N/A (rough estimation: $300,000500,000) -Projects and services provided on paid basis
No Confidential
Funding
-Project based
-Institutional -Projects
-Program-based
N/A
-Project-based
ASIA
Variables
EASTERN EUROPE
CER Uzbekistan -International organizations -Government - Projects and consultancies Providus Latvia -Soros Foundation Grant ICPS Ukraine -International organizations -Bussiness IPM Belarus -International organizations -Local private organizations IUE Russia -International organizations mainly
ISS India -Multilateral and bilateral international organizations -Government
SDPI Pakistan -International organizations -Local revenues
CPD Bangladesh -Academics/ - Sponsoring agencies - Sales of publications -Overhead, bank interests and institutional levy - Private sector
Sources of Funding
Selection -Mostly led by of research funding agencies topics
-In response to funding opportunities
- On the basis - Defined by of whether the the Steering issues are of Committee critical national given current priorities of the importance/ policy relevance GoU and strategic research plans of the major partners
-Members
-Founders (determine the strategic areas and have power to ban unrelated projects)
- By order, by topicality and urgency.
-IUE Council
97
ASIA
Variables
EASTERN EUROPE
CER Uzbekistan Providus Latvia ICPS Ukraine -Researchers IPM Belarus -Quite flexible in terms of adjustment to changing context. IUE Russia -Directors of research departments.
ISS India
SDPI Pakistan -Decisions by the board -Researchers expertise
CPD Bangladesh - Emerging issues from CPDs dialogue process - Private sector - On the basis of whether the issues are of critical national importance/ policy relevance
Selection of research topics
Research features
-Operational output
-Mix of academic / applied
- Applied in nature
- The central principle of the CER is that research is not a priority in itself but only an intermediate product to produce highquality policy advice.
-Mix of academic / applied
-Topicality on Ucranian needs
-Empirical analysis
-Operational output
ASIA
Variables
EASTERN EUROPE
CER Uzbekistan Providus Latvia -Addressing local issues in policymaking ICPS Ukraine IPM Belarus IUE Russia
ISS India -Relevance -Quality control -Influence over time
SDPI Pakistan - Addressing local and international issues
CPD Bangladesh
Research features
- Addresses -CER is only important & interested in critical develop- research projects mental issues that have direct of the country effect in terms with policy of policy angles recommendation - Issues which deal with regional cooperation and implications of globalization
-Quality control -Information based -Original approach -Application of - Policy relevance modern research techniques -Addressing local -Strictly applied and international - Diverse in terms issues of thematic coverage -Quality control -Influence over time -Standarization and technology
Staff (number) Who is in charge of communications
110 -Director
80 -Individual researchers
50 -Division of dialogue and communication, under the direct supervision of the Executive Director
23 (research staff) -Director of the CER -Project coordinators -Public relations/ fundraising department
15 Communications specialist
46 -Director -Marketing and Fundraising Department
11 N/A
110 -External Relations Director
Regular
contact with
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
the media
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AFRICA
Variables
LATIN AMERICA
CEPA Ghana 1993 N/A ISSER Ghana 1962 -Academia FIEL Argentina 1963 -Business GRADE Peru 1980 -Academia -Government CEP Chile 1980 -Business -Academia Fedesarrollo Colombia 1970 -Business CELS Argentina 1979
KIPPRA Kenya 1997
ESRF Tanzania 1994
NEPRU Namibia 1990
Year of foundation Founders
- Senior -Academia Hon Amathila, government Hon Dr officer in the -Government Mbuende and Ministry of Prof Katjaviv Planning and National Development
-Relatives of victims of the -Academia military repressive -Government apparatus. - Human Rigts activists -Lawyers
Board or staff held

Government
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
positions Budget (USD) Funding
750.000 1.000.000 -Institutional -Projects
+ 1.000.000 + 1.000.000 + 1.000.000 -Institutional -Projects -Institutional -Institutional -Projects
N/A -Institutional -Projects
+ 1.000.000 + 1.000.000 -Institutional -Projects
750.000 1.000.000 -Institutional -Projects
750.000 1.000.000 -Projects
300.000 400.000 -Institutional -Projects
Sources of Funding
-Mainly -International -International -International -Mainly -International -Mainly -Mainly -International -Mainly international international organizations international organizations businessmen organizations businessmen organizations organizations organizations organizations philantropic -Government organizations -Government -Government -Contested -Government domestic -Private government sector grant Commissioned research
AFRICA
Variables
LATIN AMERICA
CEPA Ghana ISSER Ghana FIEL Argentina GRADE Peru CEP Chile Fedesarrollo Colombia CELS Argentina
KIPPRA Kenya
ESRF Tanzania
NEPRU Namibia
Selection -Researchers/ -Researchers -Dialogue with -Researchers -Based on the -Researchers -Researchers -Researchers -Researchers -Researchers of policymakers Ghana Poverty research government / stakeholders -Consultation and donors -Requests Reduction -Board -Funders -Board -Funders -Board topics
with stakeholders
by the Strategy government document and the private sector -In response to funding opportunities
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AFRICA
Variables
LATIN AMERICA
CEPA Ghana -Operational output -Policy relevance -Original ISSER Ghana -Mix of academic / applied -Priorities based on poverty reduction goals FIEL Argentina -Operational output -Policy relevance -Original approach -Quality control -Influence over time GRADE Peru -Operational output -Policy relevance -Quality control -Influence over time CEP Chile -Operational output Fedesarrollo Colombia CELS Argentina
KIPPRA Kenya output
ESRF Tanzania -Operational output -Policy relevance -Addressing local and international issues -Stakeholders participation
NEPRU Namibia -Operational output -Policy relevance -Addressing local and international issues
Research -Operational features
-Policy relevance -Addressing local and international issues -Influence over time
-Stakeholders -Rigorous participation internal and external peer -Rigorous rewiew internal and procedures external peer rewiew -Influence procedures over time
Staff (number)
-Addressing local and international -Flexible: -Peer rewiew issues responds to procedures changing -Rigorous needs of the -Influence internal and Ghanaian over time external peer society and rewiew economy procedures -Influence over time
-Operational -Research as output an instrument to influence -Policy -Policy public policy relevance relevance -Relevance -Original -Quality of the topic approach control and appropriateness for -Quality -Influence CELS identity control over time -Participation -Stakeholders of policy participation makers and decision -Influence makers over time -Incidence on policy uncovering human rights violations 6 40 45
59
44
31
23
51
14
47
AFRICA
Variables
LATIN AMERICA
CEPA Ghana -Executive Director ISSER Ghana -Publications officer -Individual researchers FIEL Argentina -Executive Director GRADE Peru N/A CEP Chile N/A Fedesarrollo Colombia -Executive Director CELS Argentina -Communication area -Executive Director -Deputy Director Program Directors
KIPPRA Kenya -Executive Director -Programme Coordinator -Heads of Divions
ESRF Tanzania -Heads of Administration
NEPRU Namibia -Executive Director
Who is in charge of communications
Regular contact with the media
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
N/A
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
100
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Nutley, S., I. Walter, and H. Davies. From Knowing to Doing: A framework for understanding the evidence-into-practice agenda. Discussion Paper 1. Research Unit for Research Utilization, University of St Andrews. UK, 2002. Pollard, A. and J. Court. How Civil Society Organisations Use Evidence to Influence Policy Processes: A literature review. Overseas Development Institute, Working Paper 249. London, UK, 2005. Porter, R. W. Knowledge utilization and the process of policy formation: towards a framework for Africa. Washington: USAID, 1998. Porter, R. W. and S. Prysor-Jones. Making a Difference to Policies and Programs: A Guide for Researchers. Washington: USAID, 1997. Quer, L. Lespace public: de la thorie politique a la mtathorie sociologique. Quaderni N18 (1992). RAWOO. Making Development Research Pro-poor. RAWOO Review Report. Netherlands Development Assistance Research Council, The Hague, Netherlands, 2003. RAWOO. Utilization of Research for Development Cooperation, Linking Knowledge Production to Development Policy and Practice. Publication N 21. Netherlands Development Assistance Research Council, The Hague, Netherlands, 2001. RAWOO. Building Bridges in Research for Development. RAWOO Review Report. Netherlands Development Assistance Research Council, The Hague, Netherlands, 1999. Rogers, E. Diffusion of Innovations. New York: Free Press, 1995. Ryan, J. Synthesis Report of Workshop on Assessing the Impact of Policy-Oriented Social Science Research. Impact Assessment Discussion Paper 15. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Washington D.C., USA, 2002. Ryan, J. Assessing the impact of rice policy changes in Viet Nam and the contribution of policy research. Impact Assessment Discussion paper 8. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Washington D.C., USA, 1999. Sabatier, P. Toward Better Theories of the policy process. PS: Political Science & Politics Vol. 24, N 2 (June 1991): 147-156. Sabatier, P., ed. Theories of the Policy Process. Boulder, USA: Westview Press, 1999. Simon, James. Influencing Government Policymaking. What is the relationship between TTs and governments?. Global Development Network (GDN). Washington DC, USA, 2000.
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5. The Role of Public Policy Centers in Public Reforms Implemented in Latin America1
ORAZIO J. BELLETTINI2
Introduction Studies on first-generation reforms in Latin America suggest that public policy centers (also known as think tanks) have played a major role in their design and implementation. By analyzing cases in different countries of the region, I will attempt to answer three questions in this study: what role has been played by think tanks in the public reforms implemented in Latin America?; what strategies have been used by these organizations to influence the different stages within the process of creation of said public reforms?; and, what has been their impact on democratic consolidation processes? Finally, and without intending to give a definitive answer, I will analyze the role that could be played by think tanks in the second-generation reforms still lying ahead for the region. In order to answer these questions, I present in the first place a definition, a brief history and the factors that contributed to the development of think tanks in Latin America. Subsequently, I present different case studies of think tanks that have influenced different stages within the process of public policies and reforms. The evidence shown underscores the fact that think tanks have significantly contributed to the public reforms implemented in the region. Not only have they included new ideas and policy proposals into the public debate, but they have also offered information and spaces aimed at facilitating decision-making to politicians and public officials. Furthermore, they have supported the implementation of those policies and effectively monitored the performance of public institutions. However, their impact on democratic consolidation processes is ambiguous. In some countries they have contributed to consensus building by gathering actors and ideas from different parts of the political sphere in order to
1. Prepared for the 10th Congress of the Latin American Center for Development Administration (CLAD), Santiago de Chile, October 2005. 2. The author is Executive Director of FARO Group, a think tank engaged in the design, promotion and implementation of public policies in Ecuador and Professor of Public Policies at the Catholic University of Ecuador. The author thanks Elizabeth Coombs and Adriana Jimnez for their invaluable contribution, since it would have been impossible to carry out this study without their support. The author has graduated from the Pan-American Agricultural School, Honduras, with a degree in Agronomical Engineering specialized in Agricultural Economics and from the Pontificia Catholic University of Ecuador (PUCE) with a Masters degree in Political Science and Business Administration. He has worked for NGOs, private companies and international organizations in the promotion of public-private partnerships for the provision of public services and infrastructure. Orazio has trained master students, majors and civil servants in finance and public management as well as in the area of public policies and reforms both at PUCE and the Latin American School of Social Sciences (FLACSO). After graduating from the Public Administration Programme of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Orazio worked in Mexico and Cambridge for the project Going Local: Decentralization and the Promise of Good Governance led by Professor Merilee Grindle. Orazio is founder and currently Executive Director of FARO Group, a think-and-do tank aimed at promoting the participation of civil society in the design, proposal and implementation of public reforms in Ecuador.
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design consolidation strategies aimed at the State and democratic institutions. In others, the capacity of think tanks to contribute to discussion processes and public debate, the legitimacy and degree of significance of their proposals as well as their capacity to strengthen democracy and state institutionality may be certainly questioned. Finally, I propose that think tanks could play a major role in the creation of second-generation public policies and reforms as long as they manage to address the demands for greater citizen participation, build consensus among groups from different political and ideological leanings and offer their technical capacity to provide ideas and proposals that may give an answer to the complex realities and challenges faced by the region.
Think Tanks: Towards a Definition Defining think tanks is not an easy task. Some authors underline the formal academic side of their definition (e.g. universities without students) and include academic organizations with high technical capacity (e.g. universities and research centers) whose main goal is research in this group (Weaver, 1989). Although this was the origin of think tanks, the democratization of the access to information allowed more modest organizations in terms of size and reputation to undertake the study and analysis of public policies3. In view of this, following the proposal of Lucarelli and Radaelli (2004), I define them as independent, private and non-profit organizations that carry out at least one type of activities aimed at public policies4. Although this definition might be considered too broad, particularly from the traditional Anglo-Saxon perspective, it allows for the inclusion of organizations that are actively involved in, at least one, stage of the public policy-making process. This definition, for instance, includes among think tanks those academic organizations (e.g. universities, study centers) that contribute to the organization of an intellectual agenda and the setting up of debate platforms through their research as well as NGOs that devote part of their activities to research, design and dissemination of ideas and proposals that allow to inform other civil institutions, groups and parties interested in having influence on the public agenda5.
Brief History of Think Tanks in Latin America Although the term think tank started to be used in the United States during the II World War to make reference to the departments where military strategies were designed, its use has been expanded to make reference to nearly 2,000 organizations located in the United States, engaged in political analysis, and to some other 2,500 similar institutions in the rest of the world.
3. As it has been expressed by Brunner and Sunkel (1993:15) the time seems to have come for knowledge to stop being an exclusive domain of intellectuals and their most specialized heirs researchers and technocrats to turn into a common means through which societies get organized, become adapted and change. 4. Although independence is not always a comprehensive characteristic, I think it is worth pointing out that think tanks should have a considerable autonomy from interest groups in order to be considered as engines and/or promoters of public ideas. 5. In this way, they differ from other type of NGOs that aim at having influence on the public agenda by means of activist strategies such as political mobilization, etc.
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The first wave of think tanks also took place in the United States in the early 1900s. However, no such organizations appeared in Latin America until the early 1960s. Particularly in Southern Cone countries, think tanks started to be created following the expelling of important scholars from the main universities by dictatorships. These scholars created organizations that worked as intellectual shelters. Among the most well-known examples is CEBRAP, in Brazil, founded in the early 1970s by Fernando Enrique Cardoso, among others; and, CIEPLAN in Chile, which gathered those who would later become senior leaders of the ruling coalition of parties when democracy was reinstated at the end of the 1980s (Sherwood Truit, 2000). In other countries, think tanks resulted from alliances between the private sector and scholars who were interested in setting up policy research and design centers independent of the state and universities. This is the case of Fedesarrollo, which was established in Colombia in 1970, thanks to the financial support of businesspeople that set up an endowment fund which has contributed to its sustainability until the present time (ibid). Later on, during the 1990s, a significant increase in the number of Latin American think tanks was registered. In Argentina, for instance, 19 of the 28 think tanks surveyed by Ua et al. (2004) were founded in the 1990s. The return to democracy allowed for the emergence of new actors, among them the centers for policy analysis; and also for the growing importance of symbolic techniques and symbolic analysts in the design of the economic reforms that were to be implemented in the region at the time. Some of the factors explaining the growing number and influence of think tanks in Latin America are presented below.
Factors Explaining the Role of Think Tanks in Latin America In recent decades, Latin America has undergone political and economic changes that have modified the operation of its public institutions, its socioeconomic structure and the organization of civil society. In the first place, the democratic transition experienced by the region at the end of the 1970s and early 1980s demanded the launching of a series of constitutional and legal reforms which, among other goals, allowed for the incorporation of new actors into the public agenda. Political parties, local governments and civil society organizations had for the first time in many decades the opportunity to participate and become active subjects in public decision-making. These new actors hardly represented in the past contributed to the introduction of new issues into the public agenda and demanded a more democratic and access-friendly state when dealing with peoples needs. In the second place, the economic crisis of the early 1980s demanded economic or structural adjustment reforms that sought fiscal discipline and trade opening, thus requiring high-level knowledge and the participation of a reduced group of technocrats. This double process showed how difficult it was to combine the implementation of policy reforms that demanded a distribution of power by means of the incorporation of new actors
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and increasing levels of transparency with economic reforms that demanded a concentration of power in a small group of technocrats isolated from political pressures. In addition, it evidenced the lack of capacity of the State to give answers to the challenges that were faced by region. Thus, a space was created for civil society organizations in many cases universities and think tanks to get involved in different stages of the reform and policymaking process. Furthermore, the corruption, inefficiency and ineffectiveness ended up delegitimizing Latin American states and mobilizing civil society organizations of different nature and political leaning in search for answers to public problems. There follows a description of some factors that help to explain, al least partly, the growing importance of the role played by think tanks in the public reforms implemented in Latin America. Democratization In the 1980s, Latin America experienced a dramatic time of political and socioeconomic transition. Civil society, which had grown increasingly resistant to military and authoritarian governments, started to mobilize for the promotion of democracy, which at the same time, allowed for the participation of new actors in the democratic process. Local governments, trade unions, business groups and civil society organizations of different kinds noted that democracy opened a wide array of ways to have access to power, while increasing the quality and intensity of ties between the different actors involved in the democratic process and, consequently gave the opportunity to influence public decision-making. Many of those actors used this window of opportunity to introduce and promote new issues in the public agenda. In Chile, for instance, the end of the dictatorship not only prompted the blossoming of those organizations that promoted forbidden ideas before the return to democracy but also of organization networks made up of NGOs, universities and political parties that launched a process of reconstruction of the social capital that had been eroded during the dictatorship, aiming at having incidence on the public agenda (Araujo et al., 2000). Technification of Politics and Policies Politics is no longer what it used to be. The complex nature of public socioeconomic, environmental problems, etc., the technological revolution brought on by the Internet and the growing education levels of the population have shown that the answers of society to the problems it suffers call for more technically sophisticated answers, based on a rigorous analysis of facts and empirical evidence. As pointed out by Brunner (1993:9) ...in a world whose structures and appearances are represented by strict knowledge maps: poverty is rigorously quantified, public opinion movements are measured by surveys, we are using social statistics every time and the actual problems of society indeed exist once they are identified by researchpurely ideological solutions are distrusted and insistence is placed on the need to provide them with technical grounds. Politics is increasingly relying on expert knowledge, and something similar happens with ministries, Parliament, parties, trade unions and the media. This was emphasized during the mixed process of democratization and economic stabilization previously described where Latin American societies were required to have technical
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teams in order to design and set up constitutional and institutional reforms (e.g. electoral and political party reform, reform of the Executive-Legislative relationship, etc.) and structural adjustment reforms (e.g. trade opening, tax reform). Unfortunately, the State was unable to rapidly address the needs of those processes. In the first place, most Latin American governments have failed to establish and/or consolidate meritocratic systems to hire public officials (Longo, 2003). In many cases, public officials managed to obtain their posts owing to political loyalty and nepotism, rather than by their technical qualifications and skills. This resulted in public institutions that were hardly qualified to address the challenges posed by the design and implementation of public reforms. Besides, the high levels of bureaucratization and the lack of transparency and accountability systems forced Latin American States to remain slow and without the institutional capacity to innovate their public policies. Although some governments involved small teams of technocrats in the design of public policies (Grindle, 2000; Williams, 2002), their previous knowledge was not systematically incorporated into other government levels. Political parties, on the other hand, were recovering the structure and cohesion they had lost during the dictatorships and lacked the capacity to mediate between civil society and the political society (Ua et al., 2004). Finally, and to make the situation even more complex, many of the decisions made had little legitimacy before civil society owing to the lack of transparency and participation processes. As a result of this, civil society organizations mostly universities and NGOs developed skills to address the weaknesses of certain State structures and most political actors and played a stronger role in the design and promotion of specific and technically feasible proposals for public policies in different areas such as pensions, electoral and political party system, provision of health services, etc. State Delegitimization Finally, the fact that citizens have lost confidence in the State, its management of public funds and its capacity to address major public problems in a responsible and effective way, has contributed to the increasing legitimacy of civil society actors, who before the 1980s had not been considered as valid stakeholders in public discussions. In other words, a legitimacy transfer took place, in which the credibility and legitimacy that was lost by the State was totally or partially won by civil society organizations. This was due to the already mentioned poor capacity of the State to address the political and economic reform processes and also to the ideological atmosphere of the time which decreed by consensus that the solution lied in reducing State-run institutions without necessarily having to improve them. The attention was then focused on new actors. A specific proof regarding this process was the increase in funds flowing from international financial organizations to NGOs charged with carrying out activities that were previously the exclusive responsibility of the State. Thus, different countries in the region contemplated the emergence of public service systems such as health care, education, technological transfer in rural areas, etc., to be implemented by development NGOs supported by resources from bilateral and multilateral cooperation agencies (Meyer, 1999).
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Not only did financial institutions lose their confidence in Latin American states. Surveys conducted by Latinbarmetro show that citizens had increasingly less confidence in State institutions. In 1997, 41% of citizens expressed satisfaction with democracy and public institutions. This percentage fell to 29% in 2004 (Latinbarmetro, 2004). When analyzing the rate of Latin Americans who have confidence in the government, figures are still less encouraging. In 2003, only 24% of Latin American people had confidence in the government a figure which was even lower than the 28% registered in 1998 (ibid, 2003). As a result, people started to look for answers in other actors. In view of this, private foundations and international organizations started to support civil society initiatives in terms of democratization processes, surveillance of public organizations and provision of State-parallel social services.
The Role of Think Tanks in Reform and Public Policymaking Processes in Latin America The creation of reforms and public policies fails to respond to a sequence structure or established order since it is a dynamic process where different forces and interests are simultaneously interacting. Notwithstanding this, the following five stages can be identified in an ideal policymaking process: 1) visualization of the problem and its introduction into the public agenda; 2) policy design; 3) decision-making; 4) implementation and 5) public policy sustainability or evaluation and monitoring. The first two stages can be identified with the term policymaking itself, understood as the creation of policies, while the three last stages refer in general terms to what is known as policy implementation. The different characteristics of think tank centers and the different strategies used to achieve their objectives are influencing the role they play in the already identified stages. Thus, we will see how traditional think tanks mostly created before the 1990s which are primarily focused on research, technical analysis and the publication of their results, have played a major role in policymaking. However, in recent years, research centers have gone beyond their academic nature by introducing strong political and negotiation components and playing not only the role of political critics or advisors, but also of State collaborators, thus having a direct impact on policy implementation. Bearing this in mind and making reference to each one of the above-mentioned five stages, I will illustrate with specific examples how think tanks have had an impact on the public reforms implemented in Latin America since the end of the 1980s. It is worth pointing out that by public reforms I understand both the ones referred to the consolidation of democratic institutions which were aimed at creating and establishing the rules of the game under which democracy would be operating as well as the so-called first-generation reforms that were aimed at economic opening and stabilization. Although only in a few cases the think tanks presented in this study have been involved in second-generation reforms, I believe it is important to highlight them, owing to the potential of these organizations for contributing to their implementation in the years to come. By second-generation reforms I understand those seeking the consolidation of institutions promoting effectiveness in State management, private sector competitiveness and social and economic equity (Nam, 1994; Pastor & Wise, 1999).
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Visualizing Public Problems and Turning them into Policy Objects The visualization or identification of problems belonging to the public sphere often precedes their introduction to the public agenda. Policy problems do not exist by themselves as mere objective phenomena Araujo warns us but they are built by actors moving in different scenarios, exchanging and confronting discourses based on diverse interpretation frameworks (Araujo et al, 2000:134). In this way, a public problem does not arise by decree, but is rather socially built. In democracies, political representatives in their capacity as spokespeople for citizens are responsible for the identification of those social problems affecting society in order to place them under the responsibility of the State. However, this activity is often affected by their interests and intention to comply with voters and/or political allies as well as by the institutional framework regulating their actions. The US Civil Rights Movement led by Martin Luther King is a clear example of how a leader without formal authority succeeded in making people acknowledge racism as a social evil within the American society of the 1960s. His struggle for the civil rights of black people through protests came to the point of embodying in him the brutality of racial discrimination and succeeded in granting black Americans, in practice, the civil rights they deserved under the Constitution, which nevertheless had been undermined since the countrys independence. As asserted by Heifetz (1997), such an activity could not have been carried out by President Johnson, given the fact that his limited scope of action only allowed him to achieve a balance of interests among all citizens by accepting a common denominator. Let alone those who had voted for him, who were mostly white people of the South of the country, where discrimination against black people was even more severe. In a similar way, by making use of their neutrality and independence, think tanks have managed to stand out by identifying not only those social scourges that have recently appeared in Latin American societies, but also those that should be transferred from the private to the public sphere. Such is the case with the acknowledgement of domestic violence in Chile as a problem that falls within the public domain an achievement of Concertacin de Mujeres para la Democracia (in English, Coalition of Women for Democracy), an organization primarily made up of feminist NGOs and increasingly by professional women and gender experts, who at the same time created the Chilean Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence (REDCHVD) made up by other organizations gathered under the same cause. The twenty-five year struggle characterized by the generation of new discourses in gender relations and by positing women as social subjects, brought consensus on the need to stop considering domestic violence as a private problem. In addition, the problem was put on the agenda of the Executive and Legislative powers. In order to achieve this, Chilean organizations used different strategies. Among these the setting up of pilot projects consisting in centers for the attention of illtreated women should be highlighted since their testimonies started to change the vision of society with regards to the extent of the problem. Besides, public policy centers and feminist NGOs leading this process promoted the creation and consolidation of a network with local and international stakeholders, which upon the return to democracy, also included political actors. Actions carried out by this NGO network and public policy centers finally contributed
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to the enactment of a law against intra-familiy violence and to the implementation of a public services programme for the prevention and attention of violence. The institutionalization of a problem as State policy issue as we have seen in the case of domestic violence in Chile often takes place almost simultaneously with its identification or visualization. At this stage, the issue becomes decisively incorporated to the public debate within the institutional agenda of the Executive or Legislative powers, thus fuelling a mechanism for the formulation of perspectives and solutions. In order to achieve this crucial step, think tanks become specialized in diverse tasks in order to attract attention and gather support for their actions; in this way, groups take positions either to lobby or to struggle. Some others become more focused on making society their means of action, by specializing in dissemination and awareness activities through information campaigns or arranged workshops and conferences. Thus, the intention is to raise interest among the public or voters and change the interpretation frameworks, so that it is them who exert the pressure on public authorities. Designing Public Intervention Alternatives The second stage of public policy-making i.e. their design is referred to the translation of the public problem into the different political-institutional logics, aiming at producing a legal text or at the implementation of public services, where it is necessary to define the problem, propose hypothesis on its causes, and put forward possible and practical solutions. It is here that think tanks from their inception have played a prevailing role as design groups, where they have contributed with their great capacity for innovation and creativity. And by also coordinating the efforts of think tanks overseas or by designing policies which have already been successfully implemented in other countries of the region or which have similar characteristics. As a matter of fact, the capacity of think tanks to design innovative policies offers clear leadership opportunities for reformist politicians who know how to take advantage of them. The internationally known Popular Participation Law approved in Bolivia in 1994 during the government of Gonzalo Snchez de Lozada followed a long process in which diverse public policy centers and NGOs played a leading role. In 1988, the Center for Rural Research and Promotion (CIPCA) organized a series of workshops which concluded in 1990 with the release of a document entitled Por una Bolivia diferente (in English, For a Different Bolivia), proposing a different solution to the old problem of centralism in the Bolivian State, which consisted in transferring action and decision-making powers apart from economic resources to peasant and ethnic communities (Molina, 1997). The proposal was then picked up by Fundacin Milenio (Millennium Foundation, an organization engaged in public policy debate and proposals, which was founded by Snchez de Lozada and his collaborators in the 1980s) and by a working group convened by the organization, which also included indigenous leaders and leaders of other coalition parties, besides young scholars. After having lost Bolivias presidential election in 1989, Snchez de Lozada resorted to the services of Fundacin Milenio for the design of the campaign proposals that would ensure his victory in 1993. Thus, the organization launched the so-called Plan de Todos (Plan for All),
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which aimed at the countrys most urgent problems and proposed innovative solutions, among which the popular participation of communities was underscored. According to Grindle, such a proposal offered the opportunity to eradicate three important problems in Bolivia; to promote national legitimacy, fight corruption and counteract the centrifugal trends of capital-based departments. In this way, on February 21st 1994, following several collaboration and negotiation processes with different political actors, the proposal was submitted to Congress together with a letter, portraying it as the countrys most important redistribution of political and economic power since the 1952 revolution (Grindle, 2000:19). Consequently, the Republic of Bolivia was reorganized into 311 municipalities, which are entitled to manage 20% of the national budget for local development purposes. Deciding the Course of Action At the moment of decision-making our third stage public policies are brought to life if such is the political will at the Executive or Legislative level. In effect, the hybrid presidential/legislative government system adopted by Latin American countries prevents the direct participation of think tanks in decision-making processes. This is when the democratic nature of the State, which imposes that collective decisions should be made by political representatives freely elected by citizens, comes under discussion since experts and professionals belonging to think tanks who have exchanged political ambition for intellectual neutrality certainly lack such a capacity. Lewis Coser says in a famous quotation that knowledge may bring power, but even so men of knowledge have rarely been men of power (Puryear, 1994:3). Although it is difficult to measure the influence exerted by the negotiation and information activities of think tanks on final decision-making, owing to the methodological obstacles thereof6, it is clear that many think tanks have managed to achieve a distinct impact on public decisions made in the region in recent decades. Maybe the most outstanding case regarding the role played by think tanks in indicating the political path to be followed by a country is that of Chile. During the last years of Pinochets dictatorship, intellectuales played a crucial role in the transition to democracy. Specialized professionals and scholars mostly set up effective research and consultancy centers, being among them CIS consortium made up at the same time by CED, SUR, and ILET and the Technical Committee for Free Elections. According to Puryear, Chilean intellectuals and policy centers helped the newly-formed political opposition forces to overcome their marked divisions as well as to provide them with a strategic vision (Puryear, 1994:96). In the first place, organizations such as the above-mentioned managed to replace political competition with scientific interest by means of numerous conferences, workshops, publications and informal meetings. As harshly stated by Manuel Antonio Garretn when referring to CEDs workshop programme it made Christian Democrats realize that Socialists at least at technical level were not brutes, and the Left realized that Christian Democrats were not fascists (ibid: 97). In
6. The difficulty in assessing the influence of think tanks on public decisions is partly due to the fact that there is no effective way to isolate those think tanks recommendations from which political decisions were made, since there is always an overcrowding of ideas and interests from different political groups at this point (Abelson, 2004).
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the second place, intellectuals made opposition politicians the radical proposal to put off the struggle for free elections, and participate instead in a plebiscite to decide whether the government of General Pinochet was to remain in power for eight more years. In order to justify this strategy, experts quoted diverse studies and surveys carried out, which showed that people would be more afraid to express their point of view during an election than in a popular consultation. This correct analysis together with the cooperation between opposition leaders led them to win the referendum with 54.7% of the vote, thus enabling the holding of legislative and presidential elections in 1989, where Patricio Aylwin was elected to head the new democratic regime. In Peru, the Institute for Freedom and Democracy-ILD became one of the most influential organizations during Alberto Fujimoris first administration, in the early 1990s. Not only was it charged with the design of an administrative streamlining process which significantly reduced the steps to legalize properties and other public procedures, but also influenced the government of Fujimori towards the implementation of one of the most ambitious legal reforms ever proposed in Peru in the last century, which sought to legalize the properties of marginalized groups (De Soto, 2002). An evidence of this is the statement made by Abimael Guzmn, leader of Sendero Luminoso, who said in 1991 ILD is a source of legislation, They make the laws. It is them who write the laws and then have them approved (ibid, 2002: xxix)7. ILD managed to have such a level of influence on the Peruvian government thanks to a strategy for the publication of its analysis in books and newsletters, which reached the highest levels of sales ever known in Peru until then and, maybe above all, to its capacity to establish links with elected officials. According to De Soto (2002), the President of the Republic, Fernando Belande Terry, invited, in 1984, ILD representatives to design a strategy aimed at stopping the advance of terrorism. ILD advised the President to carry out a radical reform of the legal system with a view to reduce the framework of laws and procedures regulating the operation of society. The strategy for approaching the Executive became consolidated during the administration of Alberto Fujimori when he asked ILD to design and implement the necessary reforms to legalize companies and property that were kept illegal. This double strategy massive dissemination of its analysis and independent collaboration with different governments made ILD to be ranked by The Economist magazine as one of the worlds most influential think tanks (ibid). Implementing Public Policies and Reforms Think tanks have also had a growing impact on public policy formulation itself. In this sense, they have ceased to be simple factories of ideas to turn into their developers (think and do tanks). This is partly due to the institutional weakness of Latin American States to turn good ideas into successfully implemented policies (Braun et al., 2004). In this way, innovative research centers offer technical assistance and consultancy services, which counteract the
7. The perception of the leader of Sendero Luminoso is ratified by a cartoon that was published in Caretas magazine in 1993, where the leader of ILD appears saying to former president Fujimori: I want to make it clear once and for all. He is the formal President and I am just the informal President.
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characteristic institutional weakness of Latin American States that prevents them from making structural changes or implementing very ambitious reforms. As a matter of fact, the lack of specialized human capital, particularly at local level, is one of the main constraints to the successful implementation of legal systems and/or reforms. Besides counteracting the lack of professional or expert staff at this government level, think tanks also contribute to the effective implementation of programmes and projects proposed by reformist politicians. It is worth pointing out that the degree of success and effectiveness in implementing innovative reforms and projects results from the joint effort between think tanks and the State to ensure the permanence and sustainability of those policies. FGS a think tank engaged in the implementation of public policies in Argentina is a clear example of joint work with the local government. FGS suggested the Minister of Education of San Luis province, Hctor Torino, the implementation of an innovative project consisting in the creation of independent schools in such province. The concept of independent schools quite popular in the United States and United Kingdom where they are known as charter schools was alien to Argentina. However, thanks to the 1993 education reforms the Federal Law of Education which allowed for the decentralization of educational duties to provinces the minister had the freedom to implement alternative projects in the area of education. Thus, the task of opening those schools, which have an independent administrative status in spite of being State-funded and offering at the same time free services without distinction whatsoever, was undertaken jointly with FGS. With a work team of five people in the province, FGS managed to open five independent schools in 1999, offering education services to over 2,000 first-year students. In the years that followed, the number of independent schools and students enrolled would successfully continue to increase (Braun et al., 2004). As it was previously mentioned, ILD played a crucial role in the implementation of different reforms carried out by the Peruvian government in the early 1990s. In effect, partly as a result of the agreement between the government of Peru and ILD for the implementation of legal and administrative streamlining reforms, nearly 2,700 new companies were registered and legalized, thus resulting in a tax yield of $2 trillion and in the creation of over 500,000 new jobs (De Soto, 2002)8. To implement these reforms, among other strategies, ILD set up Administrative Simplification Tribunals which were televised every week and where citizens complaints regarding the legal and administrative system were heard and discussed (e.g. the procedure to obtain a passport or to enter a public university). By means of this it was possible to identify the areas on which legal and administrative reforms were to be focused and which were then to be implemented by an ILD team in collaboration with the corresponding public officials. Nevertheless, ILDs strategy for keeping close contact with the government showed its limitations when owing to disagreements between ILD directors and President Fujimori, the think tank stopped implementing government projects in 1996 (ibid.).
8. The influence of think tanks on public decision-making is being increasingly acknowledged in countries such as the US. According to Andrew Rice, author of the book Think Tanks, Public Policy, and the Politics of Expertise, the need for a war on Iraq was already present in some research centers and it was them who finally "pulled the trigger" (TDM, 2005).
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Monitoring Politicians and Public Policies A role that has been played with growing ability and impact by a diversity of Latin American organizations is that of monitoring the quality of public officials and institutions. The opportunities brought by democracy, the increasing capacity to set up networks and alliances and the growing access to information and communication technologies contributed in the past decade to the emergence of organizations that included among their activities the monitoring of areas as broad as the public budget (Center for the Implementation of Public Policies promoting Equity and Growth CIPPEC, in Argentina), election spending (Participacin Ciudadana, in Ecuador) and the performance of local governments (Vigila Per, in Peru). As pointed out by Abelson, think tanks have turned into permanent filters within the process of public policymaking (Abelson, 2004:231). In effect, given their political independence, think tanks can be excellent in evaluating the degree of effectiveness of public policies. In addition, they have become excellent monitoring agents for public officials, particularly politicians. Thus, initiatives aimed at monitoring the performance and honesty of deputies, ministers, etc. have been developed in different countries of the region. Taking advantage of the social atmosphere prevailing in Ecuador following peoples protests in early 2005 which prompted the ousting of the then President of the Republic, Lucio Gutirrez as well as the promises of the new government to launch a more transparent and democratic way of governing, an agreement was signed between the Ministry of Economy and Finance and a coalition of 16 civil society organizations made up of universities and NGOs under the leadership of a think tank, through which said ministry undertook the commitment to publicly release the information about the origin and destination of public resources. Such information had not been made available to citizens in spite of the existence of a Transparency and Access to Information Law, which forced all public entities to release the information about their officials, budget, activities and management outcomes. As a result of the pressure exerted by this coalition, the Ministry of Economy and Finance is providing citizens with information that may allow them to monitor not only the public budget at the central government, but also the budget that is being transferred to the different local governments. Furthermore, the coalition has succeeded in making the Ministry of Economy and Finance adopt information transparency mechanisms by means of the incorporation of detailed and updated information on budget implementation to its website. In general, two trends can be identified within the activities of think tanks in this last item. On the one hand, many think tanks have focused on monitoring political processes such as election spending, the actions of officials, etc. On the other hand, there is the emergence of numerous think tanks (or think tank networks) specialized in monitoring different areas of public finance ranging from the central government budget to revenues from natural resources (e.g. oil, gas, etc.). Their impact is shown both in the small and huge efforts of the State to ensure the transparency of its economic policies, by means, for instance, of a website including budget information or by detailed reports published on a yearly basis.
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Analyzing the Impact of Think Tanks on Reform and Democratic Consolidation Processes: Champions or a Threat to Democracy? When analyzing the role played by think tanks both in the political reforms needed for the transition to democracy as well as in first-generation reforms, it is possible to find an increasing capacity to propose ideas and have influence on decisions as well as to support the implementation and sustainability of public reforms. What is not so clear is whether this course of action is undermining or strengthening democracy and State institutions. Therefore, there follows an analysis of the impact some think tanks have had on Latin American democracies.
Promoters of Ideas and Public Innovation The evidence put forward in this study shows that in countries characterized by highly-conflictive political systems (e.g. blockade among State powers combined with the promotion of a multi-party system) such as the Latin American ones, actors lacking a formal authority like think tanks have a certain leeway that allows them to put forward ideas and make reform proposals, which traditional political actors would find it politically or institutionally difficult, if not impossible, to make. The strongest temptation for politicians is to remain politically correct. Owing to the fact that democracies are becoming increasingly dependent on opinion polls, decision-makers usually base their proposals and positions on what is found acceptable by most voters and/or the groups providing them with political support. This tends to discourage the formulation of innovative and politically controversial reforms. As a result, the responsibility of pushing public problems (maybe not yet acknowledged by most of the population) to the political agenda often falls on civil society organizations. As stated by Heifetz (1997:247), our politicians find it very difficult to bring up sensitive issues in election times, since voters insist on feeling protected. This explains the importance of having people and/or organizations with enough freedom and independence so as to deviate from the rules or that which is commonly accepted and, consequently, propose creative solutions to complex social problems. Think tanks, as part of civil society, play a major role in the introduction of new issues to the public agendas, mainly though not exclusively through the creation and dissemination of innovative ideas, information and proposals. Diane Stone asserts that think tanks provide services and perspectives needed by the public that are not always produced by either the State or the market (Stone, 2004:232). She argues that this is a key process for the consolidation of democracy since many think tanks proposals are representing the interests of marginalized groups in society. The case of Chilean organizations is a palpable example of this. The network against domestic violence succeeded in preventing this from being considered as a private problem, thus turning it into a policy object. In the case of Chile, this was an issue that could have hardly been brought up by State institutions since the Chilean society had not yet visualized it as a
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public problem, but also because it was related to the legacy of violence left by the dictatorship, which politicians were willing to overcome (Araujo et al., 2000). In terms of public policy design, think tanks help to strengthen democracy by means of their capacity to present specific proposals. From the point of view of democratic consolidation, this forces traditional political actors such as political parties to increase their propositional capacity, and offers society more perspectives on the same problem. In short, public debate is enhanced and democracy grows stronger. The example of decentralization policy design in Bolivia showed the crucial role played by organizations such as CIPCA. The latter proposed a decentralization model different from those that had been proposed until then, which restored action and decision-making powers to peasant and ethnic communities and led to the approval of the Popular Participation Law which acknowledged and empowered over 3,000 Base Territorial Organizations (OTB) made up by ayllus, neighbourhood organizations, etc. Finally, think tanks have developed innovative social control methods which have contributed to the increasing transparency of public institutions, politicians and public policies. The multiplication of citizen observatories on the quality of public services (Instituto CUNTO, in Peru), public finance (CIPPEC, in Argentina; and FARO Group, in Ecuador), election spending (Poder Ciudadano, in Argentina; and Participacin Ciudadana, in Ecuador) have had an undeniable impact on the capacity of Latin American citizens to generate information about institutions previously known for their secrecy and, to sum up, to monitor and control the political power.
Think Tanks as Catalysts for Consensus Think tanks can also work as a space where actors from diverse ideologies discuss ideas and develop at least minimally agreed plans of action. In Chile, in times of Pinochet, intellectuals who had been rejected by universities sought shelter in think tanks, which served them as platforms to discuss and agree strategies for a return to democracy among actors from different ideologies and political trends. Given the weakness of political parties, the space provided by organizations such as CED and FLASCO made it not only possible to agree on the best way to prepare a transition to democracy but also to form a coalition made up of different interests and ideologies, ranging from the Communist left to center-right groups, which managed to confront the government with enough strength so as to win the plebiscite and the election. The consensus building capacity of think tanks is not an exclusive Latin American phenomenon. According to Lucarelli and Radaelli (2004), these organizations became true policy forums in Italy, which prompted in the 1990s the consolidation of plural coalitions made up by members of different ideological trends, thus facilitating tax and electoral reforms, among others. Based on the idea of governance, described as the way State, market and civil society interact, not only has the participation of think tanks enhanced democratic debate, promoted
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ideas and reform areas, but it has also catalyzed the necessary consensus to launch crucial public reforms for the development of their countries. From such a point of view, think tanks represent one of the pillars of the practice of good governance since they have sought for economic and social development by means of new partnerships among public powers, the world of private companies and the sector of non-profit associations (Balbis, 2001). Nevertheless, the presence and participation of think tanks in public reform processes has not been free of risks and limitations. The question regarding how legitimate and representative these actors are brings up another aspect of their action, which will be analyzed as follows.
Think Tanks: Champions or a Threat to Democracy? Where does the legitimacy enabling think tanks to have incidence on the public agenda comes from?, who has granted them the right to affect peoples lives?, what kind of participation processes are used by these organizations in order to make sure that their proposals are discussed with at least part of the groups affected by them? These questions seem to be particularly important when analyzing the growing influence of think tanks on the public agendas of Latin American countries. However, these questions are not new. Similar questions have come up when analyzing the role of technocracy in Latin American public reforms. Is it possible to compare think tanks with technocratic teams? Taking into account that many of the technocrats who led the implementation of structural adjustment policies in countries such as Argentina, Mexico and Chile came from very well-known think tanks (Puryear, 1994; Dominguez, 1997), it is indeed not hard to argue that think tanks share several characteristics with the technocratic groups that joined the Executive powers of Latin American governments in the 1990s and were granted the power and autonomy to promote reforms in different policy areas (Grindle, 2004). Of course, the great difference lies in the fact that technocrats were found within the State while think tanks operate outside of it. So, are think tanks in fact technocrats from outside the State? Arguments in favour of this hypothesis come up when taking into account that both technocrats and most think tanks base their legitimacy on the rationality and science incorporated to their methodology and proposals (Domnguez, 1998 De Soto, 2002). On the other hand, the same as technocrats, most of the teams making up Latin American think tanks have had a highly specialized academic training, usually in US and European universities. Bearing these similarities in mind, it is worth remembering the concern expressed by different authors with regards to the impact of technocracy on democratic institutions. Thus, in his analysis about technocracy in Latin America, Patricio Silva underlines the anti-democratic character of technocrats, as actors, and of technocratic policies, as the result of a government style which lacks the legitimacy granted by democratic processes and eliminates citizen participation and policies from the resolution of technical problems (Silva, 1997:196).
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Other authors underscore the unidimensional in general, economy-based perspective of technocratic proposals that favour authoritarian styles of decision-making, particularly in macroeconomic issues (Malloy, 1989). Finally, others highlight the isolation and lack of accountability of technocratic groups, which undermines the essence of democracy where power should always remain under the control of citizens (ODonnell, 1995). Without intending to ascribe all these concerns to the analysis of the impact think tanks have had on Latin American democratic institutions, it should be pointed out that the cases analyzed in this study give evidence as to the emergence of at least some of them. To this effect, I go back to the questions posed at the beginning of this section, which dispute the source of legitimacy and degree of representation of the proposals put forward by think tanks. This concern should probably disappear when taking into account that many think tanks argue that their legitimacy arises from the objective character of their analysis and that not being representatives of any specific group is precisely their source of credibility. However, upon the threat posed by the fact that the ideology of rationality and neutrality is nothing but a strategy to launch proposals which indeed address specific interests, it is worth wondering: who or what should be monitoring the fulfillment of this promise? In short, when analyzing the cases of think tanks involved in processes aimed at controlling and monitoring public officials and institutions (e.g. public finance, election spending, the performance of deputies, etc.) the following question arises: how come is it possible to prevent such supervision from being exerted on certain subjects to the detriment or benefit of others? This is particularly important when taking into account that one of the major challenges faced by think tanks is to obtain financing without risking their true or apparent autonomy (McGann & Weaver, 2000). The following concern has to do with the impact of think tanks on the procedures and rituals used by democracy to receive and process social demands. As I have shown in previous sections, several think tanks have contributed with innovative ideas, proposals and actions precisely due to what Heifetz describes as creative deviance which allows them to take a distance at least temporarily from the rules and rituals that are present in a democratic system and society. The use of this creative deviance enabled ILD to gather nearly 300,000 complaints regarding the operation of public organizations and produce nearly 400 legal proposals which were directly implemented by the Executive without Legislative scrutiny. This created the perception among public opinion that ILD directors represented the power behind the power (the perception of the president of ILD as informal President of the Republic, which was portrayed in the cartoon of Caretas magazine). The likelihood of think tanks outweighing public institutions is highest in societies where democratic and State institutions are weak and inefficient. However, the question remains as to whether the role of public policy centers is not contributing to undermine them even further. Taking into account these concerns and how difficult it is to ask think tanks to democratize their internal structure, it is crucial to set up mechanisms aimed at making them more transparent and accountable to public scrutiny.
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These mechanisms could be, among others: 1) to publish their activities as well as the origin and use made of resources. Only in this way will doubts as to the level of independence from specific interests be reduced; 2) to incorporate those groups that will be affected by their proposals into their design and implementation process. The public hearings organized by ILD can be a specific example of the way in which think tanks may achieve this goal; 3) to create a space where to convene representatives of different ideologies and perspectives on a specific public problem, thus becoming real policy forums where to catalyze consensus for the implementation of public reforms; and, finally, 4) to develop the ability to link their actions to democratic procedures and State institutions. These mechanisms may strengthen the capacity of think tanks to contribute to public debate and to improve the public services offered to citizens without sacrificing in the process the public institutions in charge of ensuring their sustainability.
The Role of Think Tanks in Past and Future Reforms: Some Conclusions The case studies presented here show the growing influence of think tanks in the process of creation of public reforms. This seems to confirm Bobbios diagnosis that in complex societies it is not individuals but groups which have the leading role in the political life of a democratic society. As implied by the analysis presented in this study, the growing complexity of public problems and weakness of the State to rapidly and effectively address the new social challenges, offers opportunities for public policy centers to play a key role in the promotion of those reforms needed for the development of the countries in the region. The pending challenge is to continue to fulfill their role as promoters of innovative ideas and practices in addressing public problems, without undermining but rather strengthening the already weak democratic and State institutions in Latin America. Part of such double role might be fulfilled by think tanks provided they become as in the case of public policy centers in Chile catalysts for consensus, thus preventing positions exclusively based on ideology and political polarization from obstructing not only the design and implementation of political, economic and social reforms but also the minimum levels of governance that may contribute to the progress and consolidation of democratic regimes. To such effect, think tanks are challenged to find ways to become true policy forums and get in contact with organizations representing different perspectives, interests and needs within society, thus turning into what Camou describes as a sort of transversal party that traverses different political tendencies, allowing for the implementation of public reforms that will remain beyond the elections. This is particularly true for the second generation of public reforms where a type of governance different from the one that enabled the first-generation economic reforms will be necessary. As it has been expressed by Moiss Nam, the champions of the new generation of reforms will not be a small group of powerful technocrats with expertise in the complexity of macroeconomic management, but rather a myriad of middle-level public administrators skillfully building the organizational structure and indispensable logistics for the operation of the State. As champions of reforms, the latter are being joined by civil society organizations, local
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governments and private companies that need the support of think tanks not only to help them construe the reality but also to promote ideas, proposals and consensus that may facilitate the implementation of reforms and the construction of public institutions aimed at fostering the development and change of countries within the region.
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Abelson, Donald E. The business of ideas: the think tank industry in the USA. In Think Tank Traditions: Policy research and the politics of ideas, edited by Diane Stone and Andrew Denham. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004. Araujo, Kathia, Virgina Guzmn, and Amalia Mauro. El surgimiento de la violencia domstica como problema pblico y objeto de polticas. Revista de la CEPAL (2000). Balbis, Jorge. ONGs, Gobernancia y Desarrollo en Amrica Latina y el Caribe. Unesco. Available at http://www.unesco.org/most/dsp53_sp.htm (2001). Braun, Miguel, Antonio Cicioni, and Nicols Ducot. Should Think Tanks do Policy Implementation in Developing Countries. In Think Tank Traditions: Policy research and the politics of ideas, edited by Diane Stone and Andrew Denham. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004. Brunner, Jos Joaqun. Paradigmas sobre utilizacin del conocimiento producido por la investigacin social, Santiago de Chile, FLACSO (1993), in Camou, Antonio, Los Consejeros del Prncipe: Saber tcnico y poltica en los procesos de reforma econmica en Amrica Latina. Nueva Sociedad, No. 152 (1997). Brunner, Jos Joaqun, and Oswaldo Sunkel. Conocimiento, sociedad y poltica, Santiago de Chile, FLACSO (1993), in Camou, Antonio, Los Consejeros del Prncipe: Saber tcnico y poltica en los procesos de reforma econmica en Amrica Latina. Nueva Sociedad, No. 152, (1997). Camou, Antonio. Los Consejeros del Prncipe: Saber tcnico y poltica en los procesos de reforma econmica en Amrica Latina. Nueva Sociedad, No. 152 (1997). Centeno, Miguel Angel. The New Leviathan: The Dynamics and Limits of Technocracy, Theory and Society Journal 22 (1993). In Technopols: Ideas and Leaders in Freeing Politics and Markets in Latin America in the 1990s, in Democratic Politics in Latin America and the Caribbean, edited by Jorge I. Domnguez. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. De Soto, Hernando. The Other Path: The Economic Answer to Terrorism. New York: Basic Books, 2002. Domnguez, Jorge. Technopols: Ideas and Leaders in Freeing Politics and Markets in Latin America in the 1990s. In Democratic Politics in Latin America and the Caribbean, edited by Jorge I. Domnguez. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. Grindle, Merilee. Despite the Odds: The Contentious Politics of Education Reform. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2004.
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Grindle, Merilee. Designing Reforms: Problems, Solutions and Politics. Working Papers, John F. Kennedy School of Government. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000. Heifetz, Ronald. Liderazgo sin respuestas fciles: Propuestas para un dilogo social en tiempos difciles. Madrid: Editorial Paids, 1997. Latinbarmetro. Informe Resumen 2004. Una dcada de mediciones. Available at www.latinbarometro.org (2004). Longo, Francisco. Comparative institutional diagnosis of Civil Service Systems: Summary of 17 Countries Evaluations. In Public Policy Management and Transparency Network. Washington: Inter American Development Bank, 2003. Lucarelli, Sonia, and Claudi Radaelli. Italy: Think Tanks and the political system. In Think Tank Traditions: Policy research and the politics of ideas, edited by Diane Stone and Andrew Denham. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004. Malloy, James. Policy Analyst, Public Policy and Regime Structure in Latin America. In Governance: An International Journal of Policy and Administration, Vol. 2, No. 3, 1989. McGann, James and Kent Weaver. Think tanks and Civil Society in a Time of Change. In Think tanks & Civil Societies: Catalysts for Ideas and Action, edited by James G. McGann and R. Kent Weaver. London: Transaction Publishers, 2000. Meyer, Carrie. The Economics and Politics of NGOs in Latin America. Westport: Praeger Press, 1999. Molina, Fernando. Historia de la Ley de Participacin Popular. In El pulso de la democracia: participacin ciudadana y descentralizacin en Bolivia. Venezuela: Ed. Nueva Sociedad, 1997. Nam, Moiss. Latin America: The Second Stage of Reform. Journal of Democracy 5, (1994). ODonnell, Guillermo. Democracys Future: Do Economists Know Best?. Journal of Democracy 6 (1995). Pastor, Manuel and Carol Wise. The politics of Second-Generation Reform. Journal of Democracy 10.2 (1999). Puryear, Jeffrey. Thinking Politics: Intellectuals and Democracy in Chile, 1973-1988. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1994. Sherwood Truit, Nancy. Think tanks in Latin America. In Think tanks & Civil Societies: Catalysts for Ideas and Action, edited by James G. McGann and R. Kent Weaver. London: Transaction Publishers, 2000.
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Silva, Patricio. Ascenso tecnocrtico y democracia en Amrica Latina. Nueva Sociedad, No. 152 (1997). Stone, Diane. Think tanks beyond nation-states. In Think Tank Traditions: Policy research and the politics of ideas, edited by Diane Stone and Andrew Denham. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004. Tiempos del Mundo. Think tanks o el poder detrs de las agendas polticas: Vendedores de la libertad o pensadores con agenda propia? Semanario Tiempos del mundo, 2005. Ua, Gerardo, Gisell Cogliandro and Juan Labaqui. Polticas pblicas y toma de decisiones: Los think tanks en Argentina. Buenos Aires, 2004. Weaver, R. Kent. The Changing World of Think Tanks. Journal of Political Science and Politics (1989). Williams, Mark. Market Reforms, Technocrats, and Institutional Innovation. World Development Journal, Vol. 30, No. 3 (2002): 395-412.
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6. Think Tanks and Poverty in Latin America

The Role of Thinkers in the Marketplace of Social Policies in Argentina, Chile and Mexico1
GERARDO UA2, CARINA LUPICA3 and LUCIANO STRAZZA4
Introduction One of the main problems faced by Latin America is the high levels of poverty and inequality shown by a large part of its population. According to data from CEPAL (2007), in 2006 36.5% of the regions population (194 million) lived under the poverty line, while 13.4% where under the extreme poverty line (71 million). Although this issue has always been present on the public agenda, it has been in recent decades that the reiterated socioeconomic crises affecting the region have once again evidenced its relevance. Undoubtedly, an issue of such complexity and magnitude as the lack of resources and opportunities of a large part of the population requires great efforts in order to be solved, and not just from governments and public bureaucracies, but from all the actors that can participate and/or create solutions to change this situation. In this context, social policies are of great importance to help revert this scenario, even more considering the weakening of formal employment as focal point of social integration. Taking into account this relevance of social policies, the role of actors, both belonging to the State and academic spheres as well as to think tanks or civil society organizations, is undoubtedly a dimension that should be necessarily analyzed in greater depth. However, in spite of the growing importance of social policies in the region and the increasingly greater role of think tanks
1. We would like to thank the International Development Research Center (IDRC) of Canada for the support provided to carry out this research, as well as all the interviewees and/or people contacted for their predisposition to guide us and offer us their knowledge on cases studied. As usual, errors and/or omissions are the exclusive responsibility of the authors. 2. Co-founder and Main Researcher of the Siena Foundation. Degree in Economics from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). He is currently Head of the Project Executing Unit for the Financial Management System of the State of the Budget Directorate of the Ministry of Finance of Chile. He is a World Bank Consultant in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Peru and Paraguay and the IDB in Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay in financial management and governance. Consultant ILPES / ECLAC. Research Associate of CIPPEC. Develop researcher to IDRC, Canada. He was adviser to the Undersecretary of Budget, Ministry of Economy of Argentina and the Ministry of Finance of Paraguay. He has also worked in ANSES PAMI and AFIP and the Institute of Social Welfare of the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. 3. Main Reseracher of the Siena Foundation. Degree in Political Science at the Catholic University of Cordoba. Master in Economics and Public Policy Inst Torcuato Di Tella. Specialist in Social Policy. Executive Director and Academic Director of the Maternity Center Foundation (Argentina). She serves as Consultant to the International Labor Organization (ILO) in Chile under the project Promotion of policies for workers with family responsibilities and gender in Latin America and the Caribbean. Former Member of the National Committee of Caritas Argentina. She has developed social policy research and advisory councils for various foundations. She has also worked in PAMI and the Institute of Social Welfare of the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. 4. Reseracher of the Siena Foundation. Degree in Political Science from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and graduated from the Masters in Business Administration and Public Policy at the University of San Andres. He participated as an IDB Consultant in research on Latin American civil service and strengthening the governance model for the National Plan for Food Security (Argentina). Previously, he served as Consultant in the Human Rights Secretariat of the Nation (Argentina).
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and experts that create knowledge and aim at having influence on public decision-makers, the participation of these actors in the field of social issues, still remains relatively unexplored. Therefore, on the grounds that analyzing and understanding the role and interests of all actors participating in public policies is central to better understand their results, this research is aimed at making a first approach to the participation of think tanks and experts specialists, academics or researchers with a professional track record in the different stages of social policies in Latin America. It should be made clear that, in order to carry out this research, the field of study was limited to one of the facets of social policy: the struggle against poverty. Within this, three cases related to income-conditioned transfer programs were chosen as units of analysis: Progresa-Oportunidades (Mexico); Plan Jefes y Jefas de Hogar Desocupados (Argentina) and the Program Chile Solidario (Chile), which offer illustrative cases of this type of actions in the region. Although the participation of think tanks and experts has multiple dimensions and implications, this study aims at exploring two central hypotheses. The first one posits that a small number of think tanks in Latin America are engaged in the analysis and generation of proposals in terms of social policies, and particularly in the generation of proposals regarding the implementation of income transfer programs. The second hypothesis posits that those think tanks that indeed participate in social policies, mainly do so in the stages of policymaking and policy monitoring and evaluation, but show a low level of participation in what regards to identifying and giving priority to these issues on the public agenda. With a view to intensifying the analysis of these two central hypotheses, and thus addressing the relationship between think tanks and social policies in Latin America, this study is organized in four sections. Section I describes the theoretical framework and key concepts used, while the description of the social and political context in which the three income-conditioned transfer programs selected came to life, which are their goals and benefits form part of Section II. Then, Section III analyzes the characteristics of think tanks participating in social policies, as well as how and at which stage this participation takes place. Finally, and by way of final conclusion, Section IV develops the main research findings in the light of the hypotheses proposed in this study.
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SECTION I Definition of Key Concepts Policymaking Process5 In the first place, it is worth defining the environment in which the participation of think tanks and experts takes place. In this sense, we can define the policymaking process as the process through which public policies are debated, elaborated, approved and implemented. The same can be characterized as a game in which a variable number of actors interact in a negotiation arena, in order to impose or make their ideas and/or interests prevail. Those taking part in this process can be classified into two groups: formal and informal actors. Political parties, state bureaucracy, presidents, cabinets, legislatures and courts, among others, are examples of formal actors. While the private sector, social movements, the media, think tanks and experts are part of the group of informal actors. The essential difference between both groups is that formal actors are those that play constitutionally appointed roles, while informal actors do not. Even so, informal actors play important roles in the policymaking process, since on repeated occasions their participation has impact on negotiation processes, the results achieved and/or the implementation of public policies. In order to interpret the game or the interactions established between actors in the negotiation arenas, it is necessary to understand the roles each one of them plays, the interests moving them, the capacities they have and their preferences and expectations regarding the possible behavior of the rest of participants. Likewise, it is important to know the characteristics of the scenario or the nature of negotiation areas. In this case, they can also be classified as formal legislative commissions, cabinets and informal the public space, for instance. Finally, these negotiation environments obtain higher or lower levels of transparency regarding the degree of transparency, institutionality and public visibility they may have. A legislative debate in a full House session will have a higher level of transparency than a meeting to deal with a specific topic between a civil servant and an association representing certain sector. In short, the behavior of actors in the negotiation arenas may be construed as the result of their interests, incentives and resources, their expectations with regards to the actions of the rest of actors, the operation of political institutions and the basic institutional rules. This broad and varied set of aspects encouraging the actions of actors makes the policymaking process to be complex. Through the application of this conceptual framework and considering that the same allows to carry out a modular analysis where it is possible to break down certain stages or specific processes of a public policy, this article analyzes the role of think tanks and experts informal actors in social policies focused on the struggle against poverty in Latin America.
5. This point is developed according to Stein; Tomassi; Echebarria; Lora and Payne (2006).
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What are Think Tanks and Experts and Why are they Considered to be Relevant Actors in the Process of Public Policies? There is still certain difficulty in establishing a univocal definition of the concept of think tank. The differences observed in what regards to aims, goals, structures and forms of intervention of these peculiar actors lead to designate a number of very diverse organizations using this terminology. Nevertheless, there are a series of parameters giving access to a useful definition accounting for this complex figure. According to Ua (2006), in this work we consider think tanks to be research institutes, non-governmental organizations and private organizations all of them non-profit oriented to research and/or the promotion of issues aimed at influencing the public policymaking process. Taking into account the peculiar characteristics of this type of organizations in Latin America, we consider that this definition allows to cover more thoroughly the differences they show with regards to similar organizations in developed countries, mainly in the cases of the United States and Europe. Nevertheless, in order to achieve more specificity in the conceptualization of think tanks, they can be classified according to their characteristics and distinctive features into four ideal types: a) Private Research Centers, b) Academic Centers, c) Political Foundations and d) Advocacy Groups. This classification can be shaded when crossed with four basic functions developed by these organizations: a) dissemination environments, b) policy legitimators, c) knowledge networks and, d) support for political activity. It should be pointed out that these categories and functions are not mutually excluding since think tanks may have characteristics and functions that can be ascribed to more than one type. However, this classification is useful to understand and analyze the role of these actors.6 In short, the main function of think tanks is to promote issues for their incorporation into the public agenda, as well as to elaborate diagnostics and proposals regarding public policies, with a view to having influence on decision-making spheres. Owing to this, they are many times considered as mediators between knowledge and public decision-makers, as pointed out by Stone (2001), and therefore are given an unavoidable relevance in the analysis of the public policy cycle. Thus, think tanks are currently considered as an informal actor of increasing relevance in the policymaking process, since they contribute to set up a market where ideas circulate and are disseminated and, in some cases, manage to have influence on the final decisions of governments in terms of public policies (Abelson, 2006). On the other hand, in order to participate in this process, think tanks should have enough institutional resources of their own, among which we find the professionals or experts making up their working teams. The well-known experts, academics or researchers with a professional track record are a central source of information, knowledge and links with other actors for think tanks, thus bringing more prestige to the institution. On many occasions, these experts do not work exclusively in one organization but are members of several of them at the same time, thus forming a network through which knowledge flows and consensus are built.7
6. A detailed description of the different types of think tanks and their functions can be found in Ua (2006). 7.This topic is developed for the case of Argentina, in Lardone and Donadi (2006).
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In other cases, experts form part of the knowledge network in an individual capacity, while working in government institutions or as freelance consultants for international institutions, prior to be appointed as civil servants. In all cases, it should be noticed that a group of highly-qualified and experienced professionals that analyze, research and elaborate proposals, participates in the different public policy topics, with a view to having influence on the decisions made on its area of expertise. Therefore, in this study, experts were incorporated as relevant actors in the analysis of the participation of think tanks in social policies focused on the struggle against poverty in Latin America. How do Think Tanks Influence Public Policies and how is this Influence Measured? As it was previously expressed, think tanks are characterized by their production of information and knowledge with a view to having influence throughout the public policymaking process. However, according to Abelson (2006), the influence is an ambiguous and complex concept both in its essence and measurement. Unlike Holstis linear model which posits that if actor B follows the recommendations of actor A, this is because the latter has managed to exercise influence on the first one Abelsons holistic model assumes a more long-term perspective and opens the possibility that influence may be exercised through different channels and diverse resources. Said author maintains that: a) it is possible to exercise a gradual influence on decision-makers, b) it is important to understand the identities of those who try to exercise influence and on whom they are exercising it, c) the historical political context in which influence is being exercised should be considered and, d) it is necessary to combine quantitative and qualitative indicators to measure influence. According to this author, quantitative indicators comprise, for instance, the amount of media exposure of think tanks, their congressional testimonies, the publications they produce and the human and budgetary resources they have. On the other hand, qualitative indicators are those intangibles such as personal contacts with high-level officials that may have a profound impact on shaping policy decisions. Following this approach, in this study we try to account for the influence of think tanks in the different stages of social policies, by observing a previous step: the participation of the institution in the field under analysis. In this sense, it is understood in this article that participation becomes a necessary although not sufficient requirement to achieve influence. From this perspective, the concept of participation is the first step to analyze actors in the public policymaking process in each one of its stages. On account of all the above, this article analyzes the participation of think tanks by means of the analysis of the social and political/institutional context in which income-conditioned transfer programs come to life, and the characteristics and experiences of think tanks participating in the implementation of these programs and their relationship with public decision-makers. Thus, a qualitative research methodology was adopted, including searches on bibliographic files, the assessment of publications disseminated by think tanks and experts on the different facets of addressed programs and consultations and interviews with key actors. This allowed us to account for the main ideas and recommendations of think tanks and experts participating in the selected programs, and to rebuild the context in which participation has taken place.
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At which Stages of the Public Policy Cycle do Think Tanks and Experts Participate? In general terms, public policies are the result of a cyclic process made up of stages that can be differentiated at analytical level although not always in practice, since they often juxtapose each other and reflect the complexity that is characteristic of the above-mentioned policymaking process. In spite of this complexity, it is assumed in this work that the public policy cycle comprises four main stages in order to facilitate its study. A public policy begins with what Tamayo Sez (1997) calls as identification and definition of the problem. This stage is characterized by the problematization of a social life issue and its definition. The answer to the problem falls into the second stage, formulation, in which certain goals and strategies are set forth after analyzing different possible alternatives. The third stage is that of the implementation of said strategy, which is mostly implemented by state institutions, although in recent years there has been an increased participation of non-governmental organizations at this public policy stage. Finally, the stage of evaluation is aimed at comparing the strengths and weaknesses of the public policy, based on which certain changes could be eventually made. As acknowledged by Sherwood Truitt (2000), in the case of Latin America, think tanks achieved an increasingly greater relevance in the public policy cycle. On the one hand, over the last forty years they managed to have incidence on the public agenda, the strengthening of the democratic rules of the game, the provision of economic reform lines and the construction of analytical capacities in social sciences. Nevertheless, the authoritarian contexts in which they were inserted operated as strong constraints to the action and social influence of think tanks. This situation started to change with the recovery of democracy in many countries of the region, which enabled these actors to increase their participation and open new paths to exercise influence on decision-makers. Think tanks were increasingly turned into centers for the production of applied research on social policies and into organizations for their development, promotion and implementation. In spite of this increased role, we still lack a model of theoretical conceptualization that may allow pointing out or analyzing in which stages of the social policy think tanks participate or should intervene. In this sense, based on the analysis of three relevant experiences in Latin America, this study is a first approach towards a scheme of participation of think tanks in social policies. At the same time, it aims at establishing regularities and breakpoints within this process based on an analysis of their interests and interactions with state actors in a certain context.
The Participation of Think Tanks in Income-Conditioned Transfer Programs Considering that this study is focused on analyzing the role played by think tanks in the cycle of a specific set of public policies i.e. social policies that is, those that aim to have a direct impact on the well-being of citizens, it is necessary to more precisely define the type of social policy that will be analyzed. Thus, this work only addresses one of the facets of social policies: those aimed at fighting poverty. Among the contents of this type of policies, Repetto (2001:16) mentions the
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following: short-term measures for addressing emergencies resulting from specific crises, particularly in the area of food or other types of emergencies; the construction of basic infrastructure services or habitat; the promotion of equality of opportunities to increase human capital, in particular in areas such as education-training and health care; the promotion of social organization and plural associations between social groups and, finally, a certain level of basic income for those who cannot face on their own certain exogenous changes that affect their quality of life. Regarding this last item, which refers to the social policy analyzed in this article, it is worth remembering that the need to provide an amount of income that ensures minimum living conditions to all people is an old issue of debate within the framework of social policies, which gained new momentum in Europe in the 1930s, and especially during the post-war years. Around those years, different European countries started to launch minimum income programs, most of which associated the delivery of certain income to the work situation of people. The first countries to apply this practice were Denmark in 1933 and England in 1948 (Lavinas and Varsano, 1997; Matarazzo Suplicy s.f., cited in Godoy, 2004). More recently, the discussion about minimum income programs has been framed within a broader debate on the changes undergone by social security systems and the labor market in recent decades, particularly as of the 1970s. Following the logic of the Beveridgian social protection systems, which currently assume a perspective of unconditional, minimum income programs represent social security alternatives not based on labor security which should be within reach of all people without any sort of requirements. It is a citizens income universal allocation or national dividend ensured outside the labor relation, which is granted without condition of resources and without time limit to all individuals regardless of their age and social condition (Godoy, 2004). An alternative position to the above maintains that the allocation of income, in an unconditional manner, without matching contributions, presents serious budget constraints in developing countries, besides generating possible perverse incentives if becoming, for instance, a work discouraging factor. Said position, therefore, considers it necessary to condition the allocation of benefits to the delivery of certain matching contributions, and owing to economic constraints, that it should be exclusively directed to citizens living in poverty. This perspective prevailed at the time of launching minimum income programs or income-conditioned transfer programs in some Latin American countries, particularly as of the 1990s. These programs aim at ensuring a minimum level of income to the poorest people, but above all at breaking with the intergenerational transmission of poverty by means of human capital investments. To such effect, they operate at two levels: on the one hand, monetary transfers are made in order to improve the purchasing capacity of people and cover their short-term needs. On the other hand, said transfer is conditioned upon the fulfillment of certain rules with a view to fostering the reinforcement of the human capital, mainly of children. In general, families benefited from monetary transfers sign a responsibility or co-responsibility agreement, which is associated with the fulfillment of a counter-benefit in terms of nutrition, education and/or health of the children. Thus, the fulfillment of long-term needs is also addressed, by providing children with the necessary tools to emerge from the situation of vulnerability inherited from their parents.
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An example of the last type of minimum income programs are the three cases analyzed in this study: the Human Development Program Oportunidades (Mexico); the Plan Jefes y Jefas de Hogar Desocupados [Program for Unemployed Male and Female Heads of Household] (Argentina) and Chile Solidario (Chile). These three study cases are used to analyze more deeply the participation of think tanks in Latin American social policies.
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SECTION II The Income-Conditioned Transfer Programs This section has two aims. In the first place, to present the context in which selected programs have come to life, in order to analyze the participation of think tanks in Latin American social policies, since such context has operated as framework of possibilities and political, economic and social constraints for their formulation and implementation. In the second place, it seeks to describe the programs being analyzed, presenting their main characteristics. Human Development Program Oportunidades. Mexico (1997) In the middle of the 1990s, 30% of Mexicans lived in poverty (Levy, 2006), and were mainly inhabiting the rural areas of that country. Indicators on nutrition, infant mortality and illiteracy showed an equally gloomy perspective in the midst of a strong macroeconomic crisis. As a result, the successive governments tried to fight poverty through the implementation of a set of social programs and food subsidies. Nevertheless, poverty indicators not only fell but also failed to reverse the downward spiral by means of which children inherited this social vulnerability conditions from their parents. The failure of social policies was mainly caused by deficiencies in the geographic distribution of programs these were mostly implemented in urban areas while poor people were concentrated in rural areas, suspicions of political use which fell on the state apparatus and, related to the latter, the lack of periodic and transparent monitoring and evaluation (Scott, 1999). In this scenario, the Mexican government decided to re-focus the comprehensive strategy of struggle against poverty, which was based on three main pillars: a) temporary work programs, b) basic social infrastructure, and c) reinforcement of the human capital. In order to work on the third pillar and under President Ernesto Zedillo, the Education, Health and Nutrition Program Progresa (Progress) was launched in 1997, thus becoming one of the pioneer income-conditioned transfer programs in the region (Levy, 2006). After the first years of implementation, the impact evaluations on Progresa showed positive results on the beneficiary population. This gave legitimacy and prestige to the program, which was extended to urban areas, and managed to survive the change of national government authorities upon the arrival of Vicent Fox to power, which also represented the first change of ruling political party in the last 70 years. In the year 2002, Progresa changed its name to Oportunidades (Opportunities), substantially maintaining its goal to help families living in extreme poverty to overcome this condition through investments in human capital, that is, in nutrition, health and education. More specifically, the beneficiaries of this program are poor families, particularly their most vulnerable members: children and pregnant and breast-feeding women. Likewise, in order to strengthen the figure of women within the social and family context, they are usually granted the legal power to collect benefits on behalf of their families. Beneficiaries are selected by the State, based on qualitative and quantitative tools. First, a geographical criterion is used selection of
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the poorest communes so as to later identify the families that face the worst social situation, thus becoming potential beneficiaries of the program. Together with this, an active participation of beneficiaries is sought during the selection process by means of a stage of communal control which operates as readjustment in case there has been an error in terms of inclusion or exclusion. During its operation, the program offers the following benefits: Nutrition: monthly and fixed monetary support to improve the food consumption of the family, and provision of dietary supplements for infants, children aged 4 months to 2 years old, children aged 2-5 years old who are malnourished or at risk of malnutrition and breastfeeding women. Education: provision of school items and scholarships to all children under 18 who are between third grade of primary education and third grade of secondary education. The amounts of scholarships increase as progress is made throughout the school cycle, and are higher for girls than for boys and become adjusted every six months according to the inflation rate. Health: basic package of health care services and services for the prevention and treatment of malnutrition, which includes the distribution of vitamin supplements and information on malnutrition, hygiene and health care for female heads of household. As of 2002, with the change of the program Progresa for the program Oportunidades, other benefits were included, such as monetary support for adults over the age of 70 who are members of beneficiary families; savings mechanisms for the retirement of those beneficiaries aged 30-69 through which the government contributes one Mexican peso for each peso saved by these people; adult education; access to savings and credit mechanisms; reinforcement of the human capital, among others. Beneficiaries of the program Progresa-Oportunidades must fulfill certain requirements in order to maintain these benefits. Among them, they should give proof of the enrollment of children to the corresponding school cycle in order to receive the school items; they should certify their attendance to 85% of classes in order to receive scholarships, undergo preventive health check-ups and participate in education sessions or workshops for parents. From the point of view of its implementation, Progresa-Oportunidades is under the general coordination of the Ministry of Social Development (SEDESOL) of the Federal Government of Mexico. At the beginning it was implemented in Mexican rural areas, where the most pressing poverty situations were registered, as it was already pointed out. But from 2002, the coverage of the program was extended to urban areas, currently operating in more than 86,000 places (of a total of 250,000) of all municipalities or political delegations of the countrys federative entities. In 2006, the program reached 5 million families, equivalent to 25 million people, that is, 25% of Mexicos total population (SEDESOL, 2008). Thus, the program represents the most important instrument to overcome poverty, with a budget of 2.8 billion dollars for the year 2005 (Levy, 2006:31).
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In order to understand the participation of think tanks in social policies in Mexico, it is important to remember the challenges faced by the program in its origins: a. The profoundness and extension of extreme poverty: 21% of Mexican households 4.6% of people lived with an income below the poverty line. b. The monetary inequality and the inequality in terms of basic human capacities among the different socioeconomic sectors of the population. c. The marked territorial distribution of the vulnerable population: 75% of poor people lived in places with less than 500 inhabitants. d. The poor coverage and poor quality in the offer of basic health and education services in rural areas, resulting from an urban-oriented allocation of subsidies and public investment in human capital, focused on middle and high deciles (Scott, 1999). e. The economic crisis unleashed in 1995 seriously restricted the availability of public resources to fund universal coverage programs. As a result of this, the approach to social policies was concentrated on two focal points: to focus spending and to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of programs in a credible manner.8 f. The delegitimization of social policies caused by allegations of corruption and embezzlement of funds. The last two items are fundamental to understand the participation of think tanks in income transfer programs in Mexico. In order to overcome the accusations of lack of transparency and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of Mexican social policies, an obligation to submit the program to external evaluations by renowned and experienced academic institutions was contemplated in the regulations for the creation of Progresa. But, besides this, we should also take into account the interaction between the public administration sphere and the academy in Mexico, so as to more thoroughly understand the participation of think tanks in social policies. From this perspective, and according to experts consulted,9 Mexico has a multiplicity of academic institutions financially supported by the State, as well as a fluid circulation of experts between the academic sphere and the public administration. At the same time, these links between experts and politics were usually capitalized by Mexican political parties mainly the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to achieve technical support and legitimacy in the public policies proposed and implemented by them.10 Later on, these aspects will be dealt with in more depth.
Plan for the Unemployed Male and Female Heads of Household. Argentina (2002) At the end of 2001 Argentina faced a strong and widespread unprecedented economic, social and political-institutional crisis. A social outburst was registered on December 20th of that year, which came to an end with the fall of President Fernando De la Ras government, which was succeeded by four presidents elected by the National Congress within a one-week period.
8. Interview with Carlos Maldonado conducted within the framework of this research, March 2008. 9. Ahumada Ivico (FLACSO Mexico), Ansolabehere Karina (FLACSO, Mexico) and Maldonado Carlos (ECLAC) 10. Interview with Roberto Martinez Nogueira conducted within the framework of this research. March 2008.
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At the economic and social level, the devaluation of the Argentine peso had a strong impact on the income of families, while a 34% increase of the basic food basket of an average family was registered between December 2001 and May 2002. Nominal wages did not increase, thus strengthening the impoverishment of broad sectors of the population. In this sense, in 1994, 16% of Argentine people had an income inferior to the cost of the basic food basket and services (line of poverty), such rate having increased to 26% in 1998 and having reached 54.3% of the population in 2002. Extreme poverty also grew exponentially from 3% in October 1991 to 13.6% in October 2001, reaching 24.7% of the population in May 2002. On the other hand, open unemployment rose from 13.8% in October 1999 to 18.3% in October 2001, which particularly affected male and female heads of household: while open unemployment increased 17% between 2001 and 2002, this rate amounted to 37% among male and female heads of household (Golbert, 2004). This situation was translated into a strong discontent and social protests which adopted different forms, ranging from street demonstrations and cacerolazos,TN to the setting up of associations of unemployed people, known as piqueteros.TN In the early days of 2002 the Legislative Assembly appointed Eduardo Duhalde as President, who declared an occupational and food emergency with the purpose of giving priority to fiscal resources allocated to alleviate the social situation suffered by a large part of the population. At the same time, he called for a multi-sectoral dialogue to achieve political support and generate consensus in a fragmented society, which distrusted politicians. To such effect, he called for the moral support of the Catholic Church and the technical assistance of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), which together with the government set up the Argentine Dialogue Table. In this context, the creation of an income transfer program for unemployed heads of household was announced, which later became the Plan for the Unemployed Male and Female Heads of Household (PJyJHD, in Spanish). The PJyJHD was implemented with the aim of ensuring the family right of social inclusion, which in practice became an income-conditioned transfer program for Argentine households whose male or female heads were unemployed and had at least one child under the age of 18 in their charge or disabled children with no limit of age, or whose spouse was pregnant at the time of registering at the program. The monetary transfer was established at a monthly fixed amount of AR$150, which was distributed in a direct and individual manner. The program was designed on the basis of three components: Labor re-insertion solidarity component, to achieve the labor incorporation of unemployed workers who are beneficiaries of this plan into the private sector. Training component, aimed at generating improvements in the quality of adult training, whether they are or not beneficiaries of this plan.
TN. Cacerolazo is the name of a popular form of protest that consists in a group of people creating noise by banging pots, pans and other utensils in order to call for attention. TN. A piquetero is a member of a political faction whose primary modus operandi is based on the piquete. The piquete is an action by which a group of people blocks a road or streets with the purpose of demonstrating and calling attention over a particular issue or demand.
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Material component, through which the State makes economic contributions to cover the costs of materials needed to carry out infrastructure projects of community utility. As matching contribution, the PJyJHD demanded a labor counter-benefit from beneficiaries which was materialized by means of community activities, labor training, completion of basic formal education, or the incorporation into an enterprise. Likewise, beneficiaries should comply with the following conditionality: giving proof of the vaccination of their children according to the public mandatory scheme, and certify the regular attendance of school-age children to an education institution. The PJyJHD was coordinated by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security (MTEySS), with the support of the Social Security Administration (ANSES). The program was implemented all across the country and covered 2 million households by the end of 2002 (Golbert, 2004), accounting for 8 million people, that is, 23% of the total population. In this way, it became Argentinas most important social program. A major innovation of the program in terms of citizen participation was the creation of Consultation Boards or collegiate bodies, made up by state representatives, representatives of civil society organizations, faith-based organizations, organizations of employers, employees and unemployed people. A total of 1,872 Consultation Boards were set up at the three levels of government national, provincial and municipal to act as control bodies or mechanisms for the articulation of interests (Lupica, 2003). It should be highlighted that there were no think tanks among the members of Consultation Boards.
Program Chile Solidario Chile (2002) The program Chile Solidario comes to life in a much less dramatic political-institutional context than that of the PJyJHD in Argentina. On the one hand, the stability of Chilean institutions was not in crisis, and on the other hand, there was a stable political party system. It is worth remembering that Chile has the coexistence of two political forces: a left of center coalition which has been ruling since 1990 until the present time the Coalition of Parties for Democracy and a right of center coalition Alliance for Chile that plays the role of opposition. Anyway, in spite of the political-institutional context of stability, poverty was one of the central problems of Chile. Since the recovery of democracy in 1990, the governments of Presidents Patricio Aylwin (1990-1994) and Eduardo Frei (1994-2000) undertook the challenge of reducing poverty levels through the implementation of a numerous and diversified set of social programs, some of them of assistive nature and others of human development. Following the economic growth of the 1990s and the implementation of these programs, Chile managed to reduce poverty levels from 40% to 20% of the population (Ruz and Palma, 2005). This considerable social recovery particularly took place over the first five years of the 1990s, while during the second half of that decade a deacceleration in the reduction of these
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rates was registered, which made the poverty issue to be put back on the public agenda. From 1990 to 1995, poverty fell from 38% to 23% of the population, while from 1996 to 2000 it only fell from 23% to 20%. On the other hand, from 1990 to 1995, extreme poverty dropped from 13% to 6%, while from 1996 to 2000 it remained stable at 5.7% (MIDEPLAN in Ruz and Palma, 2005:13). This situation was due, among other causes, to problems in the design of social programs for example, flaws in targeting the beneficiary population with the ensuing inability to penetrate the hard cores of poverty. In 2000, among the measures taken during the first 100 days of administration of President Ricardo Lagos, the Ministry of Planning and Cooperation was charged with coordinating a general strategy of struggle against poverty. In 2002, following a series of consultations with think tanks and experts, a system of social protection known as Chile Solidario was implemented. According to its formulation, the program Chile Solidario was implemented with the aim of working with families living in extreme poverty, in order to strengthen the capacities of family members, improve their education, health and nutrition, and promote their incorporation to social networks. Thus, the families that were selected through the application of a socioeconomic characterization survey are benefited from a program that combines assistive components and the promotion of capacities. Chile Solidario has four basic components: Psychosocial support: professionals work 24 months with beneficiary families, in 7 basic areas: identification, health, education, family dynamics, housing conditions, work and income. Family protection bonus: it consists of a cash benefit provided over a 24-month period, conditioned upon the fulfillment of a Family Contract signed by the recipients, generally by the female head of household or the female partner of the head of household. Once this period has passed, beneficiaries continue to receive a bonus equivalent to a Single Family Subsidy over the 3 following years. Guaranteed cash subsidies: access of family groups to traditional cash contributions, such as the Single Family Subsidy (persons under 18 years old), the Old Age Assistive Pension (persons over 65 years old), the Assistive Pension for the Disabled, the Subsidy for Drinking Water and/or the Pro-Retention School Subsidy; among others. Preferential Access to programs of social development, work assistance and social security: all the families that are beneficiaries of the program Chile Solidario have priority access to other social programs being implemented, either implying the transfer of resources or not. As matching contribution, families sign a Family Contract through which they formally commit themselves to improve their quality of life, by fulfilling the goals set forth regarding the 7 areas dealt with in the psychosocial support component. The program Chile Solidario managed to cover 290,000 families in 2006, accounting for nearly 1 million people, that is, approximately 6.3% of the total population (MIDEPLAN, 2008).
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Its budget rose significantly over the years, increasing from 2.5 billion Chilean pesos in 2002 to 70 billion in 2007, which amounted to 2% of GDP11 (UNDP, 2007:7). The operation of this program is coordinated by the Ministry of Planning and Cooperation (MIDEPLAN) and the Solidarity and Social Investment Fund (FOSIS), dependent on said Ministry. It is worth mentioning that the participation of think tanks in the program Chile Solidario took place within a structural context that was particularly different from the rest of analyzed experiences. The dynamics of the Chilean political system are characterized by a stable party system since the recovery of democracy, where two coalitions a center-left and a center-right one coexist with strong programmatic and ideological differences. However, there is consensus on the main state policies, which gives great stability to the system. At the same time, the ideological differences of the political coalitions are reflected in the presence of think tanks that form part of each one of them, which generate proposals and initiatives that are promoted by each one of the previously mentioned political actors. In short, and for the purposes of this study, this stylized description and brief analysis of the context in which social programs come to life turns out to be fundamental to understand their design and final implementation. This is so, since in all analyzed cases, income transfer programs undertook characteristics that were directly linked to the peculiarities resulting from poverty issues in the respective countries. In addition, the context in which programs sprang up is also important to determine the level and form of participation of think tanks and experts throughout the public policymaking process. Thus, once these concepts have been put forth, the following Section analyzes the participation of think tanks and experts at the different stages of selected programs.
11. GDP year 2005.
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SECTION III The Participation of Think Tanks at the Different Stages of Social Programs There follows a description of the characteristics of think tanks and experts that had an active participation at the different stages of selected social programs.
Characteristics of Think Tanks with Participation in Social Policy In order to identify the universe of think tanks that participated in the social programs analyzed, two directories referred to this type of organization were surveyed: CIPPEC (2004) and McGann (2007).12 Those organizations characterized by authors as being the most relevant ones and whose work areas coincide with the issues of interest of this study were identified in each one of said directories. In addition, and for the individualization of experts, the survey was supplemented with a bibliographic search and interviews and consultations made to key social actors in each country. For such reason, it is not possible to assert that the think tanks and experts analyzed in this study are the only ones that had or aimed to have a leading participation in the formulation, implementation or evaluation of these social programs. Nevertheless, we consider them to be a representative and valid sample to analyze the dynamics of operation of this type of organizations in social policies. Table 1 includes the think tanks analyzed in each country, which were distributed according to the criterion mentioned in Ua (2006) into the following categories: Private Research Centers, Political Foundations, Academic Centers and Advocacy Groups. Moreover, two categories were added: Experts and Civil Society Organizations. The first one includes specialists who had an outstanding participation in a personal capacity and not as members of a specific institution in the social programs analyzed. The second category comprises those civil society organizations that participated but cannot be strictly categorized as think tanks. According to Leiras (2007), these are non-governmental organizations engaged in public issues and linked to non-trade purposes. That is to say, they are interested in public issues but they cannot be defined as think tanks, taking into account that they are not mainly aimed at the production of knowledge on public policies with a view to having influence on government decision-makers.
12. For further details see www.researchandpolicy.org and www.fpri.org/thinktankssurvey.asp respectively.
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Table 1. Think tanks and Experts with Participation in Social Policy, by Typology and by Country*
Type of organization Private Research Centers MEXICO ARGENTINA - Instituto para el Desarrollo Social Argentino (IDESA) - Asociacin Argentina de Polticas Sociales (AAPS) - Centro Interdisciplinario para el Estudio de Polticas Pblicas (CIEPP) - Grupo SOPHIA CHILE - Centro de Estudios Pblicos (CEP)
Political Foundations
- Corporacin de Investigaciones Econmicas para Latinoamrica (CIEPLAN) - Fundacin Chile 21 - Libertad y Desarrollo
Academic Centers
- Instituto Nacional de Salud Pblica (INSP) - Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropologa Social (CIESAS) - Colegio de Mxico (COLMEX) - Centro de Investigacin y Docencia Econmica (CIDE) - International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) - Santiago Levy - Jos Gmez de Len
- Universidad del Centro de Estudios Macroeconmicos Argentinos (UCEMA) - Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales Sede Argentina (FLACSO Argentina) - Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS) - Pablo Vinocur - Irene Novacovsky - Claudia Sobrn - Frente Nacional contra la Pobreza (FRENAPO) - Mesa del Dilogo - Dagmar Raczynski - Claudia Serrano
Advocacy Groups Experts
Civil Society Organizations
* Note: For further information on think tanks and experts, see Annex N 1: Description of analyzed think tanks and experts. Source: Own elaboration.
As it is shown in Table 1, the Mexican program Progresa-Oportunidades had the participation of two types of think tanks: 1 Advocacy Group (IFPRI) and 4 Academic Centers (INSP, CIESAS, COLMEX and CIDE). All of them participated at monitoring and evaluation stage of the program. In the case of IFPRI, this organization coordinated the evaluations of the programs during the first years of implementation. INSP analyzed health aspects by means of quantitative methodologies and then started to coordinate program evaluations; CIESAS carried out qualitative assessments and COLMEX did it from a gender perspective. Likewise, as it will be later dealt with in greater depth, the experts Santiago Levy economist and Jos Gmez de Lon demographer had an active participation in the design and set in motion of the program. On the other hand, the group of think tanks that participated in the Plan for the Unemployed Male and Female Heads of Household (PJyJHD) in Argentina showed a more heterogeneous composition than that of Mexico: 3 Private Research Centers (IDESA, AAPS and CIEPP); 1 Political Foundations (Grupo SOPHIA); 2 Academic Centers (UCEMA and FLACSO Argentina) and 1 Advocacy Group (CELS). With regards to experts, three renowned professionals in terms of social policies were identified: Irene Novacovsky sociologist, Claudia Sobrn anthropologist and Pablo Vinocur sociologist. Lastly, it is worth highlighting the participation of civil society
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organizations (FRENAPO and the Argentine Dialogue Table), particularly at the background to the PJyJHD. Finally, in the Program Chile Solidario we identified the participation of 2 types of think tanks: 1 Private Research Center (CEP) and 3 Political Foundations (CIEPLAN, Fundacin Chile 21, Libertad y Desarrollo). With regards to experts, we identified the participation of 2 sociologists: Dagmar Raczynski and Claudia Serrano, who formed part at the time of Asesoras para el Desarrollo, a consulting office whose mission is to carry out technical-academic research, studies and consultancies that may contribute to public policymaking. Although all surveyed actors had an active participation in the analyzed programs, such participation is neither similar nor homogeneous. The differences in the participation of think tanks and experts in the diverse countries, and within them, enhances the analysis of the influence and the way in which think tanks are linked to social policies, which represents the subject of analysis of this study. For such purpose, there follows a more detailed account of the stages of the social policy cycle in which think tanks and experts participate in the cases under study. Participation of Think Tanks and Experts at the Different Stages of Income-Conditioned Transfer Policies In Table 2, think tanks and experts are sorted according to the public policy stages at which they participated, in the three countries studied. Aiming at analyzing each one of these stages in greater detail, each one of them is addressed separately below. Table 2. Participation of Think Tanks and Experts at the Different Stages of Social Policies
Public policy stages Identification and definition of the problem Antecedents Santiago Levy Jos Gmez de Len FRENAPO CIEPP Grupo SOPHIA Irene Novacovsky Claudia Sobrn Pablo Vinocur Fundacin Chile 21 CIEPLAN CEP Claudia Serrano Dagmar Raczynski MIDEPLAN Fundacin Chile 21 Libertad y Desarrollo Claudia Serrano MEXICO ARGENTINA CHILE
Proposal of a solution
Design of the program
Santiago Levy Jos Gmez de Len
Implementation* Monitoring and evaluation
SEDESOL IFPRI INSP CIESAS Colmex CIDE
Ministry of Labour and Social Security (MTySS) CELS AAPS CIEPP UCEMA IDESA Grupo SOPHIA FLACSO Argentina
* Note: for the implementation we indicate the State administrative area in charge of the implementation and/or coordination of the program. Source: our own elaboration.
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Identification and Definition of the Problem According to Tamayo Sez (1997), the stage of identification and definition of the problem is related to the problem of a social life issue that is incorporated into the political agenda, and to its corresponding definition. The latter is of utmost importance since it lays the foundations from which possible solutions are worked out. In fact, the strategies designed to solve a specific problem will be directly linked to the definition of said problem. In the case of our study, this means that social policies or approach strategies will be different if the poverty issue is defined, for instance, as lack of income or as deficiencies in the development of human capital. In this sense, we consider that in the three countries studied, poverty was an issue already set on the political agenda when the participation of think tanks took place. Thus, the role of think tanks in the region within the process of incorporation of issues related to income transfer social policies into the public agenda may be considered as a reactive rather than a proactive role. That is to say, think tanks react in view of an issue that has already been set on the public agenda.13 This situation differs from what happened in other public policy areas, in particular in those related to economic policies, where think tanks and experts played a central role in consensus building with respect to the economic reforms that were carried out. This situation can be particularly observed in the 1990s in the region, in what regards to reforms implemented, among others, regarding the functions and the level of participation of the public sector in the economic activity. Nevertheless, in spite of this reactive role, as it will be noticed in the following sections, each think tank and expert, once the issue has been set on the public agenda, has defined this problem in different manners, in terms of the values and support paradigms adopted.
Proposal of a Solution With respect to this stage, and for the purpose of this analysis, two likely instances of participation are contemplated: a) during a stage prior to the design of the program, thus generating antecedents, and b) directly participating in the formulation of the program. Starting by the case of Mexico, there is practically no participation of think tanks in the design of Progresa-Oportunidades. However, experts Santiago Levy and Jos Gmez indeed gained relevance, since they were the promoters and architects of the program, based on the confidence entrusted to them by the then President Ernesto Zedillo. Gmez de Len, who had been advisor to Zedillo when he was Secretary of Planning and Budget in the early 1990s (Bate, 2004), outlined a first proposal of income transfer policy in favor of poor families, aimed at strengthening their social condition and improving the level of education of children. His multidisciplinary professional profile, with knowledge in demography, sociology,
13. In the case of Argentina it is possible to identify a civil society organization that indeed played an outstanding role in the incorporation of the issue of poverty and lack of income into the public agenda: the FRENAPO. But as it was previously pointed out, this organization cannot be strictly considered as a think tank.
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economics and statistics, certainly had incidence on the whole program and the medium and long term strategic viewpoint adopted by the plan (Yaschine and Orozco, 2007). For his part, Santiago Levy drew up a proposal that operated as antecedent of ProgresaOportunidades, adopting a strategy that in the early 1990s was starting to gain relevance in forums and international organizations such as the World Bank (WB), the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Said strategy supported the need to simultaneously provide a basic package of education, health, and food services to poor families, with a view to taking advantage of the synergies among these three components and improving the social well-being (Scott, 1999). In particular, the first proposals of Santiago Levy the Extreme Poverty Assistance Centers, for example laid emphasis on the need to increase the income of families living in poverty, while at the same time encouraging the human capital. In that context, education was understood as an input within the health and food components, rather than a goal on its own (Scott, 1999). Later on, during the presidency of Ernesto Zedillo, Santiago Levy, who had been appointed as Sub-Secretary of Expenditure of the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit, Jos Gmez de Len, who was Director of the National Population Council (CONAPO), and officials working at the Ministry of Social Development (SEDESOL) drew up the final version of Progresa that included the provision of a comprehensive package of social services but the health and food components were at the service of education. In this way, the program adopted a clear approach towards the promotion of basic human capacities, which was to be later replicated in other Latin American countries. Santiago Levy also played a key role in re-directing economic resources stemming from ineffective subsidies and programs that had been finally closed towards Progresa. For his part, Jos Gmez de Len was appointed as the first Program Coordinator (Yaschine and Orozco, 2007). Thus, it is possible to notice a strong participation of experts in the process of formulation of the program and generation of previous knowledge in the case of Mexico, a situation that was not registered in Argentina, as it is explained below. With regards to background information related to the experience in Argentina, four proposals can be mentioned, which after their publication were partially adopted as reference for the design of the Program for Unemployed Male and Female Heads of Household (PJyJHD). The first one of them is the Citizens Income of CIEPP (1995) which in spite of not being a focused income-conditioned transfer policy, gains importance given the emphasis it lays on the need to strengthen the capacities of vulnerable groups and provide them with equal opportunities in the labor market, through a universal basic income transfer. This proposal contemplates a gradual implementation owing to Argentinas budget constraints and a progressive tax reform to fund it. The second proposal is the Income for Human Development (1999) of Irene Novacovsky and Claudia Sobrn. This proposal is aimed at increasing the opportunities and capacities of all members of poor families, by ensuring a monetary income to mothers. In exchange, families had to comply with nutritional, food, and health counter-benefits, as well as with the formal schooling
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of children under 19 years old. Besides, the project aimed at reinforcing the social capital through the participation of civil society actors in the provincial and municipal jurisdictions. For the two above-mentioned experts, a program bearing these characteristics had the strength of adopting a poverty approach in terms of human and social capital, and improving the selfesteem of beneficiaries within a framework of citizenship-building. The third antecedent is the Human Development Income (1999) of the foundation Grupo Sophia.14 This project, similar to that of Novacovsky and Sobrn, has the aim of promoting human capacities and improving the possibilities of children in the future. This would be achieved through an income transfer to poor families, in exchange for counter-benefits in terms of education, health care and nutrition. Likewise, Grupo Sophia also contemplated the set-up of Social Councils for Human Development, with a view to making civil society participate in social monitoring tasks. The fourth proposal, which comes from the sphere of civil society organizations, is the Unemployment and Training Insurance for Unemployed Heads of Household, drafted by the National Front against Poverty (FRENAPO), composed by a group of civil society organizations and social leaders.15 This proposal consisted in the creation of an employment and training benefit for unemployed male and female heads of household, including a universal contribution per child and another contribution to people over 65 years old who were not receiving any pension benefits. This proposal had the support of 3 million people and was granted the status of Popular Initiative, according to the Argentine legislation, thus being possible to submit it as a law bill to the National Congress (Golbert, 2004).16 In this way, concepts such as social inclusion, human and social capital and articulation with the civil society gained both visibility and support, and were eventually incorporated to the final version of the PJyJHD. However, not all antecedents had the same relevance. In fact, the PJyJHD ended up being more similar to FRENAPOs proposal than to the rest. Beyond the issue of antecedents, it is interesting to analyze how the PJyJHD was drafted, which were the actors taking part in it, and which was the role played by think tanks and experts within this framework. The Argentine political, economic and social context was a constraining factor regarding all these questions, in a probably more clearly defined way than in Mexico and Chile. The seriousness of the Argentine social situation made it necessary to urgently implement a program with the strong support of all social sectors, aimed at alleviating the precarious conditions of the population and reducing the high levels of social demonstrations and rejection towards political leaders. In this agitated scenario, President Eduardo Duhalde met with representatives of FRENAPO and opened an instance of multisectoral negotiation and participation known as the Argentine Dialogue Table. This space was aimed at drafting a social assistance program agreed upon by
14. The proposal of Grupo Sophia was developed by H, Rodrguez Larreta and Robredo G. (1999). 15. The National Front against Poverty FRENAPO was promoted by the Argentine Workers Union (CTA), and had the participation of other unions, social organizations, NGOs, etc. 16. Within this approach, we can also mention some government programs as antecedents of the PJyJHD, such as the Plan Trabajar (1995/1999) and the Plan Solidaridad. Nevertheless, for the time being they will not be addressed here, since they exceed the purpose of this study.
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major social actors. Thus, the Catholic Church, represented by members of Critas Argentina, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and officials of different state ministries were summoned. Among the government representatives, it is worth highlighting the participation of officials of the Ministry of Labor, Employment and Social Security, who brought their experience in the implementation of temporary employment programs during the 1990s, and of two representatives of the Cabinet Chiefs Office: Juan Pablo Cafiero Vice-Chief of Cabinet and his Chief Advisor, Pablo Vinocur, who had previously worked at the Ministry of Social Development as Minister and Secretary of Social Policies, respectively. The latter presented the proposal of a Child Inclusion Insurance (in Spanish, Seguro de Inclusin Infantil), which considered it of major importance to ensure the right of social inclusion. This proposal had already been put forward by the Ministry of Social Development during the final period of President De la Ras government, and was not implemented owing to both political and economic constraints (Repetto et al, 2005). In this way, the Dialogue Table became a space for the participation of civil society and institutions, which gave representation and legitimacy to government measures, but lacked sufficient experience in the design of a social program of such importance. It should be mentioned that among the members of this Table there were no think tanks with expertise in social issues, although it is worth highlighting the role of two experts: Pablo Vinocur, who was representing the government as it was previously stated, and Carmelo Angulo, UNDP director, who played a fundamental role in building this space. Both of them, together with Critas Argentina, an actor of solid prestige and social credibility, played a major role in the process of design of the PJyJHD. It can be pointed out that the absence of think tanks in this process was due to several factors, among which the following can be mentioned: a) the pressing need imposed by the social context, which neither prevented nor encouraged the participation of these actors; b) the low number of think tanks with expertise in social policies in Argentina, which is in a certain way related to the short track-record of social policies if compared, for instance, to economic policies; c) the governments lack of habit of using think tanks as usual sources of consultation and d) the tendency of these actors to establish a direct relationship with the public management, instead of establishing broader coordination tables. Anyway, it should be taken into account that the seriousness of the Argentine context was the main constraint and the explanatory factor for the speed with which the program had to be designed and put into operation, as well as for the leading participation of both government officials and social actors with a strong social credibility, although with little technical experience in the design of public policies. Lastly, the final version of the PJyJHD undertook the concept of right to social inclusion promoted by the Cabinet Chiefs Office, which had been strongly advocated for by president Duhalde himself, and also shared by the actors of the Dialogue Table (Repetto, et al, 2005). On the other hand, although all actors agreed on the fact that beneficiaries should comply with some counter-benefit, the first priority was to urgently set in motion the monetary transfer so as to alleviate poverty levels and restrain social conflicts. To such effect, counter-benefits were gradually designed within the framework of the Dialogue Table throughout the year 2002.17
17. Interview with Pablo Vinocur conducted within the framework of this research, Buenos Aires, Argentina, March 2008.
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From the point of view of the operation of the PJyJH, and with regards to the accumulated experience and the emphasis laid on unemployment, the Labor Ministry was left in charge of the operative coordination of the program. Unlike what happened in Argentina, Chile was undergoing a situation of economic, political and social stability at the time of implementation of the Program Chile Solidario, although at the same time it registered stagnation in the reduction of poverty levels. With this diagnostic, the government of the then President Ricardo Lagos considered it convenient to give priority to the elaboration of a comprehensive strategy to struggle against the hard cores of poverty. In order to design it, the government held a round of consultations with think tanks and experts in social policies. In April 2002, a first meeting was held with the participation of president Lagos advisors, the people in charge of the departments with responsibilities in the social area and a group of think tanks and experts, being the following among them: Claudia Serrano and Dagmar Raczynski both of Asesoras para el Desarrollo and former members of CIEPLAN, Pablo Arellano Executive Director of CIEPLAN, Harald Beyer Academic Coordinator of CEP and Clarisa Hardy Executive Director of Chile 21, among others (Ruz and Palma, 2005). The presidential meeting was followed by a series of seminars and workshops organized by think tanks, which were attended by government officials involved in the subject. These activities were of utmost importance, having generated the input which finally created the Program Chile Solidario. Nevertheless, it is necessary to point out two visions and different positions maintained by these think tanks and experts about a program of this kind. Think tanks and experts related to sectors of the left of center political party Fundacin Chile 21, Dagmar Raczynski and Claudia Serrano emphasized the need to think of a comprehensive social policy. Without rejecting the need to make monetary transfers to increase the economic capacity of poor families in the short term, they acknowledged that this had to be joined by mechanisms to enhance social development, the creation of social support networks, a human rights approach and the reinforcement of new capacities. For them, it was crucial to establish a protection system that may increase at the same time the monetary capacity and the human and social capital as mechanisms to reduce the vulnerability of poor sectors. Only in this way could the phenomenon of poverty be addressed in its multidimensional character (Ruz and Palma, 2005). On the other hand, CEP, an organization closer to the ideological positions of the centerright, proposed to fight poverty through the implementation of a strategy of assistential nature, which implied the transfer of income to the poorest sectors in order to lift them above the poverty line, with total freedom for the use of cash transfers. This proposal is based on the concept of the free will of people and on the concept of poverty as lack of income. Finally, the Program Chile Solidario adopted a mixed approach which combines social assistance and social development. This approach is more similar to the Program ProgresaOportunidades of Mexico than to the PJyJHD of Argentina. The final draft was prepared by two government teams belonging to competent areas: MIDEPLAN, the Solidarity and Social
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Investment Fund and the Budget Office. However, think tanks and experts of the different political leanings played a fundamental role in the generation of inputs for the final draft of the program.
Implementation of Programs The last two stages of public policies implementation and monitoring and evaluation are specifically linked to their operation. In this sense, the first two stages identification and definition of the problem and proposal of a solution are usually grouped under the concept of policymaking, while the other two stages can be considered as policy implementation. With respect to the implementation, this is generally the stage of the public policy cycle that is identified with the exclusive participation of state agencies. Nevertheless, in recent years and owing to the deterioration of state capacities in Latin American countries, think tanks managed to work their way around implementation functions. Not only did this evidence some functional progress but also a theoretical advance, as a result of which this type of institutions started to be conceptualized as think and do tanks. This new think and do scheme is materialized through advisory services and the provision of expert human resources from think tanks to public management, aiming at contributing to the efficient operation of a certain public policy (Braun et al., 2004). In spite of this growing trend, the experiences analyzed in this study are not inscribed in this logic. In fact, the implementation of the three programs was left in charge of the State without the participation of think tanks. In all these cases, given that the programs are strongly related to territorial aspects, an organization scheme was adopted with coordination at central level and operative support at sub-national level. In particular, in Mexico, the government area in charge of coordinating the Program Oportunidades is the Ministry of Social Development, with the support of different government institutions Ministry of Public Education, Ministry of Health and the Mexican Institute of Social Security and in operative coordination with state and municipal governments. On the other hand, in Argentina, the PJyJHD is coordinated by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, with the operative collaboration of the National Administration of the Social Security and municipalities in what regards to territorial aspects. It should be highlighted that, in the Argentine case, participation was opened to civil society organizations, which made up National, Provincial and Municipal Consultation Councils, which took part in the selection of program beneficiaries. Finally, the Program Chile Solidario also represents a case of centralized coordination by MIDEPLAN, with the collaboration of the Solidarity and Social Investment Fund, and of operative coordination with municipal governments. With regards to the implementation of programs it is worth highlighting the role played by international institutions, specifically the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, in funding said programs. In particular, the World Bank partially financed the implementation of the Program for Unemployed Male and Female Heads of Household in Argentina and the Program Chile Solidario, while the IDB supported the Program Oportunidades in Mexico.
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Although the role played by these actors exceeds the analysis of this study, it should be pointed out that the process of design and implementation of projects funded by these institutions creates a process of influence on the programs final design and/or implementation, which can be of greater or lesser intensity depending on the circumstances.
Monitoring and Evaluation When it comes to the participation of think tanks and experts, as in previous stages, the monitoring and evaluation stage shows major differences among the analyzed experiences. In the case of Mexico, and in response to criticism received by previous programs mainly the National Solidarity Plan and owing to suspicions of discretional use of public funds, the ProgresaOportunidades established in its regulations the mandatory nature of external and periodic evaluations on its operation and impact on beneficiaries. From the point of view of Santiago Levy and Jos Gmez de Len, evaluations were a crucial tool, not only to adjust the programs operation, but also to have reliable data and empirical evidence of its achievements. They both considered that if Progresa was evaluated by experts and external institutions, it would be possible to ensure a greater sustainability to the program (Bate, 2004). Thus, such evaluations were carried out by renowned academic institutions, with expertise in the social field. According to Teichman (2007:562), the IDB had influence on their selection, since it suggested that they should be foreign and local institutions and even recommended some of them, taking advantage of the fluid relationship between this institution which financially supported the program and Santiago Levy and Jos Gmez de Len. According to the same author, this explains the inclusion of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) as one of the most outstanding evaluating organizations of the ProgresaOportunidades. In this context, a point to be highlighted is the role played by IFPRI in this initial process of evaluation. This organization operated as an umbrella to carry out evaluations of the different dimensions of the program. That is, it was the organization that proposed the programs general evaluation strategy, together with international and local individual experts, so as to later commission other organizations or individual experts with specific evaluations.18 Considering these dynamics of operation, it is possible to identify other institutions that participated in the evaluation of the Mexican program, such as: CIESAS, INSP, Colmex and CIDE. In most of these cases, think tanks received the technical support of experts from Mexican and foreign universities, among which the following can be mentioned: Iberoamerican University, University of Guadalajara, College of Sonora, University of California, University of Pennsylvania, University College London, University of Chicago, University of Texas and the experts Petra Todd, Orazio Atanasio, Paul Gertler, Emmanuel Skoufias, Paul Schultz, Jere Behrman.19 At the same time, some of these experts were members of the Evaluation Advisory Group, which defined the focal points of evaluations, the indicators, the research methodology and the analysis of information for the identification of results (Yaschine et al, 2008).
18. Interview with Iliana Yaschine conducted within the framework of this research, Mexico DF, June 2008. 19. Interview with Ivico Ahumada, September 2008.
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Thus, in 2000, IFPRI prepared a compiled evaluation of all partial reports drew up until then, in its above-mentioned role as evaluation coordinator. Basically, this evaluation concludes that after 3 years of operation, the Program Progresa which was only being implemented in rural areas had contributed to increase the school enrollment and attendance of poor children, improve their dietary needs and their access to better quality health care, allowing to envision a more promising future for such population. In addition, the reinforcement of the role of women and the mechanism of focalization and selection of the poorest people as beneficiaries of the program was positively evaluated, although its decreasing effectiveness in contexts of moderate poverty was noticed. Notwithstanding the short time passed, the positive results at the moment of evaluation led the IFPRI to recommend not only its continuity but also its extension to urban areas. IFPRIs evaluation was presented in Washington in 2001, and the fact of having exposed empirical data supporting the effectiveness of the program at an international level resulted in the strong support of international institutions, such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, which had influence on the decision of President-elect Vicente Fox to continue and extend the program (Teichman, 2007). In this way, the evaluations included in the design of the program created conditions to ensure its sustainability, as it had been anticipated by designers. Once the first comprehensive evaluation of Progresa was finished, the role played by IFPRI started to be undertaken by INSP, being the responsibilities thus transferred from an international to a local institution. In this way, INSP became the umbrella organization that has been coordinating the activities of evaluation of the Program Oportunidades from the year 2001 until now. At the end of 2006, the INSP together with CIESAS published a second representative evaluation of this second expanded phase of the program, including progress made by CIDE. This paper confirmed that program beneficiaries in both rural and urban areas had managed to improve education, health and nutritional aspects. In particular, a positive impact was noticed in the schooling levels of children, the reduction of infant and maternal mortality, the increased use of health services, the increased height and weight gain in children, and a more complete dietary intake, etc. On the other hand, the report stated that the program did not encourage migration or violence against women. Finally, the budget compliance of the program and the satisfaction of beneficiaries were positively assessed. In this framework, the recommendations made after 9 years of operation of Progresa (1997-2006) support the continuity of the strategy aimed at providing a comprehensive set of benefits and services nutrition, education and health care. But, a the same time, they suggest the introduction of qualitative improvements within each one of the areas of action, which are necessary due to the increased number of public service users and because the improved situation of older beneficiaries calls for higher quality approach tools. Thus, a relevant participation of think tanks at the stage of monitoring and evaluation can be noticed in the case of Mexico. In the case of Argentina, the PJyJHD established in its regulations the mandatory participation of civil society in the programs monitoring and evaluation, through the incorporation of civil society members to the Consultation Councils at the different government levels. In addition to this organic type of evaluation imposed by the program itself, which had a very low
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level of development, the programs operation and impact were complementary analyzed by a group of think tanks, on their own initiative. These evaluations can be gathered in two main groups: a) global evaluations from a perspective of human rights and, b) evaluations on specific aspects of the program. The first group includes the evaluations carried out by CIEPP, CELS, AAPS and Grupo Sophia. These three organizations maintain that the PJyJHD fails to comply with the goal of ensuring the family right to social inclusion and reducing poverty levels. In this sense, they point out that: 1) the program has an assistential logic rather than a logic of social inclusion, since benefits in terms of education and health care are considered as matching contributions rather than as rights; 2) the idea of quotas to incorporate beneficiaries to the program is opposed to the idea of universal right, and is a source of inequality for those people who in spite of being poor fail to comply with some of the requirements in order to have access to benefits and, 3) the amount of benefits is insufficient and should vary according to the size of the family. Even when these think tanks acknowledge the capacity of the program as a palliative measure in a context of crisis, they maintain the need to re-direct it towards a universal logic (Neri, 2002; Pautassi et al, 2003; Lo Vuolo and Barbeito, 2003). In the particular case of CELS, access to all social institutions is being promoted rather than just the provision of a certain income (Pautassi et al, 2003). On the other hand, given the fact that the implementation of universal programs faces strong economic-financial constraints, the proposals of CELS and CIEPP lays emphasis on the need to carry out a progressive tax reform to ensure the funding of the program over time (Pautassi et al, 2003; Lo Vuolo and Barbeito, 2003). For its part, Grupo Sophia evaluated the PJyJHD and based on this, it presented a proposal to turn the program into a Social Protection Network. Such proposal implied the unification of social programs, the replacement of the eligibility of beneficiaries based on the position they held on the labor market for another one based on the income of families, the increase of the amount of benefits, the priority given to health and education services as tools for building human capital and greater transparency and control of the program (Rodriguez Larreta and Vidal, 2005). The second group of evaluations that focuses on specific aspects of the program includes those carried out by UCEMA, IDESA, Grupo Sophia and FLACSO. The study carried out by UCEMA analyzes the criteria of eligibility of beneficiaries, the impact on the labor market, the efficiency of public expenditure and the consequences in terms of clientelistic practices, and finds that the flaws in the allocation of the PJyJHD turned into a discouragement for the reinsertion of beneficiaries into the labor market particularly the formal labor market which intensified the precariousness process of the poorest people. Besides, it maintains that the program benefited a significant number of people that failed to comply with all the requirements and, finally, that the clientelistic practices of beneficiaries organizations and political parties certainly had an impact on the efficiency of the public expenditure used to finance the program. Notwithstanding criticism, UCEMA, the same as other think tanks, acknowledges the need and usefulness of the program in a context of emergency such as the one in which it was created (Lpez Zadicoff and Paz, 2003).
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Likewise, IDESA, Grupo Sophia and FLACSO analyzed the operation of the Consultation Councils (CC), which represented instances of participation, articulation of interests and monitoring of the program by civil society. IDESA found that the CCs operated in practice as spaces of sectoral disputes and clientelistic practices rather than as articulation spaces. In view of this, it recommended that CCs should be given a political rather than an operative role, thus preventing the obtainment of material benefits (Colina et al, 2006). Grupo Sophia, by means of a survey carried out in 64 provincial and municipal CCs, analyzed and recommended improvements with respect to their operation and representation (Lupica, 2003). For its part, FLACSO coordinated an investigation funded by the government20 in which it recommended to strengthen Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and reinforce their engagement in state social programs. With this summary of evaluations carried out in the case of Argentina we aim to illustrate the aspects that called for greater reflection in those think tanks that analyzed the operation and impact of the PJyJHD, and also to emphasize that these were initiatives of think tanks themselves rather than interventions promoted within the sphere of the program, as it happened in the case of Mexico. In this sense, Chile shows certain similarities with the Argentine case. In fact, the regulations of Chile Solidario also failed to contemplate mandatory instances of external monitoring and evaluation. Therefore, the think tanks and experts that evaluated the program did it on their own initiative. However, it is worth pointing out that in 2003, the ECLAC, at the request of FOSIS, carried out an analysis of results achieved during the first stage of one component of Chile Solidario, the PUENTE program, in its installation phase.21 With respect to the evaluations of think tanks and experts, a strong correlation is noticed between the contents of evaluations carried out by think tanks and their ideological inclination towards one of the two coalitions ruling the Chilean political party system. This is particularly visible in the evaluations of Libertad y Desarrollo, a think tank identified with the right of center coalition, and Fundacin Chile 21, a think tank that is close to the ruling left of center coalition. While the first think tank focuses on aspects related to the autonomy of people, the centralization and the potential political discretionary, the second one emphasizes the broad social consensus supporting the program, and its effectiveness as central government strategy in the fight against poverty.22 In fact, the evaluations of Libertad y Desarrollo lay emphasis on the fact that beneficiaries have expectations about improving their living conditions that are higher than what they really achieve upon coming out of the program. According to this evaluation, said paradox becomes an obstacle to achieve an effective autonomy and empowerment of people. Besides, it questions
20. This activity was funded by SIEMPRO, within the framework of an institutional reinforcement program, promoted by the National Center of Community Organizations (CENOC), dependent on the Ministry of Social Development. 21. Anlisis de Resultados del Programa PUENTES, Social Development Division, ECLAC, Santiago de Chile (2003). 22. Medeiros et al (2006), Libertad y Desarrollo (2003), Fundacin Chile 21 (2002) and Len (2007).
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the centralized operation scheme of the program, underlining the risks it poses to transparency. In view of this, it recommends to decentralize the program towards municipalities in order to take advantage of their knowledge in terms of local realities, and to open up the participation to organizations with technical skills so as to evaluate the programs operation and impact. On the other hand, in a survey carried out in 2002 by Fundacin Chile 21 emphasis is laid on the broad social acceptance of the so-called Lagos reforms. According to this think tank, within the package of reforms announced, the creation of the program Chile Solidario was the one that was granted more support (40%), while nearly 85% of surveyed people considered it immoral for families to live on extremely low incomes (Fundacin Chile 21, 2002). In this framework, the implementation and publication of this survey became a tool to analyze the repercussions of announcements and the support and legitimation of the political sector of reference. In 2006, following 4 years of program operation, this think tank published an article in which it analyzes the reduction of poverty announced by president Michelle Bachelet, and points out that the acceleration of this reduction within the period 2003-2006 if compared to 1998-2003 is explained by the combination of increased salaries and the effectiveness of Chile Solidario in penetrating the hard cores of poverty (Len, 2007). According to the evaluation of Chile 21, these results ratify the success of the program and encourage its continuity and expansion. In spite of these outcomes, the evaluations of experts that are close to the Coalition of Parties for Democracy, among them Claudia Serrano (2005), support the continuity of the program but propose to change some aspects. For instance, they propose to strengthen the work on psychosocial support to families by encouraging social and community bonds. On the other hand, they criticize the fact that the program is focused on families living in a critical situation, since the support is limited to specific and short-term assistential issues, which often acts to the detriment of a reinforced autonomy. This weakness is reinforced by the large number of families each promoter is responsible for, and by the decreasing assistance provided to those families that start to be lifted out of critical situations. Instead, these families should be offered a sustainable assistance aimed at the medium and long term. In short, as it can be noticed in the case of Chile, the evaluations performed by think tanks and experts are strongly correlated to the ideological proximity and/or the political party references of these actors. Once the participation of think tanks and experts has been analyzed, with regards to the four stages of the programs under study, it is possible to notice a set of differences between the cases of Mexico, Argentina and Chile. These differences can be sorted into three main dimensions: 1) stage of the public policy cycle at which think tanks and experts participate; ii) form of participation and; iii) type of think tank prevailing in each one of the analyzed cases. Table 3 schematically shows the main characteristics of the three cases analyzed.
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Table 3: Main Characteristics of the Participation of Think Tanks and Experts in the Selected Cases
MEXICO Stage of Participation Form of Participation - Formulation - Monitoring and evaluation - Organic at the formulation stage - Organic at the monitoring and evaluation stage - Academic Centers ARGENTINA - Formulation - Monitoring and evaluation - Organic / Spontaneous at the formulation stage - Spontaneous at the monitoring and evaluation stage -Heterogeneous composition (Academic Centers, Private Research Centers, Political Foundations, Advocacy Groups) CHILE - Formulation - Monitoring and evaluation - Organic at the Formulation stage - Spontaneous at the monitoring and evaluation stage - Political Foundations
Type of Prevailing Think Tank
Source: Our own elaboration.
In the case of Mexico, there is an outstanding participation of think tanks and experts at the formulation and monitoring and evaluation stages of the program Progresa-Oportunidades. Specifically, experts Santiago Levy and Jos Gmez de Len played an outstanding role in the design of the program, while institutions such as IFPRI, INSP, CIESAS, CIDE and Colmex, besides a large group of Mexican and foreign experts, played an important role in its external evaluation. With respect to the form of participation, think tanks and experts participated in an organic form, that is, on the initiative of the state apparatus, or because they form part of it, or owing to the design and/or regulations of the program itself. In this sense, Levy and Gmez de Len were influential government officials who had the strong support of the then president Zedillo, while the Mexican and foreign institutions that participated in the evaluation of the program did so pursuant to the provisions included in its own design. With regards to the prevailing type of think tank, in the case of Progresa-Oportunidades there is a supremacy of Academic Centers, mostly as a result of the regulations set forth in the program, which demand a mandatory external evaluation to be carried out by renowned expert institutions, and also owing to the dynamics of close interrelation between the public management and the academic sphere in Mexico. On the other hand, in the case of Argentina, think tanks and experts mainly participated at the formulation and monitoring and evaluation stages. Although there is no participation of think tanks during the formulation of the program, the role played by another type of civil society organizations has indeed been outstanding, as has been the role of an expert such as Pablo Vinocur, who formed part of the government. At the same time, it was possible to identify the participation of a series of think tanks and experts at a stage previous to the design of the program, thus generating antecedents which were partially adopted during the final design of the Program for Unemployed Male and Female Heads of Household. Such participation took place in a spontaneous form, without any formal invitation from the State. With respect to the stage of monitoring and evaluation, there is a large group of think tanks and experts that approached the program from different perspectives. Regarding the form of participation, in the Argentine case there is a combination of organic and spontaneous participation. The first one can be evidenced in the case of Pablo Vinocur, who at the time of the programs formulaThink Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America
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tion was playing an outstanding role in the Dialogue Table in representation of the government of the then President Duhalde. But, at the same time, the participation of think tanks and experts at the monitoring and evaluation stage took place in a spontaneous form, that is, motivated by their own initiative rather than as a result of an organic and/or institutional invitation, as it happened in the case of Mexico. Meanwhile, with regards to the prevailing type of think tanks, the case of Argentina is characterized by a heterogeneous map of actors, in which there fails to be supremacy of a particular type of think tank, but instead there are organizations belonging to the four types presented in this study. Finally, the case of Chile shares with the other cases analyzed the fact that the participation of think tanks and experts takes place at the formulation and monitoring and evaluation stages. At the stage of formulation, their participation takes place in an organic form, resulting from the call made by the then president Lagos to think tanks and experts of different political leanings. Nevertheless, at the monitoring and evaluation stage, they have an spontaneous form of participation, since the same as the Argentine program and contrary to the ProgresaOportunidades, the program Chile Solidario fails to establish formal instances of external monitoring and evaluation to be carried out by think tanks and experts. Meanwhile, with regards to the prevailing type of think tank, Chile shows supremacy of Political Foundations, closely related to the two main political coalitions in the country. These Political Foundations played an outstanding role in the formulation of the program and later on spontaneously evaluated its operation and impacts, emphasizing certain recommendations related to their respective ideological/party positions. Once the participation of think tanks and experts has been described in each one of the social policy stages referred to the income-conditioned transfer programs of cases studied, we can notice similarities and differences among the analyzed experiences, mainly observed with regards to the level of participation of think tanks and experts at the different stages of the public policy cycle, the specific stage in which they participate, and the level of institutionalization of these spheres of participation. In order to go deeper into the factors accounting for these differences, the following Section shows the main conclusions of this analysis.
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SECTION IV Main Conclusions Once this research has been carried out, it is possible to validate the two work hypotheses that were mentioned at the beginning of this article. On the one hand, we can confirm that the first hypothesis, which posits there is a small number of Latin American think tanks and experts engaged in the analysis and creation of proposals in terms of social policies, and in particular, in what regards to proposals related to income transfer programs, proves to be true. According to the two directories used in this study, in what refers to the identification of think tanks at global level, the one created by McGann (2007) identifies 408 think tanks in Latin America, while the initiative coordinated by CIPPEC, carried out with the support of the Global Development Network in 2004, identifies a total of 193 think tanks for the countries of the region. In the three cases analyzed in this study it was only possible to identify a total of 16 think tanks 5 in Mexico, 7 in Argentina and 4 in Chile , and a total of 7 experts 2 in Mexico, 3 in Argentina and 2 in Chile with a significant participation in these programs. Thus, there are only a small number of think tanks engaged in this type of social policies. This low number of think tanks with expertise in social issues may be associated with the short history of these policies in Latin American countries. In fact, although poverty is not something new in the region, it was not until the 1990s when employment lost vigor as a focal point of social integration that social policies started to gain importance, and the implementation of incomeconditioned transfer programs became widespread. This situation substantially differs from that of think tanks engaged in economic issues. In the two above-mentioned initiatives, as well as in most part of the bibliography devoted to think tanks, most of the organizations identified are engaged in economic issues. By way of example, most of the 20 major Latin American think tanks mentioned in the directory created by McGann (2007) are devoted to economic issues. Thus, in spite of the fact that countries in the region face serious social problems related to the levels of poverty of the population, there are still no think tanks that may operate as links between knowledge in social issues and the public sector, while also contributing to the economic analysis on the problems suffered by the region. With respect to the second hypothesis, which posits that those think tanks that indeed participate in social policies mainly do it at the stages of formulation and monitoring and evaluation, but show a low level of participation in what regards to identifying and giving priority to these issues on the public agenda, the same can be proved true in general although with shades in particular cases. In the three countries studied, think tanks and experts mainly participate at two stages: 1) proposal of a solution, and 2) monitoring and evaluation. Chile is the clearest example of think tank participation at the stage of formulation or proposal, resulting from the call made by the Executive Power to participate in a space of debate with government areas, from which the guidelines of the program Chile Solidario were obtained. It is worth mentioning that this experience is becoming increasingly usual in Chile. For instance, in 2007, President Bachelet called a group of 48 experts, coming from think tanks as well as from the political, business, union, religious and academic spheres, who made up the Presidential Advisory Council Labor and Equity, chaired by the Director of CIEPLAN, to discuss and create proposals on social issues. On the other hand, among the three countries analyzed, Mexico is
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the main example of organic participation of think tanks and experts at the stage of monitoring and evaluation, which was established in the design itself of the program ProgresaOportunidades. At the present time, this trend was spread to all social programs, by means of the creation in 2004 of the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policies (CONEVAL), which is strategically aimed at improving the efficiency and effectiveness, as well as the rendering of accounts of social development policies, through the monitoring and evaluation of programs and social policies and the measurement of poverty. With respect to the case of Argentina, think tanks participate spontaneously at a previous stage to the formulation of the program, thus generating antecedents, as well as at the stage of monitoring and evaluation, substantially differing from the other two experiences. Taking into account the peculiar characteristics of each case, we can propose a continuum, placing a level of organic participation of think tanks and experts, represented by the case of Mexico at one end, and a dynamics of spontaneous participation, reflected in the case of Argentina, at the other end. For its part, the case of Chile would be found at an intermediate point between these two situations, with an organic participation at the formulation stage, but showing a spontaneous participation in what refers to monitoring and evaluation. But, which were the factors that enabled or prevented the participation of think tanks in the social policy cycle? Are there regularities and fractures from one experience to the other? Undoubtedly, a key factor promoting or preventing the participation of organizations and experts is the economic, political and social context in which the program arises. The degree of participation of think tanks is strongly influenced by the context or framework of possibilities and constraints in which social programs come to life. This is particularly noticeable in Argentina, where the little participation of think tanks at the formulation of the Program for the Unemployed Male and Female Heads of Household can be mainly explained by the urgent need to implement a social program to contain the strong social crisis, and by the need to call upon other type of social organizations that may contribute legitimacy such as the Catholic Church, for example at a time in which politicians were broadly discredited. In this sense, the context in Mexico and Chile played in favor of a greater participation of think tanks and experts in the design of social programs. Although in both countries poverty was already placed on the agenda as a top priority, both governments had broader margins to propose their respective programs. In the case of Mexico, a relatively small number of experts, who at the time were working at the public administration and had a vast experience and track record on the subject, participated in the formulation of the Program Progresa. On the other hand, the Chilean Executive Power gathered the main think tanks and experts for the design of the Program Chile Solidario, in a context of economic, political and social stability, which promoted the dialogue among the countrys major political actors. But not only has the context had influence. The dynamics of operation and interaction between the public sector and the sphere of think tanks and experts, together with the political will to summon them is a second factor affecting the level of participation. The intervention of think tanks and experts in social policies is related to the track record in terms of
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engagement between these actors and the public apparatus. Thus, at the monitoring and evaluation stage of the Progresa - Oportunidades, the Mexican government included in its regulations the mandatory participation of a specific type of think tanks: Academic Centers. In the case of the PJyJHD, the Argentine government gave participation to civil society organizations through their incorporation into Consultation Councils, but think tanks and experts became involved spontaneously and on their own initiative. Nor in Chile was the participation of think tanks and experts at the monitoring and evaluation stage the result of a request from the government, which in fact had been the case at the formulation stage. However, in this last case, the outcomes of these evaluations responded to the needs of the government or the opposition, according to the party ideology of think tanks. According to the above, we can make some deductions of a more structural nature regarding the greater or lower proximity between the knowledge sphere and the public service in the three countries analyzed. In this sense, both in Mexico and Chile, the increased interaction between policymakers and knowledge generation spheres is more solid than in Argentina. In the first two countries there is a fluid flow of experts from one sphere to the other, although in the Mexican case, it is Academic Centers which are closer to the public service, while in Chile, the political foundations are the ones that prevail. In Argentina, the relationship between think tanks and the public service is less direct, at least in the case of the PJyJHD, in which those civil society organizations that were called to have an organic participation in the program indeed had more influence. As it may be noticed, although it is possible to identify experiences of interaction between the sphere of policymakers and the knowledge generation sphere, it is still necessary to continue promoting and reinforcing this situation, particularly considering the challenges faced by social policies in the region. In this sense and based on the experiences analyzed, we can point out certain lessons learned that may help to strengthen the link between knowledge and this type of public policies. In the first place, as it is shown by the Mexican experience, it is highly important to incorporate external expert organizations to monitor and evaluate social policies. This mechanism can ensure greater objectivity to program evaluations, generating empirical data to sustain their achievements and adjust the flaws and/or deficiencies of actions. In a context of constrained resources, as the one usually faced by the countries of the region, and with a large part of the population living in a situation of social vulnerability, it is a key factor to increase efficiency and effectiveness in the use of resources allocated to social programs and ensure their continuity; and to such effect, think tanks and experts can play a major role. In the second place, it is advisable to promote the participation of think tanks in the process of debate and formulation of social policies. As it is shown by the case of Chile, the creation of spaces for debate and participation by the State helps to bring about public policies that are of better quality and greater consensus, thus providing them with more stability as agreements are reached on their central aspects. And these spaces should not only be restricted to the participation of think tanks and experts. As it can be noticed in the case of Argentina, as well as in Chile, civil society organizations and representatives of the political, business, union, religious and academic spheres can also play a major role in social policymaking.
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It is of key importance to understand the role of all actors involved in the public policy cycle in order to understand their results and current impacts. In the case of policies aimed at fighting poverty one of the main problems faced by Latin America the process of policy design, implementation and evaluation calls for great efforts not only from governments and public bureaucracies but from all actors that can participate and/or bring solutions to change this situation. Think tanks and experts can play a very important role in generating knowledge that may bring feasible solutions for the implementation and monitoring and evaluation of these policies. This research aims at contributing to the promotion of an increased dialogue between the knowledge sphere and the people who are responsible for the implementation of policies in Latin America.
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Annex I
Description of Analyzed Think Tanks and Experts Mexico Instituto Nacional de Salud Pblica (INSP): academic center engaged in the creation of proposals on health issues. www.insp.mx. Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropologa Social (CIESAS): public decentralized academic center. www.ciesas.edu.mx. Colegio de Mxico (COLMEX): academic center, considered as a reference point in social sciences. www.colmex.mx. Centro de Investigacin y Docencia Econmica (CIDE): academic center engaged in economic and public administration issues. www.cide.edu. Internacional Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI): advocacy group based in Washington (USA), with expertise in food and nutrition. www.ifpri.org. Santiago Levy: economist and international consultant. He acted as government official under President Ernesto Zedillo between 1994 and 2002, holding the position of SubSecretary of Expenditure of the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit. At the present time he is Vice-President for Sectors and Knowledge at the IDB. Jos Gmez de Lon: expert in demography and closely related to President Ernesto Zedillo. In 1994 he acted as Secretary General to the National Population Council (CONAPO). He was the first National Coordinator of the programme Progresa. Argentina Instituto para el Desarrollo Social Argentino (IDESA): private research center engaged in social policies, mainly in the areas of social assistance, education, health and labour market issues. www.idesa.org. Asociacin Argentina de Polticas Sociales (AAPS): private research center concentrated on research, analysis and proposals in terms of social policy issues. www.aaps.org.ar. Centro Interdisciplinario para el Estudio de Polticas Pblicas (CIEPP): private research centre engaged in public policy research. www.ciepp.org.ar. Fundacin Grupo Sophia: political foundation engaged in the elaboration of public policy proposals of feasible implementation, and the creation of technically strong groups to participate in public management. It has strong links with the coalition Propuesta Republicana (PRO), the political party of the Head of Government of the City of Buenos Aires, Mauricio Macri (2007-2011). www.gruposophia.org.ar.
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Universidad del Centro de Estudios Macroeconmicos Argentinos (UCEMA): academic center of a liberal position, engaged in the analysis of public policies from an economic perspective. www.cema.edu.ar. Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales - Sede Argentina (FLACSO Argentina): academic center with expertise in social science research. www.flacso.org.ar. Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS): advocacy group engaged in the promotion of human rights. www.cels.org.ar. Frente Nacional contra la Pobreza (FRENAPO): it was a social movement mainly promoted by the Argentine Workers Union (CTA), which was made up of hundreds of social and political organizations from all over the country, under the motto Not a single poor household in Argentina. This movement had its most significant moment at the Federal March of FRENAPO, which took place in September 2001 and was aimed at disseminating and promoting the Popular Consultation held from December 14-16 of that same year, obtaining more than 3 million signatures. This level of support granted the status of Popular Initiative to the project in order to be submitted to Parliament as draft Bill. www.cta.org.ar. Mesa del Dilogo Argentino: it was an initiative of former president Eduardo Duhalde, which was offered the spiritual support of the Argentine Episcopal Conference and the experience and technical capacity of the UNDP. It was officially launched on January 14, 2002. This initiative was aimed at promoting a broad and participative process of exchange and discussion, which succeeded in increasing the capacity of dialogue and consensus between the Government and Society on issues of key importance for Argentina. To such effect, Sectoral Tables were set up, being one of them referred to social, labor and production issues, having the institutional and technical support of the International Labor Organization (ILO). This Sectoral Table brought about the basic consensus on the Program for Unemployed Male and Female Heads of Household. www.trabajo.gov.ar/prensa/historicos/2002. Pablo Vinocur: sociologist and expert in social policies with a vast track record as consultant for international institutions such as UNICEF, the IDB and the United Nations, from where he became engaged in programs aimed at improving maternal and child health care and nutrition. He was engaged with the public service on repeated occasions. After having worked at the Health Ministry as Coordinator of the Maternal and Child Program, he was appointed in 2001 as Secretary of Social Policies of the Ministry of Social Development. In 2002, he was Chief Advisor to the Vice-Chief of Cabinet Juan Pablo Cafiero, during the government of Eduardo Duhalde. At the present time, he is Coordinator of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Argentina. Irene Novacovsky: sociologist and expert in social policies. She was director and responsible for launching the System of Information, Monitoring and Evaluation of Social Programs (SIEMPRO), originally implemented within the sphere of the Ministry of Social Development, and funded by the World Bank. At the present time, she works as consultant for international institutions.
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Claudia Sobrn: anthropologist, expert in social policies. She worked at the System of Information, Monitoring and Evaluation of Social Programs (SIEMPRO). At the present time, she works as consultant for international institutions. Chile Centro de Estudios Pblicos (CEP): private research center engaged in the analysis of public issues, on whose values, principles and institutions a free and democratic order is based, according to its own presentation. In spite of not being a Political Foundation, the global view on which its research is based is in a certain way related to the positions of the Chilean center of right coalition. www.cepchile.cl. Corporacin de Investigaciones Econmicas para Latinoamrica (CIEPLAN): political foundation of an academic nature, which became independent of the Catholic University in the middle of the 1970s. In 1990, with the recovery of democracy, some of its main reference points joined the government of president Aylwin, two as ministers Alejandro Foxley at the Finance Ministry and Ren Cortzar at the Labor Ministry and others as experts with technical responsibilities in different government spheres, among them Claudia Serrano at the Municipality of Santiago. As of that time and after the political participation of its founder and director Alejandro Foxley first as president of the Christian Democrat Party and then as current Foreign Minister, CIEPLAN became increasingly identified with the Chilean center of left coalition Coalition of Parties for Democracy, and most part of its work was aimed at providing the ruling party with proposals. www.cieplan.cl. Fundacin Chile 21: political foundation which supports the administration of the ruling coalition with its human and analytical resources. Apart from being honorifically chaired by Ricardo Lagos, some of the reference points of Chile 21 held important government positions, such as for instance Carlos Ominami former Finance Minister (1990-1992) and current senator; and also Clarisa Hardy as head of MIDEPLAN until early in 2008. www.chile21.cl. Libertad y Desarrollo: political foundation created in 1990. From its different areas of work, it supports the political activity of the Alliance for Chile with technical resources and analyses. This included advising the legislators of the coalition when the Law of the program Chile Solidario was dealt with at Parliament. www.lyd.com. Dagmar Raczynski: Sociologist at the Catholic University of Chile. PhD in Sociology at UCLA, USA. Founding partner, Consultant and Researcher of Asesoras para el Desarrollo since 1998 until today. In 2006, she was member of the Presidential Advisory Council for the Reform on Child Policies, Professor at the Catholic University of Chile. She was researcher at CIEPLAN. www.asesoriasparaeldesarrollo.cl. Claudia Serrano: sociologist, expert in public management and public policies. She was member of the consulting office Asesoras para el Desarrollo. At the present time she is SubSecretary of Regional Development at the Ministry of the Interior.
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Annex II
Analyzed Publications.
COUNTRY MEXICO Think Tank IFPRI Levy, Santiago INSP; CIESAS ARGENTINA Grupo SOPHIA Grupo SOPHIA Grupo SOPHIA AAPS CELS Novacovsky, Irene Sobrn, Claudia Rodrguez Larreta, Horacio Robredo, Gonzalo Lupica, Carina Rodrguez Larreta, Horacio Vidal, Mara Eugenia Neri, Aldo Pautassi, Laura Rossi, Julieta Campos, Luis Lo Vuolo, Rubn Barbeito, Alberto Author/s Title of the Document Est dando buenos resultados el Progresa? Sntesis de evaluacin de impacto. Progress against poverty. Sustaining Mexicos Progresa-Oportunidades Program. Evaluacin externa de impacto del Programa Oportunidades 2001 - 2006. Propuesta de un programa de transferencia directa de ingresos para la Argentina: Ingreso para el Desarrollo Humano. El desafo de la igualdad. Fortalecimiento Institucional de los Consejos Consultivos - Programa Jefes y Jefas de Hogar. Qu hacer despus del default social. A propsito del Plan Jefes y Jefas. Plan Jefes y Jefas. Derecho social o beneficios sin derechos? Year of Publication 2006 2000 2006 1999 1999 2003 2005 2003 2003
CIEPP FLACSO
El ingreso ciudadano en la agenda de las polticas pblicas de la Argentina. Evaluacin de los niveles de participacin de las organizaciones de la sociedad civil en los consejos consultivos y la capacidad de aprovechamiento de los recursos locales.
2003 2003
UCEMA IDESA
Lpez Zadicoff, Pablo Paz, Jorge Colina, Jorge Giordano, Osvaldo Torres, Alejandra Crdenas, Marcelo Len, Arturo
El Programa Jefes y Jefas de Hogar. Elegibilidad, Participacin y Trabajo. Anlisis de los Consejos Consultivos del Programa Jefas y Jefes de Hogar de Argentina como herramienta orientada hacia los principios del Enfoque de los Derechos Humanos. Opiniones sobre las reformas de Lagos. Notable disminucin de la pobreza. Ms Estado, menos individuo.
2003 2006
CHILE
Fundacin Chile 21 Fundacin Chile 21 Libertad y Desarrollo Libertad y Desarrollo
2002 2007 2003 2006
Medeiros, Mara Paz Snchez, Carmen Castro, Rodrigo Serrano, Claudia Raczynski, Dagmar Serrano, Claudia
Percepcin y satisfaccin del programa Chile Solidario.
Claves de la poltica social para la pobreza. Las polticas y estrategias de desarrollo social. Aportes de los aos 90 y desafos futuros.
2005 2005
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Annex III
List of Professionals Interviewed. Interviews Conducted in Person Pablo Vinocur Sociologist. Currently Coordinator of UNDP Programs Argentina. Within the the public administration he was Secretary of Social Policies of the Ministry of Social Development (2001) and Chief of Advisors at the Cabinet Chiefs Office (2002). Eduardo Serantes Engineer. Former Director of Critas Argentina. President of the National Commission for Justice and Peace, of the Episcopal Commission of the Social Pastoral, Argentina. Aldo Isuani Political Scientist, Master in Political Sciences, Latin American School of Political Science and Public Administration (ELACP), Latin American School of Social Sciences (FLACSO), Santiago de Chile. PhD Department of Political Sciences, University of Pittsburgh. Professor at the University of San Andrs, Argentina. Secretary of the Third Age and Social Action of the Minsitry of Social Development (2001). Roberto Martnez Nogueira National Public Accountant (University of Buenos Aires), Degree in Administration (University of Buenos Aires), Technician in Civil Administration (INAP, Spain), PhD in Administration, Cornell University. Expert in Organizational Change and Analysis. Consultant for different international institutions. Professor at the University of San Andrs, Argentina. Iliana Yaschine Candidate for PhD in Sociology, College of Mexico. Director of Evaluation of the Programme Oportunidades and Member of the Evaluation Advisory Group (2002 - 2006) - Mexico. Contact via e-mail Karina Ansolabehere Sociologist and PhD in Research in Social Sciences. Coordinator of the PhD in Social Sciences and professor-researcher in the area of Culture of Legality at FLACSO - Mexico. Technical advisor for the study Diagnstico de la administracin de justicia en las entidades federativas en materia mercantil e hipotecaria of the ITAM and member of the project Conflicto, derecho y orden social of the UNAM. Ivico Ahumada Social Scientist and Economist. Full-time professor-researcher at FLACSO - Mexico. He is PhD in Public Policies and Labour Economics at Carnegie Mellon (2002), Master in Administrative Economics at the Instituto Tecnolgico de Estudios Superiores (1986).
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Dagmar Raczynski Sociologist of the Catholic University of Chile. PhD in Sociology, UCLA, USA, Founding Partner, Consultant and Researcher of Asesoras para el Desarrollo. She was researcher at CIEPLAN. Rodrigo Castro Business Administrator and candidate for PhD in Economics at the University Gabriela Mistral and Candidate for PhD in Economics at the University of Georgetown. He is researcher and director of the social programme of the Fundacin Libertad y Desarrollo Chile. Carlos Maldonado Valera Degree in International Relations of the College of Mexico. Candidate for PhD in Political Sciences and Public Policies. Master in Political Sociology and Public Policies at the Paris Institute of Political Studies. Director of Institutional Prospective and Sub-Director of International Cooperation (2003-2005) of the Ministry of Social Development of Mexico (SEDESOL). At the present time, he is Associate Social Affairs Officer of the Women and Development Unit of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC, United Nations)
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7. The trans-American Market Advocacy Think Tank Movement

MARA JOS ALVAREZ-RIVADULLA1, JOHN MARKOFF2 and VERNICA MONTECINOS3
Introduction Think tanks are not easy to define or classify. In gross and simple terms, they are research centers with a foot in academia and a foot in policy. Alongside universities, professional organizations and international agencies think thanks have emerged as major sites and channels for transnationalizing economic and other policy ideas. They are nodes of hemispheric and even global connections among which ideas, resources and personnel flow. Contrary to what many think, the direction of influence is not always from North to South. On the contrary, there are examples of influence flowing in the other direction, as well as horizontally within the developing world. These currents may even shift and reverse their course, and what may appear as the diffusion of an original breakthrough may very well be a repackaged version emerging from a much older and longer transmission chain. A notable instance is the ongoing debate on social security reform. President Bushs proposal to introduce personal retirement accounts in the US, made during his first term in office, included celebratory references to the pioneering privatization experience in Chile. The Chilean model, however, owes its inspiration to a US academic mission to Chile in the 1950s (Valds, 1995) and eventually borrowed elements from US-based blueprints (Harberger, 1997). Think tanks were and are part of this process. Cato, one of the think tanks we study here has been one of the main advocates for retirement accounts. Ideas may come and go, but the overall direction of their flow (as the case of social security illustrates) is far from random. The field of policy ideas is a contentious one in which the US in general and US think tanks in particular have played a special role in the formation and expansion of transnational networks for several reasons:
1. Mara Jos lvarez-Rivadulla is a Professor of Sociology at the Universidad del Rosario in Bogot, Colombia. She finished her PhD in Sociology at the University Pittsburgh in 2009 and had previously studied at the School of Social Sciences (Universidad de la Repblica) in Montevideo, Uruguay. She is interested in contentious politics, urban sociology and research methods (especially the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods). 2. John Markoff is Distinguished University Professor of Sociology, History, and Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh and Investigador Visitante at Pablo de Olavide University in Sevilla. His research concerns the history of democracy. His books include The Abolition of Feudalism, Waves of Democracy, and together with Vernica Montecinos, the edited collection Economists in the Americas. 3. Vernica Montecinos is a Professor of Sociology at The Pennsylvania State University, Greater Allegheny. She is the author of Economists, Politics and the State. Chile 1958-1994 (CEDLA, 1998), co-editor of Economists in the Americas (Elgar, 2009) and has published book chapters and articles in journals such as Latin American Research Review, Studies in Comparative International Development, the Journal of Economic Perspectives and the International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society. She has served as consultant on pension and gender reform in Chile and has done work on the internationalization of higher education curricula.
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Think tanks are especially numerous in the US. After a period of dramatically rapid growth of think tanks worldwide, the rate of growth has slowed down in the period 2001-2007. But the US is still the single country with the largest number, by one recent enumeration amounting to 28% of the worlds think tanks (Foreign Policy Research Institute, 2007). The think tank tradition is older and, some contend, more influential in the US than elsewhere. The Brookings Institution, sometimes seen as a prototype, dates from 1927, but it was a merger of several already existing organizations (Weaver, 1989: 565). There are other early claimants. For Rich (2004:34-41), the pioneering instances were the Russell Sage Foundation and the Bureau of Municipal Research, both launched in 1907 and followed by others over the next decade. According to Weaver (1989), think tanks became influential as a result of distinctive features of the US political and social landscape. On the one hand, such extra-governmental organizations were encouraged by a system with weak parties, division of powers, and permeable administrative elites. Weak parties and division of powers meant that Congress could seek expert knowledge on its own, rather than taking all its cues from executive bureaucracies or party experts. And think tanks could become a path to government positions, too. In addition, a long tradition of elite philanthropy provided the resources to launch and support them. US think tanks are better funded, which translates into much broader range of activities and much larger staffs, on the average, than in other world regions (Foreign Policy Research Institute, 2007). US think tanks have often sponsored counterparts elsewhere (see, e.g., Parmar, 2002), enlarging their own influence beyond the US. Some have also opened their own offices overseas, like the Brookings Institution in Beijing and Doha or the International Crisis Group in Bogot and Istanbul (Kosterlitz, 2007). Whether it is reasonable to characterize its position in the world as hegemonic may be debated, but in the early twenty-first century the US remained the single most powerful State. By virtue of their impact on US-based thinking and US policies, both foreign and domestic, US think tanks have multiple opportunities and use several mechanisms to shape the direction and characteristics of the international flow of influence. Of course, US think tanks are not unique in their transnational connectedness. Some think tanks in the global South are performing as hubs with their own networks of affiliates, counterparts and partners. European think tanks, especially those affiliated with the more internationalized political parties and with the Catholic Church, have their own spheres of influence, specific agendas and persuasion tools. At a global scale, the institutional configuration of think tanks is a growing mosaic of many intersecting colors and shapes. A recent worldwide survey of think tanks shows European think tanks are very numerous and influential and by some measures as active or even more active than those in the US (Foreign Policy Research Institute, 2007). By this count, the countries of the European Union have 1,342 think tanks, almost as many as the USs 1,402. Western European think tanks produce many more books than those in the US, and almost as many policy briefs and media appearances, although US think tanks are way ahead in website hits. Despite such extensive European activity, however, through their significance in US politics, US think tanks are able to continue as especially powerful brokers in the transnational exchange of policy ideas.
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US think tanks differ from one another considerably. Even among those often treated together as the conservative, right wing, ideological or market liberal subclass, there are important differences. Here we consider two of the most important and influential among them, the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. In the second section of this essay we describe the commonalities and differences between these two think tanks. For this purpose, we use the available literature on think tanks, primary data from these two think tanks publications, and their self presentations on their websites (e.g., mission statements, goals, history, and so on). In the third section, we specifically address Cato and Heritages thinking on Latin America. For this we longitudinally analyze their publications, sampling years from the foundation of these organizations to the present. We code and count to assess their relative attention to Latin America in comparison to other topics. We then analyze in depth their publications related to the region. This enables us to understand how these two American think tanks conceive of Latin America and how they think US and Latin American public and private actors should perform. We conclude this section by examining other indicators to measure variation in interest in the region. Finally, in the fourth section of this essay, we locate the structural position of these think tanks in a broader transnational network of market advocacy think tanks. We analyze how Cato and Heritage use the web to connect with sister institutions. We also look at how those institutions connect back to Cato and Heritage and to each other as well as how they display their identities to the global public through their mission statements and through the institutional friends they choose to mention. Using some basic network analysis tools, we graphically sketch the network and offer some descriptive measures of network density and prestige. Connections such as electronic ties, shared personnel and directors, common frames, and flows of advice and resources show the dynamics of a movement in the sense of a group of actors committed to change. Whether or not this transnationality may also characterize networks of think tanks located elsewhere in the ideological spectrum, our analysis shows it definitely characterizes the market advocacy group. When we look at Cato and Heritage transnationally, we see that their considerable differences in general ideology and perspectives on Latin America, they tend to connect to the same Latin American think tanks. Before continuing it is important to state that in this article we address only one part of the much larger and more varied universe of transnational think tank networks. We concentrate only on the openly ideological, market advocacy network on the political right, the core of which is composed of think tanks whose mission includes the defense of economic freedom. But the ideological spectrum of think tanks is much broader and their full array of institutional interconnection more complex than the restricted cluster studied here. Even within this cluster there is interesting variety. We find some, for example, that share the basic principles of an open economy but do not necessarily advocate a small state and whose conceptual frames resemble a group of think tanks in Latin America that are favorable to market economic policies but identify with a center or even left-of-center political ideology4. There are also very
4. For an influential example of a think tank populated by leftist liberals, see the list of columnists at Expansiva, one of Chiles largest think tanks at http://www.expansiva.cl.
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important US and Latin American think tanks that are absent from our analysis5. A final caveat is that while closely looking at think tanks we recognize important actors that have been understudied, but we miss other actors and contextual features to which think tanks are connected, sometimes across national borders. We study here just the network of think tanks alone. We consider a think tank to be prestigious if it is very well connected with other members of the transnational market oriented network. Yet other connections may also determine prestige in a broader sense. Support from parties, churches, business elites, multilateral agencies and governments, for instance, also strongly influence think tanks prestige. Our portrait therefore is a simplification extracted from a complex reality. Nonetheless, we believe that an examination of even a limited part of the think tank universe is a revealing starting point.
Variations Among US Market Advocacy Think Tanks Cato and Heritage are influential through their direct and indirect participation in policy making and public opinion formation, including policy and opinion on international affairs. Policymakers rely on them for advice and advisors, both formally and informally. Thus, the fate of trade agreements signed with a Latin American country or the shaping of immigration laws in the US are colored by what think tank experts have to say. In addition, the views of the US public on Latin American affairs are shaped by the continuous presence of Cato and Heritage experts in the media. So what is thought and said at Cato and Heritage affects the daily lives of millions. Typologies of US think tanks often consider those like Cato and Heritage to belong to the same cluster of late-twentieth century conservative think tanks. These are seen as distinguishable from other categories: earlier generations of think tanks, more strictly academic think tanks that might be called universities without students (Weaver, 1989:564), think tanks with a mission of nonpartisan expertise, or think tanks with other political identities, such as centrist or progressive or leftist. There do exist, indeed, a lot of commonalities among market-oriented think tanks, to use a term from one important member of that category (Atlas, 2007). However, there are some very significant differences among them as well. Here and in the following section we will explore a range of differences that are of particular concern to Latin America and to US foreign policy towards the region. Our method will be a comparison of our two major exemplars: the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Commonalities Abelson (2002) classifies the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute among the third generation of think tanks. Heritage was established in 1973 and Cato in 1977. Abelson calls them advocacy think tanks because they dedicate most of their effort to media exposure.
5. Indeed, a logical future research step would be to analyze the variations among networks of think tanks with very different ideological orientations, rather than restrict ourselves, as here, to variations within the political right. See Korzeniewicz and Smith (2005) for a comparison of transnational civil society networks, including some think tanks. They show that there are several organizational networks, some of which embrace market, culture, finance and/or production globalization, some of which try to come to terms with it and some of which resist it. It would be interesting also, to analyze transoceanic networks, including organizations beyond the Americas, given that some European political parties and organizations have been active in promoting socio-democratic and other ideas in Latin America.
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Their policy research is joined to aggressive marketing techniques. According to Rich (2004, 2005), it is this effort at persuading the public and politicians, this higher profile as actors in the policymaking process in comparison to previous generations of American think tanks, that has made conservative think tanks like these far more successful in the war of ideas. He presents evidence that progressive (his term is liberal) and middle of the road think tanks are focused on research to the neglect of selling themselves and their ideas, something that the more openly ideological conservative think tanks have been mastering (Rich, 2004, 2005). Rich stresses this aggressive promotion of their ideas, rather than their financial resources, as the key to their influence. In the late 1990s, conservative Heritage and non-ideologically classifiable Brookings Richs categories were regarded as the most influential of all think tanks by Richs interviewees and were similar in financial resources. But Heritage had even more influence on policy than Brookings did, at least in the judgment of the knowledgeable informants Rich questioned. In 1997 Rich (2004:80-90) surveyed congressional staffers and journalists for their views on think tank credibility and influence as well as their perception of ideological affinities. Among 27 think tanks thus rated, the non-ideological Brookings Institution and selfdefined non-partisan Rand Corporation both established decades before the 1970s ideological turn to the right were first and second on credibility. Heritage came in ninth and Cato tenth.6 But Heritage and Brookings were the two most influential, with Heritage at the very top, a change from the early 1990s when Brookings had the lead. Cato was in third place on influence, well ahead of Rand, despite Rands having ten times Catos budget. Much of Heritages budget goes for media and government relations; most of Brookings goes for research, a historical tradition since its founding (Rich, 2005:25). More generally, the major foundations classified as liberal in the US collectively are not only much wealthier than those on the right, but they spend much more in support of think tanks (Rich, 2005:21). However, their ideal is the funding of politically neutral research, while those on the right have an overtly partisan agenda. Of course the Republican control of Congress until 2006, and the more general conservative turn in the US since the presidency of Ronald Reagan (1981-1989), has also helped in getting a hearing for conservative think tanks views and these think tanks, in turn, had much to do with the embrace of conservative ideas. Nonetheless, observers have been inclined to stress marketing techniques as crucial. McGann (2003) calls these organizations think and do tanks because they have an overt ideologically-driven agenda and intensely work to pursue it. Both Cato and Heritage belong to this category. They are definitely committed to getting legislation passed, influencing policymaking and shaping public opinion. The political leanings of our two think tanks are evident. Richs respondents ranked them as the two most conservative among the 27 think tanks under consideration (Rich, 2004:84-85). While the non-ideologically identifiable think tanks tend to be staffed by researchers with strong academic credentials, conservative and/or advocacy think tanks such as Cato and Heritage emphasize a wider range of criteria when choosing their experts. Some staff members have
6. There is some interesting variation among Richs respondents, with Republican congressional staff ranking Heritage and Cato more credible than Democratic congressional staff do, but the most credible think tank for Republicans and Democrats alike is the non-classifiable Brookings, perhaps a testimony to its claim to less ideologically driven, high quality research.
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PhDs or MAs in subjects such as economics, international relations, and history but they also tend to have experience in business, politics and the media.7 Regarding funding, although Heritage has a larger budget and more assets, it is similar to Cato in having most of its funds come from individual contributions. According to their 2006 annual reports, individual contributions made up 74% of Catos $20.5 million income and 60% of Heritages $41.5 million (Cato, 2007c; Heritage 2007b). The rest comes mainly from foundations, such as the Brown Foundation for Cato and the Margaret Thatcher Foundation for Heritage, and corporations, such as Exxon Mobile for Cato and Microsoft for Heritage. Last but definitely not least, what puts Cato and Heritage in the same broad category, despite the divergences we turn to below, is their shared free market advocacy. Cato and Heritage are both overtly ideological, of the political right, and zealous advocates. They are both opponents of big government and of state intervention in the economy. Divergences Despite these similarities, Cato and Heritage represent different constituencies within the US political right. Cato is a libertarian market advocacy think tank whereas Heritage is a conservative market advocacy think tank. We avoid the use of liberal to qualify either of them because the word has different meanings across the globe. Until now we have used the term conservative for both, using a label common in the US, but since we are addressing connections with Latin America, where ideological classifications differ, we should clarify our terms. Catos (2007d) website has a good discussion of the problematic terminology in the US where conservative, liberal, classical liberal and libertarian are sometimes used interchangeably to describe those who embrace the principles of individual liberty, limited government, the free market and the rule of law. One might call Cato liberal as that phrase tends to be used in Europe and Latin America, to indicate a view that socially desirable results are produced by freeing individual initiative from the heavy hand of the state, but since this is so very different from what liberal generally means in the US which is closer to the worldwide meaning of progressive we prefer to use libertarian (following Catos own usage). The libertarian label has been until now less frequently employed in Latin America, although there are efforts under way to promote libertarian parties and campaigns recommending, in the words of a prominent proponent, a massive, colossal transfer of power from the state to the individual, from that single unit called the state, to that massive decentralized unit which is really millions of units called the individual (Vargas Llosa, 2004).
7. The brief online CV for Cato Senior Fellow Steve H. Hanke is revealing of the type of people that advocacy think tanks recruit (Cato, 2007b). He is an Applied Economics Professor at John Hopkins. He also has a business background since he is a Principal at Chicago Partners, LLC, a Chicago-based firm that provides economic and accounting advice in the areas of securities, intellectual property, antitrust, business torts and other complex litigation disputes. He has international experience, having worked abroad and advised leaders from many countries on currency and regulatory reform, privatization, public finance and capital market development. In addition he has political skills and contacts with conservative politicians since he was a Senior Economist on President Reagans Council of Economic Advisors. Finally, as it does with all its experts, Cato emphasizes Dr. Hankes ability to reach out to the general public. Besides authoring academic books and articles, he has been a columnist for Forbes Magazine and other nonacademic journals.
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Cato frames itself as libertarian economically and socially. Individual freedom is the most valued principle and any involvement of the state is therefore considered a violation. By contrast, Heritage does not extend its desire for economic freedom to nearly as many other spheres of life. The Foundation promotes a conservative ideology as widely understood in the US, that is to say, views on social issues associated with groups commonly identified as social conservatives, including, but going well beyond, that countrys Christian right and embracing interventionist foreign policy positions some label as neoconservative. We can see their differences in their mission statements.
The Cato Institute seeks to broaden the parameters of public policy debate to allow consideration of the traditional American principles of limited government, individual liberty, free markets and peace (Cato, 2007d). [Heritages] mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense (Heritage, 2007c).
The two institutes are quite similar in their advocacy of limited government and free markets. They do not have major disagreements regarding economic policy. But Heritage is also committed to what it sees as the traditional American values, which its president broadly summarizes as family (understood as nuclear and heterosexual), faith and community (Feulner, 1998). In addition, while Cato emphasizes peace in its mission, Heritage emphasizes defense and has a strongly militaristic and interventionist perspective. Finally, we note that while Heritage lists traditional American values together with free enterprise, limited government, [and] individual freedom among its central concerns, for Cato, free enterprise, limited government and individual freedom, along with peace, are the traditional American principles they are concerned about. Important concrete disagreements stem from these divergences. In the abortion debate, the two think tanks are on opposite sides. Cato is pro-choice, which follows from its view that government should not constrain individuals freedom. Heritage is pro-life, which follows from its commitment to state action in defense of American values. Similarly, they are opponents regarding gay rights, with Cato opposing government intrusion in the bedroom and Heritage defending what it sees as traditional family values. Differences are also evident in their foreign policy perspectives. Cato has been very critical of the second US war in Iraq, while Heritage has supported the Bush administration policies. These differences in foreign policy are also evident in the think tanks perspectives on US relations with Latin America to which we now turn.
What Think Tanks Think About Latin America The aggressive marketing techniques of Cato and Heritage include a great number and range of publications targeting various audiences, such as journals, policy reports, web memos or short postings, articles in mainstream newspapers, and speeches for Congress. A
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comparative analysis of these publications reveals the extent and nature of their interest in Latin America. For a diachronic perspective that would cover the varied publication genres of these two organizations, we sampled one year every five years from 1980 to 2005. This covers the period from shortly after the founding of these organizations to the present. We listed and coded all their publications in the sampled years. We first classified a total of 753 publications as focused or not focused on Latin America. We then studied those with a Latin American focus.8 How Much Attention? In absolute terms, every year these think tanks publish more and more about Latin America. The active pursuit of media attention that Abelson (2002) talks about has increased dramatically from the creation of these organizations to the present. But this increase does not necessarily mean that a rising proportion of their attention is on Latin America. In fact, the two think tanks differ in this regard. To begin with, we note that the percentage of all publications that are focused on Latin American issues is small. In 2005, for example, only 4.5% of the vast production of these organizations concerned Latin America directly (9 out of the 200 Cato publications in 2005 and 25 out of the 553 Heritage publications for the same year). This is not surprising given the fact that the mission of these institutions has to do with US domestic politics more than anything else. They simply are publishing more on quite a variety of topics, not just on Latin America, which tells us something about growth in think tank efforts to influence policy matters. If greater effort yields greater impact, this also suggests something of their growing significance as well. A comparative analysis of the changing interest of these think tanks in Latin America, however, is much more revealing. Chart 1 presents the percentage of publications devoted to Latin America by the two institutions over a quarter century. We see a clear difference in the trend for the two think tanks. While Heritage has reduced its interest in Latin America across the years, Cato has been increasingly interested in the region, although even at its highest point,
8. Our sources were the very well developed web sites of Cato and Heritage (http://www.heritage.org and http://www.Cato.org). We looked at all publications in the sampled years that were available online. Many, if not all, of them are available since both organizations have done a great job of uploading archival materials originally published in paper format. Heritage has uploaded archival materials since 1977. We accessed them by clicking on the section Issues and then Policy Archive. View by date. We also crosschecked with Policy Archive. View by issue and then Latin America in order not to miss any relevant publications. For Cato, we looked under the tab Publications, where several types of publications are listed. Clicking on any of them gives you a list ordered by date. Cato also has uploaded archival materials. For example, the first Cato Policy Report available is from 1982. We also crosschecked examining another sector of the website. We went to Cato Research Areas, Foreign Policy, and then under Issues by region, we clicked on Latin America. Also under Cato Research Areas, we went to International Economics and Development, and from there to Latin America & the Caribbean. We considered an item to be focused on Latin America when it addressed explicitly some issue about the region as a whole, a specific country, or US immigration of Latin American origin. But we did not consider other items that are relevant to Latin America but that do not specifically discuss the region. For example, a paper recommending cutting US agricultural subsidies to comply with the World Trade Organization was not counted because it lacked specific discussion of Latin America, even though it has significant implications for the region. To classify publications we looked at titles, authors (e.g., paying attention to staff members working on the region), and available abstracts, and we read the texts when we were unsure. After classifying publications as about or not about Latin America, we looked more deeply at the Latin American subset for the analysis of content. From Cato, we considered Inquiry Magazine, Cato Journal, Quarterly Magazine Regulation, Bimonthly Cato Policy Report, as well as books, monographs, briefing papers and shorter studies. From Heritage, we considered the Foundations Annual Report, the monthly newsletter Insider, Web Memos, public policy papers addressing Congress, lectures and other items.
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its proportionate attention is still much less than that of Heritage used to be. As from 2005, their interest was pretty even. Chart 1. Percentage of Publications Focused on Latin America
14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 1980 1985 1990 Cato
Source: www.cato.org and www.heritage.org (see footnote 4).
1995 Heritage
2000
2005
Attention to What? But Heritage and CATO do not differ only in their trends in attention to the lands south of the US. They also differ in their views of the region and the policies they recommend to the US and Latin American governments. In a nutshell, while CATO mainly focuses on economics, Heritage mainly focuses on politics. Cato foregrounds a pro-market agenda for the region, including privatization and opening of trade barriers. Heritage shares this support of marketoriented policies and a reduced role of the State in economic management. But it is much more worried than Cato by the political or ideological threat posed to the US by the populist Latin American left and by corrupt Latin American political institutions. It is therefore more prone to favor US intervention in the region. If we search the world for worrisome threats and for hopeful opportunities, Cato seems rather more inclined than Heritage to find opportunities in Latin America and models to be emulated rather than merely antimodels to be avoided. Cato seems more open to the world in other regards as well. Indeed Cato takes its very name from a pair of foreign models. Its website informs us that it was inspired by a series of libertarian newspaper essays from eighteenth century England, published pseudonymously by two writers under the name Cato, in honor of a still older champion of republican liberty against the tyrant Julius Caesar. By contrast, the traditions evoked by the name Heritage seem thoroughly American, not the heritage of English antistatism let alone Roman republicanism. Table 1 compares their publications and some general characteristics more in detail.
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Table 1. US Think Tanks Visions of Latin America and US-Latin America Relations.
CATO Founding Date Annual Budget Ideology US immigration policy General view of Latin America 1977 17.6 million (2001) Libertarian Freer immigration Publications highlight lessons from market reforms in Latin America, especially from Chile (e.g., social security reform, school choice). Non interventionism Freer trade with Cuba Mexico is the main focus of attention and Chile is second (as a model for social and economic reform). HERITAGE 1973 38 million (2000) Conservative Limit/regulate immigration Vision of Latin American politics as generally corrupt and authoritarian. Chile viewed as the exception. Interventionist - Cold War language Cuba as a threat Currently9 Chvezs Venezuela is the main focus of attention. Continuous interest in Cuba (at least one publication devoted to the region in each of the sampled years from 1989 to 2005). Also interest in Central America. See Table 2.
US foreign policy Cuba Main country of interest in the region
Cato and Heritage hold quite different positions about one of the intermittently hot political topics in the US, immigration from Latin America. While Catos libertarian philosophy plays out in support of more open borders, Heritages more conservative ideology urges regulation and considers immigration as yet another southern threat with dire consequences for the US. Cato published an article by one of the most renowned US sociologists of immigration, Douglas Massey, who has argued that focusing on stopping people from crossing from Mexico into the US has paradoxically increased the population of undocumented Mexicans in the US (Massey, 2005). One sees the connectedness of several of Catos positions in this statement on its website:
We reject the bashing of gays, China, rich people, and immigrants that contemporary liberals and conservatives seem to think addresses societys problems.
A more pragmatic position towards immigration is also found in the latest edition of the Cato Handbook on Policy, a publication aimed at directly influencing politicians votes and policymakers thinking. In its Foreign and Defense Policy Section, Cato recommends easing restrictions on immigration. Specifically in relation to Latin America, it advocates creating a temporary workers visa program for less-skilled immigrants in order to alleviate US labor shortages. Consonant with Catos admiration for the market, this would also have the salutary effect of reducing incentives for illegal immigration. The proposal includes allowing applications by workers already in the US illegally (Cato, 2005).
9. Based on an analysis of the 2005 Heritage publications focused on Latin America. See Table 2.
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Heritage, equally characteristically, has a more restrictive, less liberal perspective on immigration. It advocates more regulation, especially on the Mexican border (Carafano, Kephart, and Rosenzweig, 2005). As Johnson (2005e) explains, for Heritage,
Latin America is the primary source of undocumented migrants entering the United States and, with few exceptions, the conditions that push people out are not getting better. Unless policymakers pay attention, efforts to secure borders and regulate temporary workers could be too little, too late.
Now consider their general perspectives on the region. Cato casts aspects of Latin American reform experience in a favorable, even exemplary, light. Heritage also finds some positive notes in Latin American experience, but it does not emphasize those as much as Cato does, focusing its attention more on the regions institutional problems, seen as threats to the US. Catos admiration for some successful experiences in economic and social policy in Latin America, especially in Chile, has been repeatedly expressed. In 2005 Cato published What America Can Learn from School Choice in Other Countries, edited by David Salisbury and James Tooley. This book places Chile among the exemplary countries, along with Sweden and the Netherlands, where school choice works well and from which the US should learn. Another example indicating a willingness to learn from Latin American successes in order to improve US practice is seen in congressional testimony by one of Catos experts, Peruvian-born Ian Vsquez (2005):
Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify today on Chiles private pension system, especially since it has become the model for countries around the world that have reformed their public pension systems or are considering doing so.
Cato has been an advocate of imitating Chilean social security reform for more than a decade now. Chilean economist Jos Piera is co-chairman of Catos Project on Social Security Choice, launched in 1995. Indeed, Pieras position as one of Catos leading experts in itself strongly underlines Catos admiration for Chilean initiatives. Chiles private pension system based on personal retirement accounts was introduced in 1980 while Piera was Minister of Labor and Social Security. He could be taken to exemplify the ideal type of technocrat (Markoff and Montecinos 1993; Montecinos and Markoff 2001). With a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard, he served the Pinochet government, first as Minister of Labor and Social Security (1978-1980) and then as Minister of Mining (1980-1981), has taught in the US and advised governments in various countries; he also was a presidential candidate in 1993 running as an independent. Committed to spreading the Chilean model throughout the world,10 Piera founded the International Center for Pension Reform at Cato in 1994, becoming a pension reform pied piper as the Wall Street Journal has dubbed him (Moffett 2005). Despite the approbation received by Chiles private pension system in this and other international quarters, Chile is currently engaged in a reform of the reform in order to improve social protection for the poor and self-employed, eliminate gender discrimination and address other shortcomings. A reform bill, approved by the Chamber of Deputies in August of 2007, is under discussion in the Chilean Senate.
10. Evidently his efforts have yielded some success in the transnational think tank network. The website of Croatias Adriatic Institute for Public Policy, for example, features a prominent quote from Piera on social security policy. Retrieved September 28, 2007. http://www.adriaticinstitute.org.
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Cato also has a high regard for Panamas monetary system, where there is no central bank and no government intervention. According to an article published in 2005, Panamas freedom of choice and high level of macroeconomic stability are unparalleled even by Chile and should be imitated by others (Moreno-Villalaz, 2005). If Cato often sees Latin America as a laboratory to learn from, Heritage is more prone to direct its attention to Latin American institutional flaws, such as lack of rule of law, defective property rights and widespread corruption. Latin America as a whole is most definitely not a good model for the US, although Heritage does make an exception of Chile. Like Cato, it salutes the Chilean privatization of social security and places this country high in the ranking of Economic Freedom that Heritage calculates for the world. But except for Chile, Latin America is for Heritage a place of backwardness. An extract from one of Heritages lectures synthesizes this view.
Latin America is predominantly rural, Catholic, and poor. Ireland is also rural and Catholic, but no longer poor, nor a net people exporter. () Despite average poverty rates running about 50 percent, Latin America has felt too little pressure to reform. Foreign assistance and loans make it easy to get by without change. Outside actors, such as China, are willing to trade and deal with corrupt governments that maintain control over markets. () For all its faults, U.S. diplomacy has had notable success. Just 25 years ago, military dictatorships outnumbered civilian-elected governments by two to one. Today, all Latin American countries except Cuba and Haiti hold competitive elections and have adopted some market-oriented reforms. Pretty much on its own, Chile has even become a first-world leader in trade and market liberalization. With help, Colombia is back from the brink of a collapsing State. () Except for Mexico, the United States probably could survive without Latin American markets, which account for less than 6 percent of U.S. trade with the world. () But U.S. peace and security depend on a stable neighborhood and on more prosperous neighbors. () Without adequate support for reforms that go beyond elections and free trade, the regions democratic progress could slide. To ward off future problems, the United States must: Implement a more comprehensive strategy. This strategy should be based on three pillars: to promote stability through more democratic governance, to help open economies through the rule of law and the establishment of pro-business policies, and to improve security by strengthening police and military capabilities. All diplomacy, foreign assistance, and public outreach programs should be judged by these goals. () Sustained U.S. commitment is essential to assure Latin Americas stability and continued peaceful, democratic developmentall very much in our national interest. In a nutshell, the ships in our diplomatic armada need rust-proofing, a clear course, and courageous captains to weather the storms ahead (Johnson 2005f).
Heritages foreign policy proposals differ from Catos focus on trade agreements. In the past, Heritage recommended supporting counterinsurgent paramilitary groups in Cuba, Nicaragua, and other Central American countries (Ashby, 1985). Currently, Heritage encourages less direct forms of action, such as military and police training or economic and diplomatic pressure in the form of conditional economic assistance. For instance, Heritage suggested emergency assistance in Nicaragua that would be contingent on free market reforms (Cox,
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1990). Heritage also advocates that the US support the war on drugs in countries like Colombia and Mexico (Johnson, 2005g; Wilson, 1990). Occasionally, Heritage still resorts to its old language. Stephen Johnson (2005a), author of much of Heritages writing on Latin America, observes:
Halloween scares have come early to South America, and one knocking on the front door right now is TELESUR, a new satellite TV network funded largely by Venezuelas authoritarian president Hugo Chvez.
Johnson has also written against the US accepting aid from Cuba and Venezuela for Hurricane Katrina alleviation efforts (2005b) and about the danger posed by Evo Morales in Bolivia (2005c). There is continuity in Heritages belligerent narrative, from the Soviet threat until the present (we write in 2007), as the following extract illustrates.
Political instability in Haiti could threaten U.S. interests. Because of its proximity to the U.S () and to communist Cuba, Haiti is very strategically located (Wilson 1990).
In a similar vein, a 1985 Heritage memorandum denounced Nicaraguas communist regime for terrorist acts against Americans in Honduras (Pascoe, 1985). The language had been even stronger in 1980, when Heritage called for US intervention in Central America to combat Marxist revolutionaries (Di Giovanni 1980). But the fight is still not over. Heritage recently published an article characterizing China not only as an economic but also an ideological competitor in Latin America (Johnson, 2005d). Catos emphasis on the economy and Heritages emphasis on politics also distinguish these two think tanks takes on Cuba. They both would like to see a democratic Cuba, but while Cato focuses on free trade and is more worried about the lack of freedom in the island (Cato, 2005), Heritages rhetoric has called for intervention to address the Cuban threat (Ashby, 1985). The most recent Cato Handbook on Policy, in its Foreign and Defense Policy section, recommends renewing relations with Cuba. Heritages view is consistent with its general concern with corruption, the rule of law and leftist populism. A simple tabulation points to some of these differences. Table 2 shows the specific countries of interest to each think tank over time.
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Table 2. Number of Publications on a Specific Latin American Country, by Year. Heritage and Cato, 1980-2005
Cato 1980 Chile Mexico Panama Cuba Guatemala Honduras Hait Colombia Nicaragua Bolivia Ecuador Venezuela Per Argentina
Source: Cato and Heritages websites.
Heritage 1985 1990 1995 1 1 1 2000 2005 2 3 1 2 Total 3 5 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 2 1 1 2 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 2 1 5 2 8 2 1 3 1 1 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 1 2 2 2005 Total 1 14 1 10 1 1 2 3 4 2 1 5 2 1
Both think tanks show interest in Mexico. Proximity to the US and immigration issues surely draw this attention. However, there are differences. Most of Heritages publications about Mexico in our sample are from 1990, a crucial year of protests against the government of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari that accelerated the democratization of the political system. This highlights a feature of Heritages attention to Latin America. In addition to its focus on free markets reforms shared with Cato Heritage takes worried note of the regions political turmoil and, specifically, the leftist threat. Consistent with this emphasis, several of Heritages publications are devoted to Latin American electoral results, but not a single publication from Cato in our sample concerns elections. As shown Tables 1 and 2, the most recent Heritage preoccupation is Venezuela, whose President Chvez is perceived as dangerous to US interests. Both think tanks have taken some interest in Panama. Table 2 shows that in the sampled years each has one publication about this country. Yet their concerns are very different and consistent with their other preoccupations. Catos discussion praises Panamas macroeconomic and monetary management (Moreno-Villalaz, 2005), but Heritage complains about President Clintons decision to withdraw US military forces from the Canal in 1995 because the US should still defend its interest in the region. According to Heritage, Congress should press the Administration to revoke this decision (Tierney, 1995). Other Indicators of Attention and Linkages to Latin America In addition to publications there are other indicators of the think tanks interest in and connection to Latin America. We may consider, for example, the presence of staff members of Latin American origin and second, the number and proportion of staff who work on the region
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in comparison to those who work on other world regions. By these indicators, Cato seems more dedicated to the region. First, Cato employs two individuals who are Latin American born among its main policy experts and speakers.11 Although Heritage had a Latin American born specialist on international economics who wrote about Latin America as well as world economics in general, she had left by 2007.12 More important than the national origins of the staff is the geography of staff responsibilities. By this measure as well, Cato appears more focused on Latin America. In 2007, it had six staff members dedicated to foreign policy and international economic issues who dealt with the region, while Heritage had just one (Cato, 2007a; Heritage, 2007a).13 This difference is even more striking if we make a few simple interregional comparisons. Cato dedicates as many staff members to Latin America as to any other large region. Its half dozen people working on Latin America may be compared to its six experts on Asia, six on the European Union, three on the Balkans, four on North Africa, Middle East and Persian Gulf, and two on SubSaharan Africa. The geographic distribution of Heritages attention is quite different. Heritage has one staff member dedicated to Latin America, as well as one dedicated to Africa and one to Russia and Eurasia combined but these are outnumbered by the four experts dedicated to the Middle East, the six to Asia and the Pacific, and the five to Europe-NATO. We may speculate that the end of the Cold War, the new geographies of likely US military action, the dramatic expansion of the Chinese economy, and the increasing economic and political strength of EU-Europe, have dramatically shifted the location of the potential threats to which Heritage is sensitive. Another indicator of Catos greater attention to Latin America is its webpage in Spanish. It is not a mere translation, but has a distinctive content for Spanish readers. The website announces its purpose as the promotion of the values of a free society and policies consistent with those values in the Americas and Spain. In its goal of promoting alternatives around the world one may perhaps hear a libertarian response to the World Social Forums catchphrase another world is possible. In addressing that larger world, the Spanish mission statement drops the English websites description of its basic principles as traditional and American,
11. In addition to Piera, Peruvian-born Ian Vsquez is the director of the Cato Institute's Project on Global Economic Liberty (Cato, 2007a). Vsquez received a bachelor's degree from Northwestern and a master's from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins. Before coming to Cato, he was at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Caribbean/Latin American Action. 12. Ana I. Eiras, an Argentine, is a former Heritage employee who used to be senior policy analyst on international economics at the Center for International Trade and Economics (Heritage, 2007a). 13. Cato lists the following as its experts on foreign policy in relation to Latin America: Christopher Preble (Director of Foreign Policy Studies whose history Ph.D. is from Temple), Carlos Ball (Adjunct Scholar who runs the Agencia Interamericana de Prensa Econmica, a Florida wire service that provides op-eds to major newspapers in Latin America), and Enrique Ghersi (attorney in Peru who co-authored The Other Path with Hernando de Soto. As its experts on Latin American economic and development issues, Cato lists: Roberto Salinas Len (Adjunct Scholar, President of the Mexican Business Forum), Steve H. Hanke (whose impressive credentials we described earlier), and Ian Vsquez, mentioned earlier. Heritages solitary expert on Latin America has changed. For years, it was Stephen Johnson, who wrote most of Heritages publications on Latin America. He had an MA in International Relations from Georgetown and had been a former state department officer who worked at the bureaus of Inter-American Affairs and Public Affairs as well as served in the Air Force. In 2007, James M. Roberts became the Latin American expert. He has an MA in International and Development Economics from Yale and an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh (Cato, 2007a and b).
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although the principles themselves are identical, and addresses the citizen interested in public debate where the English addresses, perhaps a bit more narrowly, the intelligent, concerned lay public (El Cato, 2006).
Think Tanks Transnational Networks Transnational concerns have led to transnational connections among think tanks for a long time. For example, Stone (2000:34) points to transatlantic connections among post-World War One institutes of international affairs. So it is not surprising, in our global age, that market advocacy think tanks, with their strong ideological identities, would establish crossborder connections. We will show that despite their differences in outlook and their unequal relative attention to the region, Cato and Heritage tend to be connected to the same organizations in Latin America. When we look at the organizations or think tanks with whom they partner, consider as friends, or sponsor, in order to promote free market ideology and policies, we see a similar collection of Latin American institutions. And when we look at market advocacy Latin American think tanks, we see that many consider both Heritage and Cato as friends. In fact, for all their differences they are both part of the same transnational network of pro-market think tanks, both support expanding free market ideas overseas and both display a sense of identification with similar (but also interestingly not identical) institutions in Latin America.14 Rationale for Data and Analysis We borrow from Keck and Sikkink (1999:89) the label transnational advocacy network for the connections among the pro-market think tanks in Latin America and the US. According to Keck and Sikkink a transnational advocacy network includes those actors working internationally on an issue, who are bound together by certain values, a common discourse, and dense exchanges of information and services. () What is novel about these networks the authors say is the ability of non-traditional international actors to mobilize information strategically, to help create new issues and categories, and to persuade, pressurize, and gain leverage over much more powerful organizations and governments. Cato, Heritage and other advocacy think tanks frame the issue of interest differently depending on the audience. Cato has websites in Russian and Arabic as well as in Spanish, each with distinctive content, strong evidence of how much investment it is willing to put into self presentation.15 The three websites are not mere copies of the English version. Like the Spanish, the Russian and Arabic sites are not only different linguistically but in the references and framing of the same libertarian principles. The Russian version takes note of nineteenth
14. We remind readers that the market advocacy think tanks we study here are only a part of the organizational environment of Cato and Heritage. Heritage is linked to some very conservative family-values oriented organizations in Latin America that are not connected to Cato (RedFamilia, 2007). The third World Congress of Families took place in Mexico in 2004 and Heritage participated (RedFamilia, 2007). This network, however, does not overlap with the Latin American market advocacy think tanks we examine here, not one of whose members belongs to the conservative family network. 15. We thank Mohammed Bamyeh for explaining the Arabic website to us.
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and early twentieth century Russian liberals (Cato.ru, 2007a and b).16 Aladdins lamp on the Arabic website is just one of the local touches Cato gives its outreach strategy (Misbahalhurriyya, 2007), although it might make some wonder if one needs a genie to arrive at liberalism. As of this writing, Cato promises websites in an additional six languages plus an English-language site devoted to African concerns (Cato, 2007e). Latin American think tanks also use language to reach out to different audiences within and across borders. Some of the Latin American think tanks that we will soon be looking at maintain an English version of their Spanish or Portuguese websites. Sociologists and other social scientists are paying increasing attention to transnational advocacy networks. Myra Marx Ferrees (2006) study of transnational womens organizations using their websites is one inspiring example. Other scholars, too, have paid close attention to the use of the Internet for transnational (and national) network organizing (Diani, 2000). Our study of transnational or trans-American market advocacy think tanks is also guided by network concepts and uses hyperlinks or Internet references from one site to another as an indicator of connectivity. Accompanying the increasing role of electronic communication in social interaction, studies of hyperlinks have proliferated. The web materials of social movements and transnational advocacy networks are well worth studying, including the study of their hyperlinks. And one very promising way of exploring those hyperlinks is network analysis, considering them as ties between organizations. (For some important cautions, see Park and Thelwall, 2003). For this study, in order to investigate the transnational network of conservative market advocacy think tanks, we first needed to establish a list of think tanks to be included. We took as our basic source the Atlas Directory of Think Tanks which helps define the universe appropriately, since Atlas is a market advocacy umbrella think tank that includes in its directory only those think tanks that are free marketeers as well.17 We further limited our universe to three US instances (Cato, Heritage, and Atlas itself) and to think tanks in six Latin American countries: Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, Colombia and Chile.18 These consisted of a total of 40 Latin American instances, which, together with the US cases, constituted our universe for this analysis of 43 organizations, all of which, to repeat, are reasonably understood as promoting free markets but which turn out to embody some interesting variations just as Cato and Heritage do.
16. By way of extra multicultural layering, the Russian website has some English-language material, which is not identical to its own predominant Russian. Someone familiar with the rejection of bashing gays, China, rich people and immigrants that we quoted earlier from Catos English website might find curious that the English language portion of the Russian site substitutes Japan for China; we were unable to find the entire list of those not to be bashed in the Russian version at all (compare http://www. cato.ru/english.php with http://www.cato.ru/about.php as retrieved on Oct. 20, 2007). 17. Atlas's Think Tank Directory compiles information on nearly 500 think tanks worldwide that are sympathetic to the values of a free-market society. It is available online at http://www.Atlasusa.org . 18. The six countries selected are those treated in a collection of essays on professional economists edited by Montecinos and Markoff (forthcoming). We think they are a good selection since they vary in their endowments of think tanks from Uruguay with a timid development of think tanks outside universities (see Garcs article in this book or Garc, 2006) to Chile or Argentina with a considerably better established think tank tradition. Of course, this means that we are presenting only a part of the Latin American think tank network.
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We studied these organizations websites to see who was connected with whom by seeing who cited whom. We took the presence of a link on a think tank website to the website of any of the other think tanks in the little universe we have just defined as an indicator of ideological affinity, particularly important among this group of market-advocacy think tanks since they are imbued with an ideologically explicit identity. If a think tank had such a link, we may have not known what type of connection that was, but we did know they had a positive connection or sisterhood of some sort. We knew they shared some common goal since they were in the Atlas directory. Also, we did not take any mention or hyperlink randomly but only those that were in the links section. Some of the sites explicitly said other free market organizations or things that indicated hyperlinks referred to friends. In addition, in order to validate our results we explored those websites, paying special attention to the organizations mission and goals. We include some of this analysis below. As Diane Stone (2000:36-39) points out, virtual networks are one of a number of ways think tanks are connected. Others include linkages of person to person through shared personnel or through the career movement of individuals from one to another, the transfer of financial or other resources, the formation of alliances for purposes of influence or fundraising, or the constitution of research networks for collaborative projects.19 It is important to note that we are not analyzing those other important sorts of connection here. Internet references may indicate that there are such other exchanges and we suspect that there are, but we need different types of data to demonstrate this. A Think Tank Network Figure 2 shows the web of connections linking our think tanks. There are many connections and we can draw some conclusions from them. The figure shows our 43 think tanks connected by 197 directed arcs representing outgoing and incoming ties among them. We have located Atlas at the center of the network. Atlas is by definition connected to all the Latin American sites through its outgoing ties since we used its directory as a key step in defining our universe.
19. The six countries selected are those treated in a collection of essays on professional economists edited by Montecinos and Markoff (forthcoming). We think they are a good selection since they vary in their endowments of think tanks from Uruguay with a timid development of think tanks outside universities (see Garcs article in this book or Garc, 2006) to Chile or Argentina with a considerably better established think tank tradition. Of course, this means that we are presenting only a part of the Latin American think tank network.
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Figure 1: Market Advocacy Think Tanks' electronic Connections in the Americas. 43 Think Tanks, 7 Countries
Note 1: Country abbreviations in parentheses: Uy is Uruguay, Ar Argentina, Bz Brazil, Co Colombia, Ch Chile, Mx Mexico and US United States. For the full names of the think tanks, see glossary at the end of the article. Note 2: We graphed the network using Pajek (Slovenian for spider), network analysis software that also calculated the centrality measures we present below. We thank Patrick Doreian and his students, Spencer Foster and Jared Coopersmith, for having introduced us to it and for their instruction. Source: Atlas Think Tank Directory available at www.Atlasusa.org and the websites of all the think tanks in this graph.
Although there are a considerable number of ties among these think tanks, this is not a very dense network as a whole. Many organizations are unconnected to each other. The density of a network like ours is the proportion of possible ties that are actually present, a quantity that ranges from 0 to 1(Hanneman and Riddle, 2005). For our network, the computation yields 0.11 (D=197/(43*42). Thus, only 11% of the potential links among the think tanks in our constrained universe do exist. Some of the think tanks represented here are connected to Heritage or Cato. Some are connected to neither of them. There are 11 organizations connected to both. We have indicated these think tanks with a rectangle in the middle of the picture to represent the core of this transnational market advocacy network. In general, they are densely connected with each other as well as with the other Latin American think tanks. Chilean Libertad y Desarrollo (Freedom and Development), for instance, is connected to 31 other organizations in this network, which is almost three quarters of our universe. Looking at the mission statements of the 11 organizations inside the box validates our conjecture that website hyperlinks are indicators of sisterhood. The mission statements of these 11 think tanks agree on a group of principles. They are all committed to a market economy, limited government, and the rule of law through research and advocacy. As the Instituto Liberdade (2007) mission statement has it: [they are here to] produce ideas and build influence Their research tends to be guided by that goal. The Liberal Institute
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(2007), for instance, states its commitment to research that shows the advantages of a society organized according to a liberal order. Besides changing domestic policy, some have an international aim. One of the main goals of CIDAC (2007) for instance, consists of strengthening the Mexico-US relationship. Not only do they have common views, but they inhabit a densely connected sector of the overall network. The density of the subnetwork within the rectangle is 0.36 (D=40/(11*10)), notably higher than the network as a whole. While these core positions affiliate them with both Cato and Heritage, we are also struck by the general absence of the sorts of concerns that distinguish Heritage from Cato. These eleven organizations do not, on the whole, share the moral or social conservatism of Heritage, at least not strongly enough to include them in their mission statements. This is true for most of the nodes of this network with only the few exceptions we mention below. The members of our network do more than share some core ideas (while differing on others) and display a sense of identity through web links. They sometimes act collectively towards a common goal and with a common interlocutor. (We see in this an affirmation of the validity of our taking hyperlinks as indicators of ties among network members). On November 2007, the heads of State and government of Iberian and Latin American countries assembled in Santiago to debate and sometimes insult one another at the Seventeenth Ibero-American Summit. This years conference themes were the problems of inequality and social cohesion in Latin America, problems whose durability has been giving the left a string of electoral victories in one country after another. One might well imagine such a conference bolstering support for strengthening state intervention. Evidently concerned at this prospect, a group of US, Latin American and Spanish public figures, academics and organizations signed a document addressed to the presidential attendees that argued in favor of economic and political freedom as the only route towards regional growth, equality and cohesion. Latin America should reduce State size and open its markets. The petition described the region as a field of contention between two development models, Venezuelan and Chilean, the former inefficient and authoritarian, the latter promising wellbeing for all. Among the small group of signers eight are think tanks belonging to our network, including the Heritage Foundation (Libertad y Desarollo 2007).20 Let us return to Figure 1. Three organizations, which we have located in the bottom left corner of the graph, are connected to Cato but not to Heritage. Four, which we have located in the bottom right corner of the picture, are connected to Heritage but not to Cato. These two groups of organizations tend to share the core values of the boxed group regarding economic freedom. They differ from each other, but not as clearly as we would have expected. If Cato and Heritage were targeting different audiences or friends within the Latin American think tank universe, we would expect those connected only to Heritage to be more socially conservative than those connected only to Cato. This is only partially true. Two of the four organizations that connect only to Heritage do have a socially conservative touch that emphasizes values or ethics in a way not found among those only connected to Cato.
20. For a different classificatory scheme see Struyk, 2000a and b.
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The Instituto Cultural Ludwig von Mises aims at defending and promoting freedom with responsibility, through ethics education, human activities and public policies (ICLVM, 2007). The Centro Interdisciplinar de tica e Economa Personalista (CIEEP, 2007) is even closer ideologically to Heritage since it has a religious component and worries about a moral crisis. CIEEPs mission consists of disseminating the practice of Judeo-Christian values.21 We suspect that the labels conservative and libertarian do not distinguish among Latin Americas market advocacy organizations as sharply as they distinguish Heritage and Cato. In fact, some of the think tanks may use both frames, choosing libertarian or conservative arguments depending on the topic. Moreover, they may mix them in innovative ways. This seems to be the case with abortion and reproductive health in general, a heated topic in a generally Catholic region. As an example, Chiles Libertad y Desarrollo has been very critical of President Michelle Bachelets reproductive health initiatives, especially the plan to allow adolescents to buy Plan B contraceptive pills, without needing their parents authorization. Libertad y Desarrollo argues this gives more power to the State and less power to families. Moreover, using libertarian arguments, it defends the individual freedom of pharmacists to follow their ethical beliefs and not sell the pills (Libertad y Desarrollo, 2007b). The Argentine Centro de Implementacin de Polticas Pblicas para la Equidad y el Crecimiento (CIPPEC), also connected to Heritage and not to Cato, is unusual in contrast to the network as a whole because it is oriented more towards equity than to freedom, as indicated in its very title. This institute wants a just State as well as an effective one. It is telling that the three ties it has are incoming and not outgoing ties. This is not because CIPPEC does not have a links section in its site, but because none of the other 42 members of this market advocacy network are cited in its quite long list of NGOs, foundations, and so on (CIPPEC, 2007). CIPPEC does not seem to consider them sister institutions. In its distance from libertarian principles it is less far from Heritage than from Cato, but its own social ethics are at some considerable remove from either, and from the rest of the network, too. The Brazilian Instituto Millenium (2007) is the fourth one connected to Heritage but not to Cato. Yet its libertarian mission makes it ideologically closer to Cato itself, or to the think tanks connected to Cato and not to Heritage. It also resembles, for that matter, most of the institutes of the network, in its pro-market orientation. That it is connected to Heritage not Cato, rather than the other way around, demonstrates that the virtual affiliations we are exploring are not altogether matters of ideological affinity. Now let us turn to the bottom left corner, the three connected to Cato alone. They are indeed libertarian, as expected, but not terribly different from those in the central rectangle. The basic picture remains: Cato and Heritage tend to support, be friends with, or have other types of ties with the same group of institutions that advocate a free market economy in Latin America.
21. The other signers are from ESEADE, Libertad y Desarrollo, Instituto Liberdade, Fundacin Libertad, Instituto de Ciencia Poltica, Academia de Investigacin Humanstica, and Alejandro Chafuen (president of ATLAS). The absence of Cato or any of Catos experts is quite intriguing.
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The group of think tanks we placed in the upper left corner is part of this network by virtue of Atlas listing them in its directory. They are indeed market advocacy think tanks, but they do not have websites or links sites in their webpages, and they are not very popular, in network terms, among the rest of the institutes since not one has a reference to them. They are almost isolated, at least in cyberspace. They appear in our network only because they are in the Atlas directory. Finally, we turn to a very interesting group, at the top center and right of the graph. They are not connected to either Cato or Heritage through their websites, despite sharing a free market orientation. Yet they do have many connections with the Latin American ambassadors of the market advocacy movement. If we look at their ties, we see that they tend to be connected with Libertad y Desarrollo, Red Libertad and the others in the network core, and that they have almost no connections among each other. The only exception is an interconnected cluster of organizations dedicated to justice, delinquency and security issues: Foresjusticia, Paz Ciudadana and Fundar-Justicia y Seguridad. This last organization is also connected to a more typical market advocacy think tank from our network, Fundacin Pensar, the Argentine counterpart of the Fundacin para el Anlisis y los Estudios Sociales, a Spanish think tank linked to the Partido Popular and presided over by former President Jos Mara Aznar (FAES, 2007). In addition to describing the clustering of think tanks, we can study their prestige as that term has come to be understood in network analysis. Prestige among actors in a network is related to centrality under the assumption that actors that have more ties have more access to information, can influence others more, are less dependent on others and are regarded as important by others (Hanneman and Riddle 2005). For us, it will be important to distinguish between outgoing and incoming ties for they may well indicate different things. Often outgoing ties might indicate influence, particularly if we were studying flows of resources, for example, who provides funds to whom. But outgoing virtual ties, as in our study, may simply mean too many things other than that the source of the tie has great influence. (They might, for example, simply mean that some think tank has just hired a particularly energetic computer geek who enjoyed placing hyperlinks on the website). Incoming ties, however, mean someone else has thought another organization worthy of note. In trying to map the prestige structure of our network, then, we will restrict ourselves to incoming ties and regard think tanks as more prestigious, the more hyperlinked they are. The most prestigious think tank in this network turns out to be Atlas, with 17 out of the 42 other members of this network referencing it in their webpages. Knowing that Atlas has ties to all of them since we used its directory to define the universe means that 40% of the think tanks reciprocate those ties. Cato and Heritage are the next two most prestigious think tanks in this network, with 13 and 12 incoming ties respectively. So, US-based think tanks are very important members of the western hemispheric market advocacy movement. But four think tanks in our central rectangle, the core Latin American membership, are almost equally prestigious. Fundacin Libertad, Libertad y Desarrollo, ESEADE and Fundacin Atlas 1853 each have 11 incoming ties from others. We see this as another indication that global market advocacy can not be reduced to a flow of ideas and policies from North to South.
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Table 3 offers data on prestige, but by country instead of by individual think tank. In the first column we have the number of think tanks in our network by country. The second column shows the number of incoming ties, many of which turn out to cross national frontiers. This may be seen by returning to Figure 2. We see for instance that the Argentine Instituto Acton is not connected with any of the other Argentine think tanks in this network but with one from Chile, one from Brazil and one from the US. But the numbers in Table 3 add some precision to the visual image. Table 3. Think Tank Prestige by Country
N of think tanks in network (a) Uruguay Colombia Mexico Chile Brazil US Argentina 4 3 5 4 5 3 19 Number of incoming ties (b)) 9 10 11 24 28 42 73 Normalized number Number of transna- Normalized number Percentage of transof incoming tional incoming of transnational national incoming ties (b/a) ties (c) incoming ties (c/a) ties (c*100/b) 2.3 3.3 2.2 6.0 5.6 14.0 3.8 9 10 11 20 16 36 48 2.3 3.3 2.2 5.0 3.2 12.0 2.5 100.0 100.0 100.0 83.3 57.1 85.7 65.8
Source: Atlas Think Tank Directory available at www.Atlasusa.org and the websites of all the think tanks included in the analysis (see Figure 2 or glossary at the end of the article).
Looking at the raw numbers of incoming ties, we would say that Argentina is the most popular or more prestigious country in the network, but this number is greatly influenced by the uneven number of think tanks from each country in our universe. The third column therefore offers a more comparable centrality measure, dividing the number of incoming ties by the number of think tanks in the network for each country. By this measure, the US think tanks are by far the most prestigious. The mere 3 US think tanks in the networks are so prestigious that they receive 42 references from other think tanks. Brazilian and Chilean organizations follow the US in prestige, leaving Argentina in the fourth place. Uruguayan and Mexican think tanks are the least prestigious. But we must remember that no single figure captures a fairly complex reality. What these normalized prestige scores show is that the average think tank in our US group is far more prestigious than the average Latin American. But we selected three very prestigious US institutions, exercised no such selectivity for the Latin American cases, and found, nonetheless, that the four most prestigious individual Latin American instances are almost as prestigious as the US group. In short, this study affirms the importance of US-based think tanks within the movement. No surprise there. But it also shows the importance of Latin American think tanks, a finding that invites much further study. Finally, the last three columns show data on the transnationality of the network. Among all incoming ties our think tanks receive from each other, 76% come from outside their country. The raw number of ties coming from abroad (c) gives a general idea, but the last two columns are more useful to understand what the number of incoming ties means in relative terms. The normalized number of transnational incoming ties has the same interpretation as the normalized total number of ties we have already looked at. Therefore, of the 6 incoming ties Chilean
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think tanks receive on average, 5 come from outside Chile. The last column shows the percentage of the total number of ties a country receives that come from abroad. These indicators show the comparative development of intra-country and transnational connectedness for each country. Uruguayan, Mexican and Colombian think tanks get all their ties from think tanks outside their countries. Brazilian think tanks get many ties from inside Brazil but even so almost 60% of their connections come from abroad. Crucial Actors in the Network Figure 2 shows connections among at least two types of actors that we will call first-order and second-order organizations. Most of the think tanks in the network are first-order organizations. But both Red Libertad and Atlas are umbrella or second-order organizations, a label we bestow on those that sponsor other entities in the network. Their goal is not merely to participate in the market advocacy movement, but to foster it. They incubate, connect, transfer information, and give leverage to individual or first-order think tanks. Red Libertad coordinates some of the most prestigious Argentine think tanks in our network as well as others not in our sample. Think tanks from different provinces come together in this network to promote public policies based on freedom values, private property, the rule of law, openness and market economy (Red Libertad, 2007). Red Libertad, in turn, is sponsored by the Fundacin Internacional para la Libertad (FIL), a worldwide umbrella organization of promarket think tanks presided by the renowned Peruvian intellectual Mario Vargas Llosa. FIL is not in our universe, since we focused only on think tanks based in Latin America or the US, but it is definitely a major player in the market advocacy think tank network and it is close to many of the organizations in our universe. FIL emerged as a response to what its adherents see as a worldwide reaction against an open society, which its members believe to be the only road to progress. As expressed in its statement of goals, FIL constitutes an answer to the neopopulist wave whose triumph would mean a big step backwards in the modernization process of Ibero-America. The foundation is in favor of a global modernization project that makes individuals and not social classes, racial groups or bureaucracies the main protagonists of history (FIL, 2007). As pointed out earlier, a hyperlink does not necessarily mean the existence of off line interaction. It is an empirical question whether virtual networks (which we are confident give some indication of ideological affinity among members of our ideologically self-defining organizations) are paralleled by other kinds of connection. In the case of the hyperlink from the homepage of Red Libertad to Fundacin Internacional para la Libertad, we know the ties go beyond cyberspace. The former is one of the institutes that compose the latter and it actively participates in the broader Iberoamerican network. In addition, these organizations share a director. Interlocked board or staff members are among the indicators network analysts commonly use to detect ties between organizations. Gerardo Bongiovanni, President of Red Libertad, is on the board of directors of Fundacin Internacional para la Libertad (FIL, 2007). He is also President or member of the board of other Argentine think tanks in our network, such as Fundacin Libertad, Fundacin Alberdi, Fundacin Global, ESEADE, and Fundacin Carlos Pellegrini.
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Red Libertad is not the only think tank in our network to be part of the broader Fundacin Internacional para la Libertad. In fact, 11 out of the 29 members of this foundation are also members of our network, including Heritage and Cato. And Bongiovanni is not the only shared member. Among the board of directors of the international foundation we also find staff members from the two US think tanks we are focusing on Ian Vsquez and Jacobo Rodrguez, from Cato, and Ana Eiras, from Heritage (FIL, 2007). Shared members are indicators of organizational ties, not just common identity. They are individual brokers who add another layer of connection to this multilevel market advocacy think tank movement. Some professionals, particularly economists, have been crucial brokers in the transmission of market ideology in the Americas (Markoff and Montecinos, 1993; Montecinos and Markoff, 2001). Montecinos, Markoff and lvarez-Rivadulla (forthcoming) have looked at the rsums of technocrats who go back and forth between the US and Latin America, studying in US institutions, working at international agencies, stepping into politics as economy or finances ministers or even presidents, and who then perhaps retire from politics to return to academia in the US or in Latin America. Think tanks increasingly constitute another niche for these professionals. This takes us directly to Atlas, the other umbrella or second-order organization in the network we analyze. Atlas President and Chief Executive officer, Alejandro Chafuen, is an Argentine economist with a US PhD. His CV (Chafuen, 2007) exemplifies the significance of Latin American-US linkages for the transnational flow of economic ideas, with think tanks as crucial actors. The CV also demonstrates how institutional and personal biographies intertwine and how they both contribute to the diffusion of ideas. Not only does he head Atlas, but he is also on FILs board of directors and is president of HACER, another US-based market advocacy think tank that is concerned with Hispanic America and Hispanic Americans living in the US (HACER, 2007). Both Cato and Heritage researchers have quoted Chafuens findings on the positive effects of economic freedom in the reduction of corruption. Heritage has used this study, among others, to recommend that the Bush administration allocate development money only to countries with high levels of economic freedom (Schaefer and Shavey, 2002). Again showing that hyperlinks stand for other types of interaction, this research was conducted with Eugenio Guzmn from the Centro de Estudios Pblicos, from Chile, another member of our network. We have already noticed the relevance of Atlas in our network when we analyzed connections. But what is Atlas? It is a US based (Virginia) umbrella organization that serves the international market advocacy think tank movement by helping develop independent local think tanks and related programs that advance the ideas of freedom (Atlas, 2006). More than a think tank itself, Atlas is an incubator of conservative think tanks with an international outreach. And it sees itself as the energizer of a movement, its own revealing word. We have focused in this paper on its Latin American partners, but it has partners everywhere. Its mission is to discover and support new talent in the world of free market entrepreneurship, financially and technically. Atlas is therefore a central node in the transmission of information, funds, personnel and other resources in the transnational flow of pro-market ideas and policies.
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Atlas acts as an institutional broker in a global knowledge network, to borrow the nomenclature of Stone (2002) and Struyk (2002a and b). These networks, whose members can be think tanks but also universities, development agencies, political parties, foundations, consultancy firms, individual academic or nonacademic experts, also include national and transnational umbrella organizations of the kind we have dubbed second-order. A Few Methodological Reflections Before summing up the results of this study of crossborder think tank connections, we want to take note of the limitations of the data we have presented here, something that may suggest future research. First of all, we need to think about the role of Atlas, whose directory was our main source for defining the universe of think tanks. Atlas turned out to be a very active broker in the network, not just our data source. As we saw in Figure 2 and Table 3, Atlas is the think tank that receives the most ties in our network. All of those are reciprocating ties since Atlas also sends ties to all the nodes in the network. That Atlas sends ties to all our think tanks other than Cato and Heritage is an artifact of method, rather than of substantive interest. There is, however, nothing artifactual in our finding that so many of these ties are reciprocated. Atlas is a major player. What are the methodological consequences of having used Atlas to define our network? Had we chosen another one of the market advocacy think tanks to start analyzing the network going from one website to the other one and analyzing all the hyperlinks, we would have reached a broader network. Many of our nodes would probably still be there since they are omnipresent and very active in the virtual transnational market advocacy network. Cato and Heritage would definitely be there. However, this network is only part of the organizational ecology of think tanks in the Americas. Had we chosen other directories, we would have found different organizations. Had we used, for instance, the NIRA (2005) directory of think tanks, we would have found only two think tanks for Chile, one on the fringes of our network, Fundacin Paz Ciudadana, and the other one not present in our network at all, ILPES (Latin American and Caribbean Institute for Social Planning). The absence of ILPES is especially noteworthy because it belongs to the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).22 In some ways, one might call ECLAC the Latin American think tank par excellence: a research center influencing economic development and social change from a Latin American perspective. Although it emerged when the expression think tank was not yet in vogue, and although it has changed over the years, ECLACs doctrinal stance remains at considerable distance from the market advocacy think tanks we have been studying. It is not connected to either Cato or Heritage and it is not listed in the Atlas directory. Even though our goals in this paper have been limited to studying variation within the market advocacy think tank movement on the political right, sketching its transnational structure
22. A few other organizations also mix free market advocacy with religion. Curiously, they are not tied to Heritage, at least not virtually. They are the Argentine branch of the US Acton Institute which seeks to promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual freedom and ruled by religious principles (Instituto Acton, 2007) and the Uruguayan Christian Association of Business Managers which promotes social responsibility inspired by social Christianity (ACDE, 2007).
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and paying special attention to two big US players, Cato and Heritage, we want to close with the caveat that there is a complex organizational ecology of think tanks that we have not considered here. Think tanks advocating feminist ideas, environmental policies, ethnic rights, poverty alleviation, heterodox economics, and much else have been proliferating in the Americas alongside the ideological mates of Cato and Heritage. In the Southern Cone, for instance, some of the independent research centers created during the military regimes in the 1970s and 1980s remain active. Not all of them call themselves or are commonly perceived as think tanks, but they are centers with a foot in academia and a foot in policy. By our crude definition they are think tanks, too. And they are by and large affiliated with the political center and left. Some of them, like our market advocacy group, organize transnationally and many use the web to do so.23 In the US, too, there are other wealthy think tanks of a different ideological hue than either Cato or Heritage and with, we have no doubt, their own transborder connections. Mapping this larger and more variegated universe is for the future.
Conclusions Since the 1970s, the number of think tanks around the world has increased immensely. This trend might be slowing down according to the recent worldwide survey conducted by the Foreign Policy Research Institute (2007). Perhaps, however, there are waves of think tank formation and waves of abeyance or recession. Just as there is variation in the number, type and influence of think tanks crossnationally, there might be variation over time, with some periods being more fertile for the emergence of nongovernmental policy oriented institutes. Regardless of their numbers or orientation, their influence seems to be increasing. Yet we know little about these influential organizations. It was not until recently that social scientists started paying attention to their crucial role. We still need to learn more about national cases. As we saw in this essay, when we analyze variation within one country, we can find important differences among think tanks that might at first be seen as pursuing the same goals. But there is a transnational dimension, too. As Diane Stone (2004:34) puts it, think tanks have become transnational actors in regional affairs and global politics. Market advocacy think tanks conceive themselves as part of a border-spanning movement. We will need to look beyond the national State to really understand it. In this essay, we have tried to combine both within-state and transnational analyses using different types of data and methods. We found that network analysis gave very useful clues to the complexities of a very broad and fluid group of free market advocacy think tanks. In the within-state analysis, we found that two of the major US organizations, often grouped together for their advocacy of causes on the right of the US political spectrum are in a number of ways quite different. They differ in their general ideology. Libertarian Cato and conservative
23. Choosing another directory is one way to broaden the spectrum of think tanks existent in the Americas, but not constraining the universe from the beginning is another one. Had we kept it open, we would have found ILPES anyway, since Fundacin Paz Ciudadana has a hyperlink to it.
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Heritage, moreover, have significant differences about Latin America. Cato focuses much more on economic analyses of the region and its main concerns are the promotion of free markets and small government. Its libertarian philosophy leads the institute to support a more flexible immigration policy and an end to the embargo on trade with Cuba, proposals that Heritage would never advocate. Heritage certainly shares the pro-market agenda for the region. But it focuses much more on the politics of Latin America, especially on political turmoil and leftist threats. Having maintained Cold War language over the years, the Heritage Foundation still advocates US intervention to fix Latin American institutional and ideological flaws. Nevertheless, when it comes to US politics, they both share connections with the Republican Party, despite Catos position on immigration, abortion or gay rights, which are closer to views common among Democratic politicians. A similar blurring of what philosophically seem like irreconcilable differences occurs when it comes to international outreach. Despite different trajectories of attention to Latin America, and despite their differences in outlook, when we look at the regions think tanks that Cato and Heritage consider as friends, sponsor, or partner with, we see that they are not very different from each other. Most of these Latin American organizations share a clear commitment to the spread of market ideas. In turn, when we look at these Latin American market advocacy think tanks, we see that many consider both Heritage and Cato as partners and those that affiliate with one but not the other only sometimes seem to be expressing an ideological affinity. They are both part of the same transnational market advocacy think tank network, within which their common commitments outweigh their points of opposition.
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Appendix: Glossary of Think Tanks in Figure 1

Complete name 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 Academia de Investigacin Humanstica (Mx) Asociacin Civil de Empresarios, Consumidores y Artistas Responsables Argentinos (Ar) Asociacin Cristiana de Dirigentes de Empresa (Uy) Atlas (US) Cmara Argentina de Comercio (Ar) Centro de Estudios en Economa y Educacin (Mx) Centro de Estudios Macroeconmicos (Ar) Centro de Estudios Pblicos (Ch) Centro de Implementacin de Polticas Pblicas para la Equidad y el Crecimiento (Ar) Centro de Investigacin para el Desarrollo A.C. (Mx) Centro Interdisciplinar de Etica e Economia Personalista (Br) Centro para la Apertura y el Desarrollo de America Latina (Ar) Centro de Estudio de la Realidad Econmica y Social (Uy) Crculo Liberal (Uy) Escuela Superior de Economa y Administracin de Empresas (Ar) Foro de Estudios Sobre la Administracin de Justicia (Ar) Fundacin Alberdi (Ar) Fundacin Atlas1853 (Ar) Fundacin Bases (Ar) Fundacin Capital (Ar) Fundacin Carlos Pellegrini (Ar) Fundacin del Tucumn (Ar) Fundacin FUNDAR Justicia y Seguridad (Ar) Fundacin Global (Ar) Fundacin Idea (Mx) Fundacin Libertad (Ar) Fundacin Libertad (Uy) Fundacin Paz Ciudadana (Ch) Fundacin Pensar (Ar) Heritage (US) Instituto Acton (Ar) Instituto Cultural Ludwig Von Mises (Mx) Instituto de Ciencia Poltica (Co) Instituto de Estudos Empresariais (BR) Instituto Liberdade (former Instituto Liberal do Rio Grande do Sul) (BR) Instituto Libertad y Progreso (Co) Instituto Millenium (Br) Liberal Institute -Rio de Janeiro (BR) Libertad y Desarrollo (Ch) Red Libertad (Ar) The Cato Institute (US) Instituto de Polticas Pblicas, Universidad Finis Terrae (Ch) Verdad Colombia (Co) Abbreviated name A Inv Hum (Mx) ACEmpr Resp (Ar) ACDE (Uy) Atlas (US) CAC (Ar) CE Ec y Ed (Mx) CEMA (Ar) CE Pblicos (Ch) CIPPEC (Ar) CIDAC (Mx) Etica Ec Personalista (Br) CADAL (Ar) CERES (Uy) C Liberal (Uy) ESEADE (Ar) Foresjusticia (Ar) F Alberdi (Ar) F Atlas1853 (Ar) F Bases (Ar) F Capital (Ar) F C Pellegrini (Ar) F Tucumn (Ar) Fundar (Ar) F Global (Ar) F Idea (Mx) F Libertad (Ar) F Libertad (Ar) F PazCiu (Ch) F Pensar (Ar) Heritage (US) I Acton (Ar) I C LVMises (Mx) ICP (Co) I E Empresariais (Br) I Liberdade (Br) I Lib y Pro (Co) I Millenium (Br) Liberal I (Br) Lib y Des (Ch) R Libertad (Ar) CATO (US) PPI Finisterrae (Ch) Verdad Co (Co)
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PART III. Think Tanks in the Ro de la Plata
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8. Knowledge Behind the Throne

Expert Intellectuals, Think Tanks and Economic Policies in Argentina: between the Austral Planand the Convertibility Crisis
ANTONIO CAMOU1
Introduction This work offers an analysis of the relationship between the expertise of economic advisors and the decisions made by Princes at some stages of the Argentine history in the last two decades. More specifically, its main goal is to examine by means of the expert economic press the relationship between the networks of economic experts (regarded as expert knowledge producers, promoters and operators) and the economic policymaking process at two different stages: the launching of the Austral Plan in 1985 and the convertibility crisis, in 2001. The Austral Plan was the most serious and comprehensive attempt by the democratic government of President Ral Alfonsn (1983-1989) to defeat the scourge of inflation which was affecting Argentina since the second post-war period. The failure of this Plan, and the timid attempts to further extend it, would lead to the 1989 hyperinflation crisis. It would not be until 1991 that this crisis would come to a close, upon the launching of the Convertibility Plan by Domingo Cavallo, Economy Minister of President Carlos Sal Menem, in April of that year. The Convertibility Plan mainly consisted in pegging the peso one-to-one to the US dollar, thus establishing a currency board under which the level of reserves deposited at the Central Bank should not be lower than 80 per cent of the total Argentine currency in circulation. In this way, any person could exchange freely and without any special requirements dollars for pesos at the fixed parity. The 2001 crisis would also abruptly bring the validity of this model to an end. This work is not aimed at carrying out a technical analysis of the above-mentioned plans, but at providing a view on the changes of space and public debate structuring with regards to macroeconomic issues in Argentina. To this effect, we rely on a systematic analysis of all discursive interventions by economic experts, as they were published in the Economic Supplements of three large-circulation newspapers in the country, which cover a broad political and ideological spectrum: La Nacin, Clarn and Pgina/12. Besides this brief introduction, the work is organized in six sections: the first one schematically summarizes the historical overview which has linked experts and decision-makers, and some of the most outstanding problems; then, follow basic analytical and methodological considerations of the chosen approach, highlighting the fact that these notes are part of a more comprehensive project that is still in progress; then, a review of the Austral and Convertibility cases is presented; later on, the main findings, though tentative and subject to subsequent
1. Department of Sociology, National University of La Plata (UNLP). Professor of the Master course in Administration and Public Policies at the University of San Andrs. I would like to thank Laura Paonessa (UDESA) for her excellent work as Research Assistant.
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revision, are summarized as defined by a series of trends that either emerge, are maintained or accentuated during the period under analysis: individual concentration of expertise, gender concentration, institutional concentration, greater qualification and privatization of public debate. Finally, the work includes some controversial notes on the role played by economists in policymaking processes.
Expert Knowledge and Politics. A Brief History. In short, a remote history of relationships between the knowledge spheres and the political power would deal with reflection and the different experiences ranging from the ancient classical era to the dawn of modernity, with the works of Machiavelli and the vast literature on advices to Princes; in these cases, the links between political advice and decision-making are shaped at least until Machiavelli by means of personalized and hardly systematized relationships in terms of cognitive structure, and with a very low level of institutionalization and professionalization (DeLen, 1999: 137). Modern history, on the other hand, would acknowledge their breaking point at the early rise of social sciences as autonomous disciplines and their articulation with the needs of the bureaucratic and rational State, the demands of capitalist markets, and the expectations of justice of new social actors. Let us think, for instance, in the cases of Saint-Simon, Comte, Le Play or Durkheim in France; or the program of the Fabian Society (1884), the works of Sydney and Beatrice Webb and the creation of the London School of Economics in the UK; or the work of Max Weber, Edgar Jaff and Gustav Schmoller within the renewed Verein fr Socialpolitik (1873), something that in the language of our time would be considered a think tank.2 However, the contemporary history regarding the relationship between what starts to be more clearly defined as expertise, on the one hand, and as public policy, on the other, does not begin to be written in this new light until the period ranging from the crisis of the 1930s to the end of World War II. And, to a large extent, we will have to wait until the crisis of the 1970s, and the re-shaping of structural relationships between State, marketplace and civil society within the framework of the globalization process, for the complex relationships between these spheres to be reformulated in this renewed context. In this long history of agreements and disagreements between the world of knowledge and politics, current Western societies have been incorporating their own characteristics, and also their own tensions. Among the most outstanding ones, as pointed out by Lewis A. Coser, it is worth noting the fact that the vast process of bureaucratization of social life has led cultural productivity which could have been at some point a matter of craftsmanship to be rationalized so that the production of ideas resembles, in its main features, the production of economic goods. At the same time, the position of lettered people and intellectuals of a general kind
2. It should be noticed as a historical curiosity that these original think tanks were created in Europe by socialists and reformers, and had no link with the ruling sectors; rather, they were created at the initiative of intellectuals and politicians who were concerned about the living conditions of popular sectors.
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has started to be gradually occupied by experts, who have gained technical proficiency in a certain field of knowledge, and are thus capable of applying it to the solution of specific problems in policymaking. In the same sense, the link between experts and politics is registered increasingly often within issue networks, connecting government agencies, think tanks, research centers, private foundations, multilateral institutions, universities, project sponsors, and other complex organizations, thus leaving little room for the declining figure of the independent intellectual.3 By focusing our attention on the 1940s, the intention is to highlight the fact that two complex processes, which will contribute to define the terms of the relationship between expert knowledge and policies in the following three decades, are joined together during that period each one of them with its own temporalities and dynamics. On the one hand, we witness the emergence of a State that is placed at the core of society, both as economic regulator and promoter of social integration, which will be increasingly demanding experts and technicians to fulfill the increasingly differentiated tasks that are characteristic of its Welfare State status. On the other hand, the scientific disciplines, in general, and social sciences, in particular, will experience since then a marked process of theoretical and methodological development, of institutional diversification, specialization, and professionalization, within the framework of university modernization and expansion, to a large extent supported by public funds. Simultaneously, think tanks will undergo a period of marked growth and gradual diversification. Generally, different authors agree on saying that centers for public policy research and analysis experienced three major waves of creation (Haass, 2002; Abelson, 2002; Stone, 1996:17). In the emblematic case of the United States, towards the end of the 19th century and early decades of the 20th century, a first generation was linked to a movement aimed at professionalizing the government and improving the administration. Some examples would be the Institute for Government Research (1916), the forerunner of the Brookins Institution (1927), or the Hoover Institution (1919). A second wave was registered at the end of World War II, when the term think tanks started to be used, and research centers were strongly aimed at analyzing the international agenda within the framework of the Cold War and the challenges for US global leadership. A typical example of this generation would be the Rand Corporation (1948), which was linked to the US air force and led the development of studies in systems analysis, game theory and strategic negotiation. Finally, a third wave took place in the 1970s. These new think tanks would be focused both on defending causes as well as on research, aiming to generate timely advice that can compete in a crowded marketplace of ideas and influence policy decisions (Haass, 2002:2). The Heritage Foundation (1973) or the Cato Institute (1977) would be typical examples of this new generation of think tanks. Nevertheless, during the late 1970s and early 1980s, a time in which a certain linear and even nave vision of the relationship between expert knowledge production and its application
3. A good description regarding the growing process of specialization, professionalization and jargonization of American intellectual life compared to other cases of developed countries can be found in Bell (1993). For the concept of issue networks, see Hugh Heclo.
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to decision-making was launched. Advocates of different approaches had to focus on reviewing some of their original proposals: some of them because they failed to meet their promised goals in the areas of defense and security with Johnson and of planning, programming and budget systems; others because they faced problems of their own when implementing Great Society and War against Poverty programs. It started to be acknowledged, then, that either experts themselves had recommended policies including insufficient information, that the analysis of implementation had been underestimated or that the issue of evaluation had failed to be carefully addressed (Pressman & Wildavsky, 1984). It became gradually evident that it was necessary to comprehensively review the problems of articulation between expert knowledge and public policymaking. Along this line, the current interest in studying this issue results, on the one hand, from the new role being played by expert knowledge and expertise-building organizations within the framework of global changes among State, marketplace and civil society, and on the other hand, from the critical self-reflection of expert themselves regarding the use and actual influence of scientific knowledge on decision-making. In the first case, and as it has been pointed out by James G. MacGann when referring to those organizations engaged in the study of global problems,
... there has been a veritable proliferation of think tanks around the world that began in the 1980s as a result of the forces of globalization, the end of the Cold War, and the emergence of transnational problems. Two-thirds of all the think tanks that exist today were established after 1970 and over half were established since 1980 (2002:3).
Nevertheless, the quantitative reference must not make us lose sight of the qualitative changes brought about by them, and the perception of frequent short-circuits between the expertise and decision-making spheres. Notwithstanding the fact that in the 1950s and 1970s almost blind confidence was placed on the validity of the golden chain that linked scientific knowledge to the policymaking needs of central countries, the present situation has changed significantly. As it has been reminded by Bjrn Wittrock (1999: 408) when quoting Carol Weiss (1977), seldom has anybody dared to doubt that using social science research for public policymaking is something goodthe more it is used the better, and increasing its use implies improving the quality of government decision-making. However, the expansion of social sciences themselves in the years that followed, on the one hand, together with the repeated efforts to link them to policymaking processes, on the other, started to evidence the limitations of the nave doctrine that proclaimed certain one-way automatism in the relationship between expert knowledge and state management. To a certain extent, present-day concerns about the social use of knowledge are a good answer to formerly inflated and currently devaluated aspirations of the rationalistic revolution to rationalize all plans and coordinate public policies in an increasing number of spheres, and increasingly towards the future, with the support of a whole variety of management techniques (Wittrock, 1999: 410). These verifications leave us at the threshold of a paradox:
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Both the growth of social research and the scientization of policymaking are social processes of major importance for the West, but on the other hand, once and again we find reports by social scientists in which they complain about the fact that they are not being heard, and policymakers complain about receiving very little that was worthwhile (Wittrock, 1999: 409).
The complex nature of problems involving the links between the sphere of expert scientific knowledge and the political-institutional sphere has thus regained a central position.
Approach to the Argentine Case What role is played by the public space as a sphere of mediation between the world of expertise and that of policy decision-making? To what extent are the mass media actors with their own policy agenda (including their particular interests and views), and at the same time a scenario for the confrontation of other interests and views? How does the decision-making process turn out to be influenced while being displayed throughout public debate spaces? These concerns form part of a broader project mainly aimed at analyzing by means of the expert economic press the relationship between the networks of economic experts (regarded as expert knowledge producers, promoters and operators) and the economic policymaking process in democratic Argentina (1985-2005). To that effect, we have taken into account four critical situations, which represented major articulation points both from the point of view of economic policies and at the political-electoral level, since national elections were held in all four of them. The four situations are: the elaboration of the Austral Plan in 1985, the launching of the Convertibility Plan in 1991, the final crisis of this scheme in 2001, and the way out of default in 2005. Although analysis is restricted to those four years, the aim is to come up with a certain comprehensive view of such period, by putting forward some hypotheses of a more general nature. Reduced to its minimum expression, the central empirical argument I would like to sustain links three propositions. In the first place, I start by considering that the economic adjustment and reform processes that were developed in the 1980s and 1990s were not exclusively limited to changes in terms of economic policy contents but involved sensitive changes in the form of linking expert knowledge and decision-making processes. In other words, changes would have taken place not only regarding the what but also the how and who of economic policies, based on a fundamental pattern: the growing participation of experts and expert knowledge building organizations both in the public space and at the highest government decision-making levels. The reason why I have chosen to address this process from the point of view of the expert economic press, with all the biases and constraints this approach may imply, is because I am interested in analyzing how the public space served as building material not only for certain views on macroeconomic issues, but also how in that same space the diverse configurations, positions and relationships among the different public policymaking fields started to be (re)defined: the world of knowledge, the administrative sphere, political parties, private actors, multilateral institution and the State.
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In the second place, I argue that by expanding the dimensions of this transformation process, it can neither be explained through the objective victory of a neutral technical recipe book applied by experts without political interests as certain pro-market hagiography would like to do nor by the instrumental character of economists as agents of transnational capital and onesided thinking as the opposite end would do. Rather, it will be necessary to come up with an explanation that would combine, on the one hand, a certain way of understanding the policymaking process, highlighting the conflictive articulation between different actors and social and cultural spheres with their respective logics of action and, on the other hand, a vision regarding expert knowledge production based on the not less conflictive or asynchronical relationships between a discursive level, a political and institutional level and a social and professional level. In the third place, and looking at Argentina against the remote backdrop of other Latin American experiences, it could be stated that the articulation between the expertise sphere and other public policymaking spheres is still far from achieving a satisfactory degree of institutionalization, and that a significant part of the problem lies in the schemes of imbrication between expertise production and the historical matrix of Argentine political party competition, as well as in the weaknesses of parties and the State itself to create autonomous technical capacities.4 The notes to be read below are only a preliminary piece of this broader project. Taking such problem framework as reference, we comparatively analyze in this case the participation of economic experts during the launching of the Austral Plan in 1985 and during the Convertibility crisis in 2001. To this effect, a systematic analysis of all discursive interventions by economic experts has been carried out, as they were published in the Economic Supplements of three large-circulation newspapers in the country in 1985 and 2001. We have chosen the Supplements of three newspapers covering a broad political and ideological spectrum: La Nacin, more traditionally linked to liberal and conservative positions, Clarn, related to centrist positions and Pgina/12, as a centre-left publication. Since the latter newspaper was founded after 1985, the weekly publication El Periodista de Buenos Aires was taken as substitute source for that year, not only due to the fact that they share an analogous political and ideological space but also because several journalists working for this weekly publication will be later launching the newspaper Pgina/12. The thematic content of interventions was limited to those that analyzed macroeconomic issues and problems regarding economic policies in Argentina. No consideration was given to those interventions that were referred to the international economy or to specific chapters of the domestic economy, for example: business administration, sector problems or editorial sections devoted to financial or stock market advising. With regards to the format of interventions, it comprised three categories: economic opinion articles signed by experts, interviews and consultations; the latter dealt with interventions brought about by questions or specific demands posed by journalists working for the newspaper.
4. These concerns coincide with those recently analyzed by Stein et al. (2006), since they give priority to the analysis of institutions and policymaking processes, rather than to their specific contents.
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These consultations may appear in a typical format, including a reduced set of questions aimed at several economists, or inserted into the journalistic discourse, although with express reference to the source quoted. Overall, 174 interventions (consultations, interviews and signed articles) belonging to 91 experts were surveyed for the year 1985, and 593 interventions (consultations, interviews and signed articles) belonging to 233 experts for the year 2001. The actors that are often found in the pages of expert economic supplements fall into four types: journalists (mostly part of the newspapers permanent staff, and occasionally some guest journalist), businesspeople, social and political leaders, and guest experts who analyze diverse economic issues. Except for some clarifications we will be making below, we only focus on the latter category. A key point to be considered is the categorization of experts in terms of their political and institutional membership, understanding as such the area in which they develop their main professional activity, which at the same time represents the institutional space in which they produce knowledge on macroeconomic issues and recommendations on economic policies, and from which links are established with the public and political policymaking process. This sphere of expertise, as it has also been called, comprises from institutions focused on the production of basic knowledge and training of professional staff such as universities to a broad range of organizational spaces aimed at applying knowledge and at policymaking, without putting aside the case of independent advisors or experts. The term sphere of expertise, even in its ambiguity, aims at an intermediate level vis--vis other similar, though not identical, categories. For example, it refers to a relatively more structured space (with positions and relationships that are to a certain extent stable) than the concept of knowledge actors, which is applied to knowledge production units but fails to grasp the relationship aspect we intend to highlight. However, on the other hand, the concept of sphere of expertise is less ambitious than that of knowledge institutions which would be taking for granted what needs to be proved, that is, the fact that such units have reached certain palpable degree of stability, predictability, adaptability, etc. Within this sphere of expertise we will thus find think tanks with a long tradition in terms of knowledge production (such as in the case of CEMA, Fundacin Mediterrnea or FIEL), and with networks of stable relationships vis--vis the political and party sectors, the State or the media, together with more improvised or ephemeral party foundations, or individual experts making up issue networks in certain policymaking areas. In any case, the proposed classification is not aimed at having the last word in a universe of vague profiles and blurred frontiers, but it intends at least to provide a minimum order for analysis. In general lines, we have identified 6 basic institutional spaces in which experts produce knowledge in the area of economics and economic policies, which are: universities, multilateral institutions, think tanks, professional consultancy (business sector), political parties and the States technobureaucratic apparatus (Table 1).
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Some difficulties arose upon carrying out the analysis of interventions when the time came to characterize the effective political and institutional membership of economic experts surveyed. On the one hand, it was evident that several of these professionals and this is in fact a feature of their peculiar insertion appeared at the same time as members of very different institutions (for instance, Roberto Frenkel could be considered an economist of CEDES, professor at the University of Buenos Aires or Board member of a state bank). On the other hand, a synchronic section including the interventions of only one year could also imply missing another characteristic feature of several of these experts, that is, the fluctuating character of their professional insertion which leads them to work indistinctly at universities (domestic or foreign), private research centers, the public sector, companies or multilateral credit institutions. For instance, Federico Sturzenegger can be consecutively found (over a period of few years) as member of a foreign university engaged in academic research, as advisor to a large privatized company upon his return to Argentina, later as public official (during Cavallos administration in 2001), and then as full time professor-researcher at an Argentine private university, without detriment to other minor occupations as advisor to international institutions. Likewise, there was the case of some experts, who in spite of maintaining a steadier institutional membership, had been fulfilling that year or part of that year different tasks than usual. For instance, Guillermo Mondino was chief of Cavallos Cabinet Advisors during the months of his administration, but all his professional activity both previous and immediately subsequent to such participation was developed at Fundacin Mediterrnea. The same consideration is applied to the ephemeral team of FIEL (Artana, Solanet and others) who headed the Economy Ministry for a few days in early 2001 together with Ricardo Lpez Murphy. Another well-known case is that of Mario Blejer, member of the IMFs permanent technical staff for many years, who had a brief but significant participation as public official, first as financial advisor to Cavallo and later as President of the Central Bank (when Cavallo was no longer in office). Without going too far and taking into account this kind of considerations, where should Domingo Cavallo himself be placed throughout 2001? As historic intellectual leader of Fundacin Mediterrnea, as the instigator of the most recent Fundacin Novum Millenium, as top leader of the Action for the Republic party, or else, during some dramatic months, as Economy Minister? Certainly, in cases like these ones in which we resort to the analysis and elaboration of soft data, there is no simple solution and we run the risk of either falling into an absolutely idiosyncratic characterization, or else quitting the task in pursuit of a merely intuitive interpretation of the matter. The option taken sought to avoid situational biases in the institutional characterization of experts, although we must admit beforehand that certain categorizations will be quite debatable. On the one hand, we chose to ascribe experts to their steadier institutional membership throughout the period under analysis (1985-2001). On the other hand, the aim was to place them in the area where more time was devoted to their professional activity. But above all, we took into account an essentially qualitative dimension of the issue: we sought to characterize speakers by virtue of the place from which they legitimated their participation in the policymaking process, based on the availability of some strategic resource (knowledge, votes, institutional power, etc.), and thus they were acknowledged by other key actors as valid stakeholders in the process.
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As an alternative criteria, in case there was not sufficient information to reach a concise definition, we chose to rely on the characterization made by the newspaper, even if this happened to be contradictory (for instance, in 1985 and with only a difference of days, the same newspaper characterized an economist as expert of the UCD and as economist at Bridas). In that sense, and in order to define the above-mentioned examples, Frenkel appears as economist at CEDES, Sturzenegger as researcher at a private university, Blejer is institutionally related to the IMF, Lpez Murphy, Artana and Solanet to FIEL, and in the case of Guillermo Mondino and Domingo Cavallo we chose to keep them related to the institution to which they are historically linked: Fundacin Mediterrnea. Finally, the following obvious remark should be made. This is a political and institutional analysis of the discursive offer of a reduced group of newspapers, or in other words, of the degree of media exposure of a group of economic experts. At no time do we aim at speculating about the influence or reception conditions of these discourses on economic, social or political actors; rather, we aim at showing the degree of participation in the public debate on policies. As it is known, the influence or impact of a discourse cannot just be measured by taking into account the source of emission, since it is necessary to carry out a complex investigation regarding the different mediations that contribute to facilitate and constrain the reception of those discourses a task that goes beyond the scope of this work. On the other hand, nor the isolated analysis of that offer allows us to draw bold conclusions on the relative weight of different factors on the policymaking process. For example, the combined survey of the Economic Supplements of three newspapers in 2001 informs us that only 4% of discursive interventions belonged to experts institutionally linked to multilateral credit institutions. It would be obviously absurd to deduce from this that said institutions had a poor participation in the economic policymaking process. Rather, this information not only encourages us to take a close look at the existence of other various pressure and conditionality mechanisms but also to generate specific hypotheses to account for this phenomenon; in this case, for instance, we may have to consider that the permanent presence of the discourse of credit institutions in the main body of newspapers leads editors to adopt a reduction strategy aimed at avoiding discursive saturation which explains the lower level of exposure in specialized newspaper sections, or else that the press strategy of those institutions has not properly targeted the specific section of Economic Supplements.
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Table 1. Sphere of Expertise - Institucional Membership

A. Academic experts linked to universities: academic and basic and applied knowledge production centers, training of professional, teaching and research staff, etc). Universities are regarded as the institutional focal point of a broader academic space, in which other academic institutions should be considered, such as for instance the National Academy of Economic Science or the Argentine Association of Political Economy (AAEP), the set of expert publications, and the vast network of congresses, working sessions and other events for scientific legitimation. A.1. National Public Universities. A.2. National Private Universities. A.3. Foreign Universities. B. Experts linked to multilateral institutions: World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Economic Commission for Latin America and The Caribbean (ECLAC), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), etc. C. Experts linked to think tanks: research centers, foundations or State-independent organizations, focused on the production of knowledge applied to public issues and aimed at decision-making. D. Experts engaged in consultancy through consulting companies, independent professional consultants or economic analysis units within the private sector: D.1. Consulting company or local independent professional consultant. D.2. Economic analyst or analysis team within a local company, business organization or bank. D.3. Economic analyst or analysis team within an international company, business organization or bank. E. Political party expert F. Expert working as technical and State official G.Others
The Year of the Austral Plan (1985) Let us start by offering a general overview of the information gathered from the three newspapers, although it should be pointed out beforehand that out of a total of 174 interventions, each publication has a different weight: Clarn gathers 55.17% of interventions, La Nacin 25.29% and then comes El Periodista with 19.54%. It is worth highlighting that Clarn exceeds the total number of interventions of the other two newspapers by 10 percentual points. Owing to this, it will not only be important to consider data in its aggregated form but to break down the specific intervention profiles of each newspaper in order to have a more adequate picture of the whole. Moreover, it should be taken into account that, in absolute values, La Nacin and El Periodista have few interventions, which implies that those categories with small absolute values in these publications have a considerable share in percentual terms. Three features are to be remarked when considering the series as a whole, which can be characterized as a triple concentration of individuals, gender and institutions. With regards to the experts consulted by the three media, it is worth underlining their individual concentration. The 174 interventions by the 91 experts took place at an average of 1.91 interventions per expert, although the median of the series is 1, and the standard deviation is 1.39. This means that 22 experts (24% of the series) monopolize 50% of interventions (87), while there are 51 experts with only one intervention each. The most concentrated group ranges from 3 to 8 interventions, being the latter the highest score within the series (Table 2).
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Table 2. List of Most Consulted Experts (Sorted by Numer of References in 1985)

Value N 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Surname and Name Curia, Eduardo Lascano, Marcelo Alemann, Roberto Alsogaray, lvaro Ferrer, Aldo Lavagna, Roberto Brodersohn, Mario Cavallo, Domingo Domnguez, Jorge Martelliti, Jos Ribas, Armando P. Rossi, Rodolfo Szewach, Enrique Dornbusch, Rudiger Frigerio, Rogelio Grinspun, Bernardo Monserrat, Miguel Prebisch, Ral Sourrouille, Juan V. Krieger Vasena, Adalbert Absolut 8 6 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 Percentual 4.60 3.45 2.87 2.87 2.87 2.87 2.30 2.30 2.30 2.30 2.30 2.30 2.30 1.72 1.72 1.72 1.72 1.72 1.72 1.72 Cumulative Percentage
47.70
It is also worth noticing that the world of economic experts consulted by the three newspapers is basically a male world. This gender concentration becomes manifest when considering that women only account for 2% (2 in 91) on the total of experts, while their rate of intervention is even lower 1% (2 in 174) which means that Argentine expert women consulted are only a few and have a poor participation. The third feature to be highlighted when considering the whole series is the institutional concentration. Just the category of Political Party Experts (E) gathers nearly half of the whole series 49% of interventions thus surpassing by 32 percentual points the second category (D) referred to experts professionally linked to private consultancy services, which gathers a total of 17% of interventions (Chart 1). Chart 1. Institutional Membership of all Experts Consulted
Full Worksheet - Institutional Membership
(1985 Percentual Values, on the total of 174 cases)
60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% A1 A2 A3 B C D1 D2 D3 E F G 8% 13% 3% 3% 2% 12% 2% 3% 2% 2% 49%
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The category gathering more references is clearly that of Political Party Experts (E). It covers 49% of references, outweighing the second most mentioned category (D) by 32 percentual points, which is referred to experts professionally linked to the world of private consultancy services, accounting for a total of 17% of interventions. There follow the experts linked to universities (A), with a total of 14%, and behind there follows the Think Tank category (C), which accounts for 13% of interventions. Then, the order of the series according to the best ranked positions is: E>D>A>C. However, when we break down the different sub-categories, we notice that the highest score behind Party Experts is that of Think Tanks, followed by Private Consultants, with a low incidence of economists linked to companies having economic analysis units. On the other hand, it is worth highlighting among universities the role played by public universities, which outweigh the overall incidence of private and foreign universities. Finally, we should notice the poor relevance of those categories related to the world of international institutions (BMultilateral Institutions) and the sphere of the State apparatus.
The Fall of the Convertibility Plan Let us start by offering a general overview of the information gathered from the three newspapers, although it should be pointed out, beforehand, that out of a total of 593 interventions, each publication has a different weight: Clarn gathers 43% of interventions; La Nacin, 32% and finally comes Pgina 12 with 25%. Owing to this, it will not only be important to consider data in its aggregated form but to break down the specific intervention profiles of each newspaper in order to have a more adequate picture of the whole. Once again, in the case of 2001, we should remark the concentration of individuals, gender and institutions which we had found in 1985, although this concentration has now a different meaning. With regards to the experts consulted by the three media, it is worth underlining their individual concentration. The 593 interventions by the 233 experts took place at an average of 2.55 interventions per expert, although the median of the series is 1, and the standard deviation is 2.95. This means that 56 experts (24% of the series) monopolize 61% of interventions (363), while there are 133 experts with only one intervention each. The most concentrated group ranges from 4 to 20 interventions, being the latter the highest score within the series (Table 3). It is also worth noticing that the world of economic experts consulted by the three newspapers continues to be basically a male world. This gender concentration becomes manifest when considering that women only account for 6% (14 in 233) on the total of experts, while their rate of intervention is even lower 3.5% (21 in 593) which means that Argentine expert women consulted are only a few and have a poor participation.
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The third feature to be highlighted when considering the whole series is the institutional concentration. Just the category of Private Sector Consultants (D) gathers nearly half of the whole series 46% of interventions thus outweighing by 23 percentage points the second category (C), referred to experts linked to think tanks, which gathers a total of 23%of interventions. Table 3. Table 3. 2001 Full Worksheet: List of Most Consulted Experts (Sorted by Number of References)
Value N 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 Surname and Name Remes Lenicov, Jorge Gonzlez Fraga, Javier Broda, Miguel ngel Prez, Carlos Cachanosky, Roberto Frenkel, Roberto Redrado, Martn Lozano, Claudio Peirano, Miguel vila, Jorge Valle, Hctor Lacoste, Pedro Mondino, Guillermo Rabassa, Pedro Rodrguez, Carlos Artana, Daniel Bein, Miguel Cottani, Joaqun Ferreres, Orlando Gaba, Ernesto Poli, Federico Porzecanski, Arturo Sturzenegger, Federico Blejer, Mario Cavallo, Domingo Kosacoff, Bernardo Marx, Daniel Bocco, Arnaldo Finkman, Javier Kiguel, Miguel Kritz, Ernesto Abram, Aldo Alemann, Roberto Arranz, Juan Bouzas, Roberto Calvo, Guillermo Edwards, Sebastin Fuente, Ricardo Levy Yetati, Eduardo Llach, Juan Jos Marco del Pont, Mercedes Ochoa, Ral Rubinstein, Gabriel Solanet, Manuel Vicens, Mario Absolut 20 17 15 15 13 12 12 10 10 9 9 8 8 8 8 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 6 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 Percentual 3.37 2.87 2.53 2.53 2.19 2.02 2.02 1.69 1.69 1.52 1.52 1.35 1.35 1.35 1.35 1.18 1.18 1.18 1.18 1.18 1.18 1.18 1.18 1.01 1.01 1.01 1.01 0.84 0.84 0.84 0.84 0.67 0.67 0.67 0.67 0.67 0.67 0.67 0.67 0.67 0.67 0.67 0.67 0.67 0.67 Cumulative Percentage
25.42
50.33
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With regards to the institutional membership, it is worth underscoring some shades within the framework of a visible concentration of expertise (Chart 2). Chart 2. Institutional Membership of all Experts Consulted
2001 Full Worksheet - Institutional Membership
(Percentual values on the total of 593 cases) 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% A1 A2 A3 B C D1 Categories D2 D3 E F G 6% 5% 5% 27% 23% 15% 4% 4% 6% 1% 4%
As it can be seen, categories are ranked in the following order: D>C>A>E. According to this, private sector experts account for 46%of the interventions, which are broken down as follows: D1 (Independent professional consultant or local consulting company) with 27%, D3 (Experts working at international companies, business organizations or banks) with 15% and, further behind, D2 (Experts working at local companies, business organizations or banks) with 4%. The category that follows according to the number of references is C (Think Tanks) with 23% of interventions. Then, we find the experts from the academic world, involving different kinds of university institutions A1, A2 and A3 (National Public Universities, National Private Universities and Foreign Universities, respectively) with values ranging from 5% to 6%, and further behind we have the case of party experts (E) with 6%, followed by multilateral institutions (B) with 4%, and other minor categories. Within the category that gathers more references (D), it is worth highlighting the difference between (D3) economic analysts or analysis teams belonging to international companies, business organizations or banks (15%) and (D2), where we find economic analysts or analysis teams belonging to local companies, business organizations or banks (4%). This broad gap separating analysts working at international companies from those working at national ones can have, at least, two interpretations, which at the same time can end up being combined: on the one hand, it would be reflecting the strong transnationalization of the Argentine economy in the 1990s but, on the other hand, it could also be related to the fact that groups operating at that scale are certainly equipped to have their own economic intelligence units. These figures are still more conclusive if we take into account that the second most important category, i.e. Think Tanks, with 23% of interventions can also be associated with the main private sector companies. Universities are ranked third, with 16% of interventions and an even distribution among public (6%), private (5%) and foreign (5%) universities, which can be construed, at the same time, as a low incidence of national public universities.
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Expert Profile Returning to Table 3, which shows us the group of most-cited experts among the three newspapers, we may outline somewhat more generically the profile of the most consulted experts by the countrys leading media. It will be noticed that they share certain features. In the first place, the vast majority of experts consulted are from Argentina (95%); there are only two foreign experts, the Uruguayan Arturo Porzecansky, who was Head of Emerging Markets at ABN AMRO in 2001, with headquarters in New York, and the Chilean Sebastin Edwards, also with residence in the United States, who was for many years Chief Economist for Latin America of the World Bank, academically linked to Argentina through CEMA and the Austral University, and then professor of International Economics at UCLA. On the other hand, and as it was told in advance, there is only one woman among the group of most-cited experts: Mercedes Marc del Pont (C1), with three interventions in Pgina 12 and one in Clarn.5 Table 4. Graduate Training: Degree
Percentages Graduate in Economic Sciences 90% Lawyer 2% Engineer 5% Others 2% TOTAL 100%
Table 5. Graduate Training: Training

National University Public Private 83% 10% Foreign University 7% Others TOTAL 100%
Percentages
Table 6. Post-Graduate Training in Economics: Degree

Percentages With Master or PhD degree 61% Without Master or PhD degree 37% 2% Others 100% TOTAL
Table 7. Post-Graduate Training: Training Institution

National University Public Private 20% 4% Foreign University 76% Others TOTAL 100%
Percentages
5. The information provided below is referred to a total of 41 experts, and not 45, as they are listed in Table 2, since it was impossible to gather convincing information on the different items on Juan Arranz, Pedro Lacoste, Carlos Prez and Pedro Rabassa. All information is based on data from the CV of experts, which was obtained from different institutional sources.
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Table 8. Most-cited Experts Graduated from Foreign Universities (with Master or PhD Degrees)
University Chicago Yale Harvard Columbia Pittsburg MIT UCLA Pennsylvania York (Toronto) Cambridge Total Cases 5 4 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 19 Country USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA Canada UK Country Total 5 9 12 13 14 15 16 17 1 1 19 Percentages 26% 21% 16% (63%) 5% 5% 5% 5% 5% (90%) 5% 5% 100%
Table 9. Performance of Academic Activities (Teaching and/or Research in Higher Education Institutions)
Percentages Yes 85% No 12% Others 2% TOTAL 100%
Table 10. Previous Experience in the Public Sector (Administrative Area; Political Posts or High-level Political Advising)
Table 11. Work Relationship with Multilateral Institutions

Table 12. Work Relationship with Private Companies

Percentages Yes 76% No 24% Others TOTAL 100%
Table 13. Organic Relationship with Unions:

Table 14. Organic Relationship with Political Parties:

Percentages Yes 15% No 85% Others TOTAL 100%
From the information provided in Table 3 and Tables 4-14, we can outline the dominant profile of the most-cited experts in 2001. We are talking about Argentine male citizens who have graduated in economic science (90%) from a public university (83%); a vast majority has completed MA or PhD studies (61%)6; their MA or PhD degrees were preferably completed at foreign institutions (80%), and among them, US universities were the ones preferred: according
6. No post-graduate studies or courses were taken into account here but regular MA or PhD programmes that were indeed completed.
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to Table 8, 90% of the most-cited experts who had graduated from foreign universities had done so in a US university (preferably in Chicago, Yale or Harvard); 85% of most-cited experts performed or had performed academic activities (teaching and/or research at Higher Education institutions); 76% had or had had a work relationship with private companies; 68% had previous experience in the public sector by 2001 (administrative area, political posts or high-level political advising); 81% had or had had a work relationship with multilateral institutions; 95% had no kind of involvement with trade unions, and 85% had no involvement with political parties. Think Tanks Table 15 registers the most consulted think tanks by the three newspapers. Once again, we notice the concentration of a reduced number of organizations which, through their experts, have been given more space in the expert economic press. Thus, out of a total of 135 interventions from experts working at different think tanks, the 4 first organizations account for 57.03% of total interventions, while 115 of them (85%) belong to 7 organizations. Table15. Most Cited Think Tanks
Organizations (year of incorporation) Fundacin Capital (1994) CEMA (1978) Fund. Mediterrnea (1978) FIEL (1963) FIDE (1978) IDEP-ATE/CTA CEDES (1975) Others (Fundacin Novum Millenium, IEFE, Grupo Sopha, Fundacin Atlas, etc) Total Interventions 27 21 15 14 13 13 12 20 135 Percentages 20 16 11 10 (57.03 %) 10 10 9 (85.18 %) 15 100
Among interventions generated by think tanks, we notice a clear predominance of those organizations that are more directly linked to the business sector, particularly to large companies. As it has been already mentioned, these four organizations account for 57.03% of interventions (Capital, CEMA, Mediterrnea and FIEL), while FIDE, more related to small and medium-sized enterprises and co-operative banks, IDEP, institutionally dependent on the Association of State Workers (ATE) and the Argentine Labour Federation, and CEDES, with a long research tradition as independent institution, account for 28.14%.7 A point that deserves special consideration is that of institutional longevity as a key factor that helps to explain an increased participation in public debate. In this case we notice that most think tanks with the highest levels of media exposure are also long-lived institutions. An exception seems to be the case of the ascending Fundacin Capital, led by Martn Redrado.
7. Of the 7 organizations under consideration, CEDES owing to its profile has been the one to be less involved in policymaking, particularly in the economic area, although its applied studies and investigations can be considered in many cases as input to decision-making; besides, it should be added that some of its members had some kind of participation in different government teams and different policy management areas. On the other hand, at the time of the 2001 crisis, CEMA was really UCEMA, that is, University of CEMA. It is considered as a think tank, since this was its distinctive character for many years, since its inception in 1978 until 1995, when it became a University Institute and, later on, a university (1997).
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An element to be taken into account when considering the high level of media exposure of Fundacin Capital could be related to the fact that, by 2001, Redrado was economic advisor to the leader of the opposition party during the Radical administration the former governor of the Buenos Aires Province, Eduardo Duhalde. An additional element to be considered is the number of experts that account for the total number of interventions of each think tank. A larger number of experts should not be considered as a direct indicator of a greater technical staff something that should be analyzed separately but it at least give us an indication of the degree of exposure of its different researchers (Table 15). Table 16. Interventions of Experts by Think Tank
Organizations (year of incorporation) Interventions Fundacin Capital (1994) 27 CEMA (1978) 21 Fund. Mediterrnea (1978) 15 FIEL (1963) 14 FIDE (1978) 13 IDEP-ATE/CTA 13 CEDES (1975) 12 Interventions by Experts Carlos Prez (15 intervenciones), Martn Redrado (12) Jorge Avila (9), Carlos Rodrguez (8), Carola Pessino (2), Pedro Pou (1), Roque Fernndez (1), Guillermo Mondino (8), Domingo Cavallo (6), Gabriel Casaburi (1) Daniel Artana (7), Manuel Solanet (4), Abel Viglione (2), Nuria Susmel (1) Hctor Valle (9), Mercedes Marc del Pont (4) Claudio Lozano (10), Martn Hourest (3) Roberto Frenkel (12)
The distribution of interventions by experts from the different think tanks naturally varies from newspaper to newspaper. Table 16 shows us the media access of the main think tanks. Looking at the percentages along each row, we may notice that Fundacin Capital has somewhat an equal access to Clarn (44%) and La Nacin (41%), but less access to Pgina 12 (15%). CEMA concentrates most interventions in Clarn (57%), while 38% are found in La Nacin, falling to a meager 5% in the case of Pgina 12. Fundacin Mediterrnea almost reverses CEMAs trend with regards to Clarn (33%) and La Nacin (53%), but has a slightly higher access to Pgina 12 (13%). FIEL, on the other hand, gathers nearly two-thirds of its interventions in La Nacin (64%), distributing the rest of interventions between Clarn (21%) and Pgina 12 (14%). FIDE shows another case of high concentration level, but in Pgina 12 (62%), while the rest of its interventions are distributed between La Nacin (23%) and Clarn (15%). In the case of IDEP, we find a high level of concentration in Pgina 12 (85%), a relatively low access to Clarn (15%), and no access whatsoever to La Nacin. Meanwhile, CEDES, through its guest columnist, Roberto Frenkel, registers a high concentration level in La Nacin (83%), and an even distribution between Clarn and Pgina 12 (8% in each case).
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Table 17: Media Access of Leading Think Tanks (Total of Interventions per Newspaper, in Percentage)
Fundacin Capital CEMA Fundacin Mediterrnea FIEL FIDE IDEP CEDES Total CLARN 44 57 33 21 15 15 8 37 LA NACIN 41 38 53 64 23 83 49 PAGINA 12 15 5 13 14 62 85 8 29 Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 115
Table 18, on the other hand, shows us what could be termed as media openness to the different think tanks.8 Looking at the percentages down each column, we can notice the arrangement of each one of the newspapers with regards to the contributions of selected think tanks. Table 18: Media Openness to the Different Think Tanks (in percentage)
Fundacin Capital CEMA Fundacin Mediterrnea FIEL FIDE IDEP CEDES Total CLARN 32 32 14 8 5 5 3 100 LA NACIN 22 16 16 18 6 20 100 PAGINA 12 14 3 7 7 28 38 3 100 Total 27 21 15 14 13 13 12 115
In the case of Clarn we find an identical order of preference to that registered for the interventions of think tanks (Table 15), although with somewhat different rates. Clarn opened nearly two-thirds of the pages in its Economic Supplement to Fundacin Capital and CEMA (32%each), 14%to Fundacin Mediterrnea, 8% to FIEL, 5% to FIDE and IDEP, and 3%to CEDES. La Nacin, in turn, shared its preferences within a range of six points between Fundacin Capital (22%) and Fundacin Mediterrnea (16%), although relegating FIDE to a remote 6%, without any intervention of IDEP. Pgina 12, on the other hand, shows an analogous profile to that of Clarn, although with different preferences. IDEP (38%) and FIDE (28%) cover two-thirds of its pages, followed by Fundacin Capital (14%), Fundacin Mediterrnea and FIEL with 7% each, and finally by CEMA and CEDES (3%).
8. We talk about openness in the figurative sense to refer to newspaper editorial policies, although the fact that certain organizations or experts are mentioned or not in the media depends on many other factors, including their own will to make contributions to the press. For instance, and to consider the only null case in the sample, it is not an easy task to determine whether the lack of intervention of Claudio Lozano in La Nacin is owed to a decision made by the newspaper, by Lozano, or both. On the other hand, the fact that Pgina 12 hosts representatives of liberal-conservative thinking in its pages, could be implying that the newspaper is more open to debate, or that liberal experts are more willing to have dialogue with left-wing sectors, or both.
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From the Austral Plan to the Endo of Convertibility: Provatization of Public Debate? Provisional data surveyed so far allow us to draw some tentative conclusions by comparing the participation of economic experts in the public space through the expert media. Taking into account the two years being compared, some tendencies are maintained or become accentuated and others emerge as something new. In the first place, the individual concentration of expertise becomes accentuated. By 1985, 22 experts (24% of the series) accounted for 50%of interventions (87) while, in 2001, 24%of the series (56 experts) accounted for 61%of interventions (363). In the second place, it could be said that, in general terms, gender concentration is maintained. In 1985, the percentage of women on the total of experts barely stands at 2% (2 in 91), while the percentage of interventions is even lower 1% (2 in 174). By 2001, on the other hand, the percentage of women on the total of experts continues to be quite low: 6% (14 in 233), while the percentage of interventions is still even lower, 3.5% (21 in 593). In view of this, it can be said that, in both cases, Argentine women consulted as economic experts are very few and have a poor participation.9 The third remarkable feature when considering both series is the institutional concentration: in both cases there are categories concentrating a large number of interventions, which seem to be prevailing in each period. In 1985, such is the case of the Party Expert (E) category, which accounts for nearly half of the whole series 49% of interventions outweighing by 32 percentual points the second category (D), referred to experts professionally linked to private consultancy services, thus accounting for 17% of interventions. In 2001, in turn, private sector consultants (D) account for 46% of interventions, outweighing by 23 percentual points the second category (C), referred to experts linked to think tanks, thus totalling 23% of interventions. A fourth feature refers to an increased qualification of expertise. In 1985, the profile of most consulted experts by the three newspapers pointed to a graduate in Economic Science (63%); 84% had graduated from public universities and only 32% had an MA or PhD in Economics (of which 55% had postgraduate degrees from foreign institutions all of them in the US). In 2001, in turn, 90% of most consulted experts were graduates in economic science who had studied in a public university (83%) and a vast majority (61%) had completed MA or PhD programmes; these postgraduate studies had been preferably completed at foreign institutions (80%) and, among them, US universities were the ones preferred. Finally, the fifth feature to be highlighted is the growing privatization regarding the institutional membership of producers, promoters and operators of expert knowledge on economic issues (Chart 3).10
9. A useful comparative reference to evidence female under-representation is the 2001 Population Census (INDEC). Of the total of Economists registered, 71.65 are male and 28.35 are female. 10. A fifth feature that should be highlighted but cannot be developed here is that of the growing qualification of expertise, taking as reference the degree of education of most-cited experts.
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Chart 3. Institutional Membership of Economic Experts (1985-2001)

Comparison of Full Worksheet: 1985 vs. 2001
(Percentual values, on the total of cases)
60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 8% 10% 0% A1 A2 A3 B C D1 D2 D3 E F G 6% 3% 5% 3% 5% 2% 4% 23% 13% 27% 12% 2% 4% 15% 3% 6% 2% 1% 2% 4% 1985 2001 49%
According to the chart above, the order of categories in terms of institutional membership changes as we consider the two years under comparison. In 1985, the order of most-mentioned categories was E>D>A>C while, in 2001, the order of the series was D>C>A>E. As it was pointed out in a previous section, the category accounting for more references during the year of the Austral Plan is clearly that of Political Party Experts (E). It concentrates 49%of references, outweighing the second most-mentioned category (D), referred to experts professionally linked to the world of private consultancy services by 32 percentual points, which accounts for a total of 17%of interventions. Then, there follow the experts linked to university institutions (A), with an overall 14%, and category (C) -think tanks accounting for 13% of interventions. During the year of the end of convertibility, in turn, private sector experts account for 46% of interventions, which are broken down as follows: D1 (Independent professional consultant or local consulting company) with 27%, D3 (Experts working at international companies, business organizations or banks) with 15%and further behind D2 (Experts working at local companies, business organizations or banks) with 4%. The category that follows according to the number of references is C (Think Tanks) with 23%of interventions. Then, we find the experts from the academic world, involving different kinds of university institutions A1, A2 and A3 (National Public Universities, National Private Universities and Foreign Universities, respectively) with values ranging from 5% to 6%, and further behind we have the case of party experts (E) with 6%, followed by multilateral institutions (B) with 4%, and other minor categories. With respect to this, we notice some outstanding features by comparing both series of data. In the first place, the decline suffered by category E Party Experts is obvious to the naked eye. In 1985 it was ranked first in the series, with a participation that stood at 49%, while in 2001 it decreased in importance, falling to just 6% of interventions. In a correlative relation, we may point to the rise of those categories that are more linked to the private world: companies, think tanks, and even universities. It is also worth noticing the lack of experts from party think tanks in 2001. This implies that party expert participation in recommending courses of action in 1985 was not translated into the creation of policymaking expert centers in 2001.
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The sphere of private consulting D undergoes significant growth through time. In the first place, an overall much more important participation is registered: the total data for 2001 increases from 17% to 46%. Nevertheless, this importance is not evenly distributed among the three categories. From the 2001 Full Worksheet, it is worth noticing that while independent consultants -D1- and experts working at international companies, business organizations or banks -D3- outstandingly increase their participation, experts working at local companies, business organizations and banks -D2- fail to do so in the same fashion. In 2001, the following categories register an increase in terms of participation: C think tanks (by 10 percentual points), D1 independent consultants (by 15 percentual points) and D3 experts working at international companies, business organizations and banks (by 12 percentual points). Nevertheless, it should be remarked that both independent consultants -D1and think tanks C had a considerable participation in 1985, both accounting for 25% of data. With respect to think tanks C it should be pointed out that they have progressed in the series of best-ranked categories, increasing their participation by 10 percentual points, thus reaching 23% of data. Regarding universities A we notice that, in general terms, this sphere of expertise increases its participation over time. In 2001, they account for 16%of interventions. However, there is a decline in the participation of experts from National Public Universities -A1-. This can be due, among other factors, to the increased offer of private universities and to the technological progress in the field of communications, which draws experts closer to foreign universities. Further behind, we notice that the participation of experts from multilateral institutions -Bis quite irrelevant in percentual terms during the years under analysis. Not only does this category register a small percentage in the 1985 and 2001 Full Worksheets, but the situation is also maintained in the case of most newspapers. As an exception to this, we may mention the case of El Periodista, in 1985, and Clarn, in 2001, which register a 6% and 7% increase, respectively. With regards to technical and state officials F we notice that this category shows a residual participation in both analyzed periods.
Final Remarks: Re-discussing the Profile of Economic Experts Adolfo Bioy Casares used to say that when men talk generically about women they only refer to pretty women; something similar has been happening, but in the opposite sense, with the expression economists, which would only be referring to orthodox and neo-liberal economists (that is, the ugly ones). Undoubtedly, when we talk about economists as a professional kind, any feature that could be attributed to them should have the same value for left-wing and right-wing economists, heterodox and orthodox ones, since otherwise we would be generalizing characteristics that no matter how meaningful are only applicable to a portion of those actors.
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In a recent book, Federico Neiburg and Mariano Plotkin have made a suggestive effort to analyze the features that would characterize professional economists within the broadest world of social scientists. In the first place, the authors state that economists are the only experts who are specifically trained to develop their activity close to power, either economic (working at enterprises, consulting and finance companies) or political (working for the State); in the second place, the fact of being close to power can be explained by their command of expert technical knowledge, based on the exclusive use of a jargon of their own, acquired and legitimized in a strongly internationalized academic world; thus, economics appear to be at the same time a science about society and a set of operative tools at the service of power. In the third place, economists build an exceptional power based on their capacity to move along diverse means and activities, making use in each one of them of the assets accumulated in the others; finally, some economists usually play the role of mediators between domestic economic areas and international money flows (pp.231-232, italics are mine). In view of the analysis carried out in the foregoing pages, I believe that this characterization captures some key points, although intermingled with circumstantial features or classifications that would deserve a better elucidation. Leaving aside, for a moment, the last assertion that would only comprise some economists, I will focus on the other three. In the first place, I think it is debatable to state that economists are the only experts specifically trained to develop their activity close to power a power which, besides, tends to be ratified by the ruling power (or to say it more accurately, the ruling powers) within the discursive context. In this point, it should be bore in mind, for instance, that also lawyers could be the subject of an analogous characterization (curiously enough, the book does not include any work on Law, a discipline which gave rise to some of the social sciences analyzed); and if we go a little further, political scientists or experts in international relations may also be included, although the two latter have not managed to occupy a prominent position in the world of real power. In any case, the heart of the matter has to be sought elsewhere. It is not that economists are trained for power, but rather they are academically and professionally trained to solve problems under constraints (a style of education that is also shared by lawyers, physicians, or engineers but not by historians or sociologists). And since a key element although not the only one of the exercise of power (any power: financial or trade union power, conservative or revolutionary power) implies solving problems under constraints, economists indeed provide answers no matter how simplifying they could be in some cases where historians, sociologists or lettered people are more used to pose doubts, questions, paradoxes or criticism. In the second place, such capacity to solve problems is based on the development of principles, theoretical models and powerful analytical tools, together with a descriptive, explanatory and under certain conditions predictive ability, which lay the foundation for an engineering intervention in the world of decision-making. This idea according to which the scientific development of a discipline can be explained to a significant extent by internalistic reasons, has been for a long time discredited among sociologists, although I am among those who believe that it should be reconsidered at least a moderate version of it.11 On the other
11. In this point, and vis--vis the Bourdian dominant approach about fields, I find it more promising to explore alternative strategies such as those proposed by Oscar Nudler with regards to controversial spaces (2004).
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hand, it is still curious that while in recent years the rest of social sciences have tended to scatter, and rather to become fragmented from a theoretical point of view, economists in turn have tended in general to strengthen and polish their models and basic analytical principles, making them increasingly consensual within the profession, and even showing both capacity and ambition to extend them and exploit them with different results in other areas of the social, political and institutional life of contemporary societies (Coats A. W., 1981). In this sense, it should be made clear that it is not the expert technical knowledge of economists that is based on the exclusive use of an internationalized jargon: rather, it is just the opposite. Notwithstanding the fact that all professionals use jargons the thing is whether these jargons are based and to what extent on solid epistemic principles. In other words, the key idea here another idea that got a bad press in social sciences from the end of the 1960s is whether a language about social reality is based or not on a theoretical system, that is, on a logically articulated and empirically verifiable set of hypotheses, rather than on a mere collection of theories (no matter how many wheels, steering wheels, and carburettors you may have, a car is something else). And I believe that those principles, in the case of economics, make up a rigorous system, although obviously fallible, open to criticism and perfectible, as in all scientific disciplines. Following Kurt Lewin who wrote that there is nothing so practical as a good theory, we have to look here for some of the fundamental reasons regarding the professional consolidation of economics as a science about society and as a set of operative tools, that in many cases shall be at the service of the ruling power owing to a great extent to the capacity of said power to buy the expertise of those who solve problems and in other cases shall be against it. In the third place, the idea according to which economists make use in different fields of the assets accumulated in others should also be elucidated. In a certain sense, it could be argued that other social scientists (Gino Germani or Ricardo Levene, for instance) have evidenced an identical capacity. However, the main point here is that the intersections and the assets mediated by an anthropologists or a historian are quite different from those being mediated by an economist (both in terms of volume and composition). It may even be said that while the first ones are more constrained to essentially mediate among varied forms of cultural assets, economists (the same as lawyers) effectively operate in the intersections between different social spheres, acting as mediators between different power sources. The types of assets at stake and being mediated from Bunge to Cavallo clearly show this peculiarity, with the exception that economists are supported by powerful analytical models which lawyers obviously lack. On the other hand, this mediation is aimed at solving what the literature on decision-making has called wicked problems, that is, issues that lack an enumerable (or well-described) set of potential solutions, norare there criteria that may enable us to prove that all the solutions to a wicked problem have been identified and considered (Rittel & Webber, 1973). Therefore, a major role played by economists which lawyers are no longer fulfilling is that aimed at reducing the complexity of interactions within the framework of constraints and uncertainties, and defining the means and ends of an action, as it was acknowledged by Hayek himself, rejecting by the way any nave illusion of technocratic asepsis. Certainly, this mediation between spheres is also translated into a relationship between what is national and international, thus explaining why some economists end up having the
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status of mediators between domestic economic areas and international money flows. A status that, at the same time, is deeply rooted in structural changes at the core of power relations between State, marketplace and civil society at global scale, which have placed economic decision-making as the strategic focal point within the networks of relationship among people, organizations or regions (Centeno & Silva, 1998). It is in the dynamics of these changes and their complex interaction with the above-mentioned disciplinary features that some of the main factors which have catapulted economists to the focal point of the transnational scene are to be found.
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9. Think Tanks in Argentina: Overcoming the Tension between Participation and Permanence
GERARDO UA1
Introduction The emergence and expansion of think tanks over the past decade in Argentina is a phenomenon that has recently started to be studied more in depth. These organizations develop a wide array of activities, and are related to very diverse actors, both in the public and private sector. It is by means of these activities and relationships that they become engaged in public policy processes, establishing different types of links with political actors. Moreover, the same dynamics of the public agenda that characterizes each one of the policy processes either the agenda-setting, the policymaking and implementation process, or the elections, have an impact on the behavior of think tanks as actors engaged in such processes. The dynamics of the Argentine political system is characterized by the loss of relevance of political parties as makers of government platforms and programs based on a concise diagnosis of reality. At the same time, the existence of a strong presidential system undermines the capacity of Congress to create and propose quality policies that could turn out to be sustainable over time. Such a situation creates spaces and gaps that are filled by a multiplicity of actors, such as civil society organizations, political leaders without a strong party structure or social leaders, as well as think tanks. However, this multiplicity of actors provided with substantially less decision-making power and influence than a strong Executive Power, fails to promote consensus building and long-term agreements on the state policies to be implemented. Therefore, changes in public policy trends are often registered. In view of this, it might be argued that, in the Argentine case, it is the constraints imposed by the dynamics of the political system itself which determine that one of the main variables to be taken into account when analyzing the behavior of think tanks should be their degree of participation in the public policy process and how they manage to handle their permanence over time. Yet there are only a few studies analyzing and explaining the tension between the degree of participation of think tanks in public policy processes and their permanence in the medium and long term. This work is precisely aimed at analyzing such situation. It should be taken into account that the different organizations gathered under the term think tanks do not share the same incentives when it comes to engage and participate in public poli1. I would like to thank Donald E. Abelsons valuable comments and suggestions on previous versions of this work. I would also like to thank the excellent support of Gisell Cogliandro and Nicolas Bertello throughout the whole research process. This research was carried out thanks to the generous support of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.
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cymaking. Thus, beyond the constraints imposed by the dynamics of the political system regarding the involvement of think tanks, it is also worth considering the predisposition of the organization to become indeed involved and the real possibilities of succeeding in doing so. When it comes to take a position in public policymaking processes, preferences entail different risks, both in terms of independence and stability. In general, it may be stated that the participation of think tanks and their degree of involvement with different political and party actors will depend on their appreciation, on the one hand, of the greater exposure or visibility and consequently, larger funding that could be achieved by these means, and on the other hand, of the risks that such degree of involvement and association would imply for their permanence over the medium/long term. With the aim of developing such hypothesis, this work is organized in four Sections. Section I offers an analytical framework to classify different types of think tanks according to their main characteristics, while also presenting a typology of the different functions played by these organizations. Section II applies this classification to the case of Argentina. At the same time, consideration is also given to some of the main factors affecting the degree of involvement and participation of these organizations, such as election processes and public agenda-setting. Section III, on the other hand, analyzes the tendency of the different types of think tanks in Argentina to participate in public policymaking processes, laying emphasis on the tension between participation and permanence for each type of think tank identified. This analysis will allow to establish an inverse relationship between the participation and permanence of these organizations within the dynamics of the Argentine case. Finally, Section IV includes the main conclusions of this work.
Characteristics and Functions of Think Tanks in Argentina Think tanks aim at influencing the public policy process. To such effect, they establish relationships and links with a diversity of political actors and become involved in the debate and implementation of public policies in different ways. They can create spaces for debate, develop research and proposals, promote specific actions or set up management teams within the public administration. Owing to this, we should analyze their degree of participation in the public scene and the type of interrelation they establish with political party actors, so as to better understand their dynamics of operation. In order to develop this analysis, it is worth defining the concept of think tank. Notwithstanding the fact that we lack a univocal definition of the term, some works on the subject have contributed with useful criteria for conceptualizing these organizations known as think tanks. Thus, while Stone (1996:16) defines think tanks as independent research institutes mainly aimed at policy research, () non-governmental, non-profit organizations, indeThink Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America
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pendent of governments, political parties and interest groups; Abelson (2002) defines them as non-profit, non-partisan (which does not mean non-ideological), research-oriented institutes among whose primary objectives is to influence public opinion and public policy. A peculiar characteristic of this type of institutions is the fact that they develop a wide array of activities, establishing relationships and links with different political actors, which renders it difficult to find a univocal definition for them. This difficulty in defining think tanks is not limited to the Argentine case. Stone (2004) argues that the term think tank defies an exact definition, given the fact that the type of constitutional architecture, the historical circumstances of war or stability, the political culture and legal traditions, alongside the character of the regime in power, determine the shape and extent of think tank development in a country. Moreover, she points out that the differences among the different organizations that label themselves as think tanks cause the term to become diffuse, since being equally applied to a large number of diverse organizations, it provides scarce information about the type of organization it refers to. In view of this and for the purpose of this work, think tanks are defined as research institutes, non-governmental organizations and private organizations all of them non-profit oriented to research and/or the promotion of issues aimed at influencing the public policymaking process, a definition which has already been used in a previous work (Ua, Cogliandro and Labaqui, 2004). Objectives and Interests of Think Tanks A broad debate on the objectives and interests of think tanks can be registered in the expert literature. Are they organizations engaged in promoting the common good or do they represent vested interests? Undoubtedly, the multiplicity of organizations that can be labeled as think tanks causes this question to lack an only answer. As it is illustrated by Abelson (2006) for the case of US think tanks, there are organizations both engaged in promoting public policies aimed at the common good and institutions with a clear party and/or sector position. With respect to this and from a critical point of view, Prat (2000) argues that think tanks have as their main objective to influence policy decision-making for two reasons that are not selfexcluded: the accumulation of power resources which implies imposing their own ideas, and on the other hand, the fulfillment of goals of a third party, either a political party or a business sector. From another viewpoint, Stone (2004) stresses that private interests within think tanks can be found in those organizations engaged in competing for international funding or in those that serve as vehicles for political ambitions and as a space for the retreat and containment of civil servants. The first ones evidence an inclination towards the means that allow for the sustainability of the organization, which causes its primary goals to remain unfulfilled. The competition over funding, the publication of working papers, media coverage and the set up of contact networks relegate the primary objectives related to the achievement of goals aimed at influencing policy debate spaces through research to the background (Stone, op. cit). The increasingly shorter terms stipulated by funding companies and organizations for the development of research projects have a negative impact, thus encouraging a behavior in which sustainability is considered as a matter of resources rather than a matter of effectiveness in the fulfillment of the long-term goals undertaken (McGann, 2004). The second type of institution which involves those organizations that are
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vehicles for political ambitions and spaces for the retreat of civil servants is partly the result of the importance given by think tanks to the creation of a favorable atmosphere for the development of political careers. Thus, it is highly relevant to build a combination of new talents and experienced officials that would provide the organization with a good reputation while also training new staff. Nevertheless, we can mention the extreme case of an organization with vested interests the vanity think tank which is solely engaged in the promotion of candidates through the contribution of a not that solid technical framework and a strong political identification of platforms. In this case, there is supremacy of vested interests over the general interest put forward in the objectives of the organization. Bearing in mind these queries regarding the incentives and forms of operation of think tanks, it is necessary in the case of Argentina to analyze, on the one hand, their relationships and positions regarding other relevant actors involved in policymaking processes and, on the other hand, to measure their real degree of political participation in general, taking into account that the knowledge existing on the subject is relatively scarce. However, two major concepts within this work should be defined. In the first place, there is the concept of think tank participation in the policymaking process. It is understood that a think tank participates when the organization explicitly develops a series of actions aimed at directly influencing the process of identification, formulation, implementation and evaluation of public policies.2 These actions comprise from the development of research, the organization of dissemination and discussion events, and the monitoring of specific public policies, to the setting up of technical-political teams willing to fill executive or parliamentary support posts. With regards to the concept of permanence, it refers to the continuation of the organizations activities over the medium/long term, although with a reasonably relevant level of activities. Some think tanks continue to exist at a formal level but their activities are null or practically non-existent. Once these two concepts, that will be used throughout the rest of this work, have been defined, there follows an analysis of think tanks in Argentina. Types of Think Tanks in Argentina Taking into account the difficulty in defining think tanks in a univocal way, as well as the development of organizations with very different characteristics under this same label in Argentina, it is worth distinguishing between different types of think tanks. To such effect, there follows a classification based on Ua, Cogliandro and Labaqui (2004), which allows us to analyze the characteristics and distinctive features of four types of think tanks. It should be pointed out that such categories are not mutually excluded and one think tank can evidence features of each one of the others in its operation. The first type of think tanks are Private Research Centers (PRC). These organizations show similarities with private sector organizations, above all in terms of organizational structure, ruling bodies and operation. These similarities result from the existing links and interrelations with the business sector, which represents their main financial source and the place of origin of their management board members. These characteristics account for their limited level of
2. For a detailed analysis of the public policymaking process, see Oszlak and ODonnell (1984).
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involvement, generally constrained to the formulation of proposals and their dissemination, usually taking part in debates on public agenda issues or certain policies. Moreover, they also explain their special interest in economic policy-related issues. Generally, PRCs do not directly take part in state management and they mostly establish indirect relationships with political actors that allow them to remain in a stable position vis--vis changes in the political context. However, there are exceptions regarding their level of involvement, mostly in the case of those PRCs working in the economic area, which evidence a greater level of participation in state management. The second type of think tanks are the Academic Centers (AC): organizations with longterm goals mainly focused on research and academic dissemination activities from which they obtain most part of their resources. ACs are characterized by their search for permanence and prestige. This situation explains, in the first place, why the activities aimed at public policymaking and analysis either take into account great lines of intervention, or are constrained to the identification and diagnosis of public issues with low influence from the conjuncture. In the second place, it also causes AC members in case of participating in public policymaking processes to play these roles in a personal capacity rather than as members of the institution. But beyond this, they occasionally act as sources of human resources for the public administration in different governments, thus showing in many cases greater relevance than expected for think tanks of this type. Another characteristic of this type of think tanks is that their ideological position is many times useful as reference point for the different political actors and opinion-makers in debates on specific public policies. At the same time, their long-term research is useful as theoretical framework for the other types of think tanks. The third type of think tanks considered are the Political Foundations (PF): organizations that show the greatest degree of participation in the policymaking and management process their two main activities. Even though their activities do not differ from those carried out by the other types of think tanks, political foundations are directly linked to political-party leaders, who are in many cases involved in the management process. Their ruling bodies, generally run by a leading figure supported by the PFs own environment, define the thematic areas of interest and issues to be addressed according to the political situation and the changes in priorities of public opinion. This form of operation is in correlation with the low stability and predictability resulting from their dependence on movements in the political arena and their poor capacity to resist adverse circumstantial changes once involved with political actors that placed them in the spotlight. The last type of think tanks are the so-called Advocacy Groups (AG), which are mainly focused on raising citizen awareness about certain issues and are characterized by the way in which they combine different features from the other types of think tanks. They show the organization of private research centers and the search for stability and permanence that is characteristic of academic centers. In addition, they are characterized by their sensitivity and reaction capacity to rapidly address changes in those issues topping the political agenda a feature that can be noticed in political foundations. Based on these four categories we can assemble the different think tanks created in Argentina from the 1960s up to the present day, as it is shown in Table 1. It is worth pointing
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out that some of these organizations may not be currently developing activities or their activities could be almost none, but most of them are currently in operation. Table 1. Year of Creation of Think Tanks (1960 2006)
Private Research Centers IDES (1960) FIEL (1964) Instituto Di Tella (1967) CEIL (1971) CISEA (1975) CEMA (1976) F. Mediterrnea/IERAL (1977) FIDE (1978) F. del Tucumn (1985) Nueva Mayora (1986) F. Libertad (1998) F. Capital (1993) CEDI (1997) CEM (1997) Innova (1999) CIPPEC (2000) CEF (2002) F. Pent (2002) IDESA (2003) Academic Centers ICDA /UCC (1967) FLACSO (1972) CEDES (1975) IAE (1979) UTDT (1991) UCEMA (1995) CEER (1997) G. Plan Fnix/ UBA (2001) Political Foundations F. Andina (1984) F. del Sur (1987) Siglo XXI (1987) F. Karakachoff (1989) CIEPP (1989) CECE (1990) FUALI (1992) F. Grupo Sophia (1994) FADE (1997) F. Libertador (1997) Novum Millenium (1998) Acep (1999) F. Creer y Crecer (2001) G. Unidos del Sud (2002) FUN-DAR (2002) Fundar, Justicia y Seguridad (2002) CEPES (2002) Fund. Polticas Pblicas (2004) Advocacy Groups Conciencia (1982) CELS (1985) Poder Ciudadano (1989) ADC (1995) ACIJ (2002)
Source: Own ellaboration based on Braun, Ciccioni and Ducot (2002) and Ua, Cogliandro, Labaqui (2004).
The development of these organizations can be divided into three stages, as pointed out by Braun, Ciccioni and Ducot (2002). In the first stage, which ranges from the 1960s to 1983, low levels of association between think tanks and the State were registered, which was partly consonant with the search for greater independence and autonomy than it was available in a university context subject to military interventions (ODonnell in Gicovate, 2004). During this stage, the following institutions were created, among others: Fundacin de Investigaciones Econmicas Latinoamericanas (FIEL), Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad (CEDES), Instituto de Desarrollo Econmico (IDES) and Fundacin Mediterrnea, with its Institute of Economic Studies on the Argentine and Latin American Reality (FM/IERAL). Most part of these centers was engaged in economic research. Notwithstanding their search for greater independence of the State and more specifically of the governments that happened to be in power, they maintained strong ties with the public apparatus. This can be inferred from the following information: between 1976 and 1996, of the thirteen Economy Ministers that were appointed during that period only three were partisan economists (Camou, 1997).3 Thus, think tanks in this period had a strong influence on political parties and the public sector, through their technical and programmatic contributions to the government in economic-related issues. From this same point of view, it is worth noticing the fact that between 1996 and 2006, the number of partisan ministers also stood at three, but out of a total of five appointed ministers, thus evidencing a weakened link between economic think tanks and political parties.
3. Inverted commas in the original.
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The re democratization period marked the beginning of the second stage which spanned from 1983 until the mid-1990s, when the so-called first-generation reforms were implemented in Argentina. This second stage is characterized by the creation of think tanks linked to political parties and to specific actions related to civil society and public agenda demands. Examples of think tanks created during this second stage are: Centro de Estudios para el Cambio Estructural (CECE), Centro Interdisciplinario para el Estudio de Polticas Pblicas (CIEPP), Poder Ciudadano and Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS). There was also a strong influence of those think tanks engaged in economic issues that were created in the previous stage, which had a direct participation in state management particularly during the 1990s. The third stage began in the mid-1990s, following the shrinking of the State as a result of market-oriented reforms. These reforms encouraged the emergence of a type of think tank characterized by an increased interest in participating in policy implementation, such as for instance the Grupo Sophia, Centro de Implementacin de Polticas Pblicas para la Equidad y el Crecimiento (CIPPEC), and Centro de Estudios Econmicos de la Regulacin (CEER). Thus, we may refer to the existence of the four types of think tanks above-described. Next, follows a more detailed analysis of the different functions to be developed by these organizations. Functions Developed by Think Tanks As it has already been set forth, a certain tension between the participation and stability of think tanks may be noticed in Argentina. That is, the benefits resulting from a direct participation in public policymaking imply certain risks on the organizations stability over time. On the other hand, the development of weaker links with political-party actors and the indirect participation in public policymaking provides greater protection for the organization, taking into account the characteristic volatility of the political context in Argentina, while improving in principle their possibilities for permanence over time. Thus, a greater degree of participation may allow accessing to more funding sources for the development of activities; while a lower degree of involvement may make it more difficult to obtain the resources that are needed for the organizations sustainability. It may be worth considering that think tanks with a greater degree of participation have advantages over those that have chosen lower profiles, above all with respect to funding sources interested in short-term goals. Moreover, they consider the proximity of actors involved in the decision-making process to be of great value. However, it seems impossible to know the way in which each think tank evaluates its optimal level of participation, and based on this to define its actions and goals to be met. Therefore, with the purpose of approaching this situation, we will be analyzing the activities that can be developed by think tanks as an indicator of the different levels of participation that may be observed. To such effect, four functions according to Baier and Bakvis (2001) and adapted to the Argentine case will be considered. These four functions show different degrees of participation in the public policymaking process, being neither mutually excluding nor always clearly delimited. Therefore, the same as with the classification into different types of think tanks, certain
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institutions can simultaneously develop more than one function, which indeed happens in practice. Below, there follows a description of each one of them, sorted from the lowest to the highest degree of participation each function implies for the organization. a) Think tanks as Dissemination Environments This first function is the result of an activity commonly developed by think tanks: the dissemination and debate on public issues based on their research and/or recommendations. By means of this function, think tanks may create a favorable environment for a variety of public actors, with a view to disseminating, discussing and analyzing new approaches or lines of action related to public policies. Holding activities aimed at these purposes (such as seminars or meetings) cannot only have a direct impact on the ideas of policymakers, but also helps them to develop and validate their own ideas, taking into account the distension this environment may offer in comparison to the highly tense atmosphere focused on state management. Four interlinked variables gain major relevance for the successful development of this function. On the one hand, the academic quality and non-partisan position of think tanks as spaces for debate and, on the other hand, the public which is given access by means of the organization and the level of dissemination or discretion as the case may be of their activities. b) Think tanks as Policy Legitimators At a second level of participation, think tanks can carry out activities aimed at giving policy advice and developing policy proposals one of their main strengths. In this function and based on the technical capacity of their human resources, think tanks support and provide technical basis for those policies that are being promoted or implemented. A political actor may also resort to think tanks in search of a clearly defined ideological position which is not to be found within his/her own party, so as to justify or legitimate decisions on public policies. This function allows noticing a greater degree of involvement in public policymaking, as well as a more direct link between think tanks and political actors. c) Think tanks as Knowledge Networks At a different level from policymaking, dissemination and justification, one of the most important functions that can be developed by think tanks is the construction of networks of ideas and individuals. This knowledge networks are in constant evolution, being expanded through the different activities developed by the organization, thus enabling think tanks to offer the possibility of providing political actors with a network of contacts with almost instant access to expertise. The construction of networks and the quality of their components represent quite an important resource for think tanks, provided that these networks may turn out to be of interest for other actors. A network or a set of interlinked networks can help build support for a political actor, as well as encourage the participation of well-qualified individuals who might otherwise not engage in public policy-related activities.
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d) Think Tanks as Support for Political Activities This last function is the result of two types of needs of political actors. The first one is related to the need for think tanks to draw up, disseminate and adapt the proposals of a political sector, or candidate, given the lack of this type of structures within traditional parties as well the need to set up support teams. In case a candidate has to undertake executive or legislative functions, think tank members can end up directly managing or promoting the adoption of proposals previously drawn up. The second need is related to the possibility of channeling resources to support political actors through foundations. On certain occasions, foundations under the umbrella of think tanks act as mechanisms to obtain resources aimed at politicalpartisan activities. Given the fact that this second function exceeds the proposed analysis, from now on when reference is made to think tanks as a support for political activities we will be exclusively referring to the creation of proposals and support teams for the political campaign of a certain political sector or actor. Although think tanks can develop more than one of the above functions, it is to be expected that one of them would prevail over the rest. This situation allows us to carry out an approximate analysis of the level of participation of different think tanks, as it will be shown in the following Section.
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Behavior and Participation of Think Tanks Types of Think Tanks and Functions they Play When analyzing the phenomenon of think tanks through the categories presented in the previous Section, it is possible to assemble them according to their level of participation in public policies, considering a continuum having strongly involved organizations on one end and organizations characterized by their lower participation on the other. Taking into account the above-mentioned characteristics for each type of think tanks, it is to be expected that Private Research Centers unlike Political Foundations which owing to their nature show a high level of participation in public issues will play functions involving low levels of participation. Meanwhile, in the case of Academic Centers and Advocacy Groups, the level of participation and involvement should be between moderate and low. Table 2 comprises a classification of a sample of Argentine think tanks, combining the type of think tank and the main function developed. Table 2: Think tanks in Argentina according to Type and Function Developed
Main function developed Dissemination environments Types of think tank Private Research Centers F. Libertad F. del Tucumn Policy egitimators CEM FIEL FM/IERAL IDESA Fundacin Pent CEF CIPPEC G. Plan Fnix(UBA) UCEMA FLACSO UNLP CIEPP CEPES UADE / CEER ICDA / PROFIM IAE / GESE Knowledge networks Support for political activities
Academic Centers
CEDES UTDT UDESA
Political Foundations
ACEP F. Libertador FUN-DAR Grupo Sophia
FCYC CECE GUS Fund. Polticas Pblicas
Advocacy Groups
Poder Ciudadano Conciencia ADC ACIJ
CELS
Source: Own elaboration.
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Starting the analysis by Private Research Centers, it should be said that they mainly play functions either of dissemination environments or policy legitimators, given the fact that the activities often carried out enable them to reach a public made up of private leaders, academic sectors and international organizations and, on the other hand, their works and projects evidence a certain ideological position based on a high technical level and academic soundness. Thus, Private Research Centers operating as dissemination environments give different actors access to spaces for debate, which are characterized on the one hand by their pluralism, in the sense that they are open to actors who have diverse and divergent positions and, on the other hand, such spaces are often related to certain sectors which are otherwise difficult to access. In their function as policy legitimators, these think tanks represent clear and univocal reference points, thus allowing to make positions taken on public issues explicit, providing them with a technical and academic justification, such as for instance in the regulation of public services or tax reform, among other cases. Taking specific examples of this type of organizations, both Fundacin del Tucumn and Fundacin Libertad are favorable spaces to address the debate on public policy issues, both with a strong encouragement and support of the business sector from the provinces of Tucumn and Santa F respectively, based on the image cultivated by both think tanks as centers for research on public issues, management training and local development. Among the centers operating as policy legitimators, we can mention FIEL and FM/IERAL. Both are clear reference points in terms of economic issues, and their involvement with political actors clearly points to a position on different economic-related issues and even on politics. Fundacin Pent, in spite of its still short life-span, has managed to combine a space for debate devoted to relevant issues on the agenda with a high-level academic treatment, thus making its works and activities to be considered as points of reference and legitimating in public debates. Finally, CIPPEC evidences a particular situation, being in transition towards a policy legitimator role. This organization, created in 2000, first adopted the form of an Advocacy Group. In recent years, it started to develop research on different topics, simultaneously building a contact network, which has also been translated into an important growth of its organizational structure. In 2006, CIPPEC added a new area of work Local Public Management which resulted from its incorporation of Fundacin Grupo Innova, engaged in the study of municipal realities and local governments. Undoubtedly, this is one of the first experiences in Argentina in which a think tank practically incorporates another organization to its own structure. Think tanks included within the group of Academic Centers carry out activities related to their operation as dissemination environments, policy legitimators or knowledge networks. As dissemination environments, these institutions have an apolitical and neutral connotation, even when they may have a certain ideological position as a result of their research, the position of their members or their track-record. In certain cases, on the other hand, they show the peculiarity that as spaces for debate and dissemination they also act as links to business sectors
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committed to academic development. Likewise, in their role as policy legitimators they act the same as Private Research Centers, as points of reference when it comes to take positions. In such case, the difference lies in the fact that the track-record and academic excellence of Universities give in advance more validity to their activities, which are framed within a greater institutional soundness. In particular, an institution of this kind can be identified as a knowledge network when it engages in the study and development of projects in a specific area, combining this with the organization of periodical events gathering a significant number of experts and actors involved in the subject. These think tanks, therefore, grant access to expert individuals and institutions on a certain area or subject. In Argentina there are several cases of organizations whose main function is the legitimation of policies. Thus, the University of the Argentine Center for Macroeconomic Studies (CEMA) plays a similar function to FIEL and FM/IERAL, but from the position of an educational institution. This function is also played by Grupo Fnix, focused on the discussion of different economic aspects, but from a different ideological position from that of the above-mentioned organizations, being its academic origin as the project of a group of professors from the School of Economic Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) an outstanding general feature. FLACSO shows similarities with the previous examples since it is a think tank whose works, proposals and human resources play a policy legitimating function an advantage brought about by its long track-record in the country and by the diversity of issues and problems addressed in its projects and activities. Finally, the National University of La Plata (UNLP), particularly its School of Economic Sciences, also plays this role regarding issues of tax federalism and income distribution. With regards to Academic Centers whose main function is to set up dissemination spaces, we can mention the Torcuato Di Tella University (UTDT) and the Center for the Study of State and Society (CEDES), which are nowadays major dissemination spaces in the national and international academic spheres. In the case of UTDT, the experiences of the Institute and Foundation Di Tella, its role in the scientific and art development and the absence of a marked political party bias in its institutional position are factors that contribute to its perception as a space that is open to political actors from across the whole ideological spectrum. The University of San Andrs registers a similar situation. CEDES, on the other hand, apart from carrying out diverse research activities, is the only dissemination environment devoted to a specific area of social policies, including the issues of maternal mortality, reproduction and health care. Given the fact that this area is not covered by other organizations, CEDES is currently the only academic space where it can be discussed in terms of public issue. The cases of CEER (UADE), Catholic University of Crdoba (ICDA), and GESE (IAE), are distinguished from the rest owing to the possibilities they offer as knowledge networks. In particular, CEER made up by experts in the area of economic regulation, which was originally linked to privatized companies and the World Bank, is engaged in research and consultancy on such topics, thus representing an important source of expert human resources and inforThink Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America
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mation for actors interested in this area. GESE of IAE, for its part, is a space characterized by the presence of important business sectors and its strong commitment to the incorporation of new technologies for private and public management. This center has developed a bank of experiences through its Government Programme for the Development of Local Community Leaders, which turns it into an important knowledge network in terms of local governments. Finally, the Institute of Administration Sciences (ICDA) of the Catholic University of Crdoba, in particular the Programme for Strengthening Municipal Institutions (PROFIM), together with the School of Political Science and International Relations, offers local leaders the possibility of having access to professionals who are experts in local management. For their part, Political Foundations play functions with high levels of participation in policy processes. Operating as policy legitimators, Political Foundations often represent a valid alternative for the elaboration and promotion of policy research and projects aimed at a certain political actor and/or sector. Among the Political Foundations comprising knowledge networks, it is worth highlighting those that set up professional networks that are qualified to undertake direct management responsibilities in issues or areas requiring certain level of technical knowledge and experience. Finally, regarding those organizations included within this group, which operate as support for political activities, it should be said that they carry out dissemination activities and research projects aimed at building the image of a candidate or political group, while also legitimating their funding needs based on the development of management programs and projects. In the Argentine case, two organizations can be taken as examples of Political Foundations that play the role of policy legitimators: CIEPP and CEPES. The first one acted as reference point in economic issues for the party known as Affirmation for an Egalitarian Republic (ARI Afirmacin para una Repblica Igualitaria) during the 2003 presidential campaign. This center has developed different projects related to the citizen income one of the policies promoted by this party during that same campaign. In a similar way, CEPES operated as vehicle for the return to politics of former vice-president Carlos Chacho lvarez. This center first worked in the organization and production of a television program called Poder de las Ideas (The Power of Ideas) hosted by the former vice-president. Then, following the appointment to the working team of the Government of the City of Buenos Aires and later to the Mercosur Secretariat, CEPES became the focal point of his activities. On the other hand, among the Political Foundations that operate as knowledge networks we can mention the Asociacin Civil de Estudios Populares (ACEP), Fundacin Libertador and Grupo Sophia. ACEP, by definition, is a network of Justicialist leaders from the countrys central region with presence in several provinces. Another organization that mostly operates as knowledge network is Grupo Sophia. This foundation has a broad network of members, who are either directly or indirectly involved and participate in different areas of the civil service at country level, and both in the City and Province of Buenos Aires, while several of its members also take part in the technical teams of Fundacin Creer y Crecer belonging to the party known as Commitment to Change (Compromiso para el Cambio). Likewise, Fundacin Libertador
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appears nowadays as a network of Justicialist Party leaders from the Province of Mendoza which has links at national level with legislators from that province. There are several Political Foundations working as support for political activities. For instance, Fundacin Creer y Crecer operates as support for the Commitment to Change party, existing overlapping structures between them which make the frontiers between the foundation and the party quite blurred. The same situation is observed for Grupo Unidos del Sud. This self-proclaimed do tank currently operates as technical support for the legislative activity of its president and founder, Francisco De Narvez, who is a National Deputy. CECE is an expert center in economic and budget issues with a strong influence on the legislative activity, developing different tasks with a sector of the Civic Radical Union (UCR) of the City of Buenos Aires and supporting the activities and projects of this sector. Finally, the Foundation of Public Policies headed by the former Mayor of the City of Buenos Aires, Anbal Ibarra, is mostly made up of former officials of his administration, and operates as direct support for the political career of its main leader. Lastly, Advocacy Groups mainly play the characteristic functions of dissemination environments and knowledge networks. Nevertheless, with regards to the first function, their role has more to do with a sort of quality label than with the possibility of granting access to a specific public. In other words, the possibility of jointly disseminating proposals and programs with Advocacy Groups and of participating with them in spaces for dialogue and discussion, gives an image of openness to civil society and transparency to the activities being carried out, which can thus be capitalized by the other organizations taking part. With respect to the second function, when Advocacy Groups operate as knowledge networks their participation or cooperation with a certain line of action can be understood as an endorsement by members of the issues being addressed. Otherwise, these actors should get involved from riskier and more costly positions. That is, some Advocacy Groups offer actors involved in a specific issue of public relevance the possibility to participate through the construction of a knowledge network under which the costs of taking a position on a certain topic are lower. Of the think tanks considered as Advocacy Groups, two examples can be taken of institutions operating as dissemination environments: Poder Ciudadano and Conciencia. The presence and participation of Poder Ciudadano in events and programs is regarded by other actors as a sort of endorsement linked to a greater level of transparency. Asociacin Conciencia, for its part, plays a similar role although in this case the presence of the organization implies a greater openness to civil society. In this sense, it is worth underlining the fact that Asociacin Conciencia takes part in most initiatives in which participation is opened to civil society organizations, while Poder Ciudadano has a certain position which constrains the selection of initiatives and projects in which it participates. On the other hand, in the cases of ADC and ACIJ, we can also identify their operation as dissemination environments as main function, although with a lower degree of exposure to and acknowledgement by society, owing partly to their more recent date of creation. Both think tanks are focused on strengthening institutions and are engaged in monitoring and supervisThink Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America
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ing the Legislative and Executive Powers. In particular, ADC promotes the rights and liberties of citizens, while ACIJ particularly encourages the struggle against socioeconomic discrimination and social inequity, promoting equality of conditions among people. With regards to Advocacy Groups operating as knowledge networks, an example is CELS, which promotes the defense of human rights, as well as that of economic and social rights, citizen security and information access. It is made up by renowned scholars whose presence in the discussions, projects and initiatives on this subject area implies the endorsement of certain sectors in the field of law and of human rights international organizations. To sum up, in the case of Argentina, Private Research Centers mainly develop functions as dissemination environments and policy legitimators, since they target private and academic sectors, as well as international organizations. On the other hand, their projects evidence a certain ideological position which needs to be supported by high-level academic research. Academic Centers may play functions as dissemination environments, policy legitimators, while also setting up knowledge networks. As dissemination environments, they are characterized by being apolitical and neutral, while in their role as policy legitimators they act the same as Private Research Centers, as points of reference when it comes to taking positions. On the other hand, only some academic centers, like ICDA/PROFIM and GESE (of IAE) are distinguished from the rest for allowing the possibility of generating knowledge networks. For their part, most Political Foundations set up knowledge networks and act as support for political activities. Only in two cases they act as policy legitimators. They set up knowledge networks given the fact that think tanks offer the possibility of having access to experts in different issues, while they operate as support for political activities, providing a specific political sector with contents and programs. Finally, in their role as policy legitimators they often represent a valid alternative for the elaboration and promotion of policy research projects in support of a certain actor. Finally, Advocacy Groups are characterized by their main function as dissemination environments, where their role mostly implies giving a greater level of transparency to public policies and institutions through their participation and involvement. As it can be noticed, this classification of think tanks allows inferring certain characteristics regarding their participation in public policymaking. But, how shall these organizations behave within a process like that of elections, implying a greater tension between participation and sustainability over the medium-term? The Influence of Elections At a peculiar moment of democratic life election time think tanks should make careful decisions about their level of participation in the public policymaking process. Elections result in positive effects for these institutions since they offer more possibilities of participation in
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view of the weakness or lack of partisan technical teams registered in Argentina. Elections also concentrate media attention on pending issues and citizen demands, which turns them into favorable contexts for the promotion and dissemination of think tank activities as well as for the organization of events that may operate as public gathering dissemination spaces. With respect to negative effects, the atmosphere of uncertainty regarding the post-election scenario can turn into an obstacle for those organizations with projects aimed at medium/long term perspectives. Elections make private actors await results before defining their contributions to think tanks, while political leaders are focused on day-to-day issues, thus emphasizing the short-term vision of the public agenda. Yet, they have as positive effect somewhat related to this uncertainty the creation of expectations regarding the opportunities that might be thus prompted by the incorporation of new political actors into different decision-making spaces, either in Congress or the Executive Power. Although these effects are the result to a greater or lesser extent of election processes in general, we should distinguish between presidential and legislative elections. Presidential elections are more important owing to three reasons. In the first place, they provide more opportunities to have access to government areas, given the fact that most part of Executive Power posts at national level are at stake. In the second place, not only is a specific agenda of issues and a vision of how to address it being disputed in the presidential election, but above all, there is the position with greatest influence in terms of agenda-setting, i.e. that of the President of the Nation. In the third place, given these two characteristics, presidential elections have the peculiarity of allowing for the participation of all types of think tanks, regardless of the different roles and functions being developed by them. In the case of Political Foundations, presidential elections offer opportunities to achieve direct management spaces and/or the implementation of their proposals. On the other hand, legislative elections provide these foundations with opportunities for the dissemination of projects, as well as for the development of campaign messages aimed at proving a management capacity understood as a capacity to come up with solutions and address issues related to key policy areas. The support offered by members of Political Foundations as media swords, provides the organization with greater media coverage while also projecting the image of a candidate supported by experienced and prestigious teams. In the case of Advocacy Groups, elections are events in which their role relative to endorsing transparency gains increased relevance. The crisis of representation suffered by Argentina in recent years turns transparency and openness to society into highly valuable assets for contending candidates and parties. Nevertheless, the form of operation of these organizations varies depending on whether the elections are presidential or legislative. The first ones are elections in which the whole country represents a single district, thus being parties at national level the structures to be monitored by Advocacy Groups. In turn, legislative elections offer as difficulty the fact that each party behaves differently across the different provinces, setting up different alliances and electoral fronts. Owing to this reason, during legislative elections, Advocacy Groups are often engaged in activities that fail to be focused on parties but rather
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are concentrated on different aspects of the election, such as the use of media spaces or the impact of elections on legislative tasks. On the other hand, in the case of Private Research Centers and Academic Centers, elections imply a diversion of attention towards short-term issues and demands. In this type of contexts, to come up with high impact diagnostics and proposals appears to be a more suitable, and to some extent a more productive task than to carry out policymaking projects, which are designed to have a medium or long term impact. Therefore, elections force these think tanks to make some adjustments to their work plans and activities, so as to take the greatest possible advantage of their virtues in an election year. Thus, elections lead Private Research Centers to give priority to projects that, even in spite of being aimed at a medium-term impact, are of strong relevance to private decision-makers for short-term decisions to be made according to the electoral schedule. In other words, these think tanks adjust their work plans so as to make them highly attractive owing to the issues addressed and the projects included over the short/medium term, thus aiming at having a greater receptivity among the private sector. Election processes, in turn, test the capacity of Academic Centers as dissemination environments, in terms of their power to convene private sector representatives, the academic community and international institutions interested in local issues. The organization of activities with the participation of political actors of different leanings, the massive dissemination of results achieved and their acknowledgement by sectors of major importance are factors that influence these activities. By developing this sort of activities on a frequent basis during the successive elections, these think tanks manage to be better positioned in the future, acquiring certain leadership as centers qualified to achieve consensus spaces in the political process. In the same sense, the complexity that often characterizes these processes and the number of contending actors allows Academic Centers to act both as analysts and qualified commentators of the different outcomes and events, thus developing an additional facet in terms of election analysis. As it may be noticed, elections also influence the behavior of think tanks, which react in various ways by developing different types of activities and making different adjustments to their work plans in order to face these processes. The Role of the Public Agenda. Relationship with Think Tank Niches In addition to elections, the issues making up the public agenda are another factor influencing the behavior of think tanks. Changes in the public agenda can indeed explain certain variations in the behavior and development of think tanks between different periods. When a specific policy issue becomes a priority, organizations engaged in this area of concern can be encouraged to re-allocate larger amounts of resources to such topic in order to have a greater impact and benefit in the short term. Nevertheless, this works both ways, so it
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should be taken into account that think tanks have certain capacity to influence the agendasetting process and in fact aim at doing so. For instance, following the 2001/2002 economic and political crisis, most think tanks and particularly Private Research Centers coincided with issues related to economic insertion and development and competitiveness strategies. This was the case of FIEL, Fundacin del Tucumn, Fundacin Libertad, Fundacin Pent, and FM/IERAL, among others. Most academic centers such as IAE (GESE), UCEMA, and Grupo Fnix also focused their research on public finance areas, markets, regulation, and economy-related issues. However, in the years that immediately followed the crisis 2003/2004 think tanks were mostly focused on social problems and in some cases on security-related issues, in response to the new priorities of society. The think tanks that mainly addressed these issues were Political Foundations. With regards to political foundations addressing social, education and health policy issues, particularly poverty issues, we can mention CIEPP, Creer y Crecer, Grupo Sophia and Grupo Unidos del Sud. In terms of security and justice we can refer to CEPES, Fundar, Creer y Crecer, Grupo Sophia and Grupo Unidos del Sud. Nevertheless, the influence of the public agenda on think tanks is not the same in all cases. Therefore, and in order to analyze it in accordance to the typology of think tanks presented in this work, the impact of the public agenda is considered along a continuum having Academic Centers which are the less influenced on one end, and Political Foundations the group that is more influenced by the agenda, given the interest to participate in political processes on the other end. At an intermediate point on this continuum we would find Private Research Centers, which in spite of being engaged in the elaboration of projects aimed at outlining the medium/long term agenda, are subjected to constant revision according to the interests of the different actors they are involved with. A clear example of this situation was the constant process of interaction between the economists of IERAL and business members of Fundacin Mediterrnea, according to Colina, Giordano and Ronconi (2005). This process of validation and internal debate on previous versions of the works to be published by FM/IERAL resulted in benefits for the investigations, such as for instance, the study of specific problems and the elaboration of practical solutions; as well as for the identification of problems that are of concern for and therefore attract the attention of politicians, thus allowing to identify likely promoters or detractors of proposed reforms. Advocacy Groups, which fail to be ascribed to a specific point on this continuum, deserve a special mention. They generally use the public agenda to their own advantage, seeking to apply their tools to the different problems that arise, or carrying out the follow-up to specific issues that fail to be registered by public opinion. Besides the above-mentioned influence of the public agenda closely linked to the different functions to be developed by think tank we should also refer to the effects related to the expertise of think tanks. The coincidence of the agenda with issues that are within the expertise of an organization, brings about a situation having a strong potential, in which the products and projects
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of said organization gain more value, both on account of their relevance for the occasion and of the possibilities of positioning itself on the mass media. Based on this and by way of hypothesis for future works, it would be worth considering the possibility that those think tanks whose activities and products are aimed at meeting short-term interests could be seeking to create more flexible and easy-to-adapt issue niches, so as to make it easier to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the public agenda. On the other hand, the organizations giving priority to influence on the long-term agenda should aim at dealing with issues defining a niche regardless of the possibilities of those issues of making up said agenda. This situation is observed in the lower capacity of Private Research Centers and Academic Centers to somewhat adjust their work plans in line with the public agenda, vis--vis the structural flexibility evidenced by Political Foundations and Advocacy Groups, whose response capacity shows an increased rate of adaptation to circumstances. To sum up, with regards to the influence of elections and the public agenda on the behavior of think tanks, we can notice that Private Research Centers and Academic Centers place themselves at a certain distance from current circumstances, trying to focus the attention of the different actors on structural and medium-term issues. To such effect, these organizations rely on the receptivity of the business community and local and international academic institutions. Nevertheless, they face the constant challenge of concentrating attention on structural issues that fail to be considered as pressing ones. On the contrary, Political Foundations are faced with the challenge of influencing the circumstantial agenda, which is further accentuated during election processes. Owing to this reason, this type of think tanks concentrate their efforts on the elaboration of products and organization of activities related to issues that may gather the attention of the massive public, while giving space to new projects with strong impact on the public agenda. For their part, Advocacy Groups use both election processes and issues making up the public agenda, in accordance to their own goals, thus participating more or less intensely according to the issues under discussion. Once the main types of think tanks, their functions and the impact of elections and the public agenda on their behavior have been described, the next Section will be directly dealing with the study of the different levels of participation and their impact on the permanence of organizations in the Argentine case.
The Tension Between Participation and Permanence There are a series of tensions common to all think tanks, either belonging to developed or developing countries which are closely linked to the form of operation of think tanks, as pointed out by Lowenthal (2006). Thus, we can mention as example the tension existing between a specific approach to research and a greater visibility of the think tank institution; the tension between the organizations intellectual autonomy and the access to funding sources, or that existing between preserving certain autonomy in decision-making and maintaining the relationship with relevant political contacts. In the specific case of Argentina, one of the most significant tensions for think tanks is established between the level of participation in the policymaking process and the organizations permanence over the medium/long term.
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The level of participation of think tanks depends on their objectives, activities and funding factors which are to a great extent determined by the incentives each organization has to establish relationships with partisan political actors or, otherwise, to remain at a distance. However, in spite of their higher or lower level of participation, all think tanks aim at having influence on public policies, so they will seek to establish relationships with actors having decision-making power over these processes. In the case of Argentina, a strong identification with certain party sectors, the direct participation in government management with the administration of the day, or otherwise a excessively critical position over the government, entail risks for the future permanence of the organization, mainly due to the impact of these decisions on the possibilities of having access to funding. In this way, think tanks in Argentina must overcome the tension between an increased level of participation which allows them to meet their goals of having influence on public policies; while also impacting their permanence in the medium/long term, by making it difficult to obtain funds in case the organization is directly involved in a government administration and a change of government takes place; or if the organization has a excessively critical position over the government. In other words, think tanks face the risk that a high level of participation at a given time, with the benefits thus resulting from it, would place them in a position that will make access to funding difficult once the conditions that prompted such increased level of participation are no longer present. This has been a common situation in Argentina in recent years, given the high volatility in terms of political, economic and social courses. This tension between the participation and permanence of organizations varies according to the different types of think tanks. Each type of institution participates in policy processes and establishes links with political actors in diverse ways. The benefits and risks of becoming involved in government management are not the same for Private Research Centers and Political Foundations; or the benefits resulting from the operation of Academic Centers as discussion and dissemination spaces are not the same if compared to other types of think tanks. Taking these differences into account, there follows a description of the particular characteristics related to the level of participation and its impact on permanence for each type of organization in the Argentine case. Tension between Participation and Permanence: Main Characteristics by Type of Think Tank In general, all Private Research Centers have the characteristic of dealing with economic issues or economic development related issues, considering the different factors thus affecting it as well as international relations, the political system and institutional quality. The incentives for the participation of this group of think tanks considered as a whole in policymaking processes are relatively poor. The instability of these processes results in detriment to the possibilities of developing high-level academic and professional spaces with permanence over time, which are necessary to carry out projects related to structural issues on the agenda. In view of this, their participation could be ranked as of low intensity. Although the direct support to a certain government administration can attract funding for the organization from private sectors with short-term interests, a certain level of stability turns out to be of utmost importance when it
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comes to establish links to be maintained beyond specific circumstances. To such effect, they need professional teams that would carry out research on an ongoing basis, thus becoming regular and periodic products not tied to any government administration. Examples of this situation are CEF or Fundacin Libertad. However, as it was previously stated, the public agenda has a strong influence on the behavior of think tanks, and particularly on a group of Private Research Centers. This group is made up by think tanks specifically engaged in the economic area, such as FIEL or Fundacin Mediterrnea/IERAL. In the case of these centers, the successive economic crisis suffered by Argentina as of the 1970s were a fundamental factor in their behavior. Think tanks engaged in the economic area have a particular approach with a clear and defined ideological position. The incorporation of members from these institutions to a ministerial cabinet is a clear indication as to the economic positioning of the government. It also allows to anticipate the actions and measures to be taken by think tank members holding such positions. Undoubtedly, one of the main characteristics of these organizations is the setting up of work teams having the capacity to undertake positions in government management. These are often relatively small and highly cohesive groups, and are appointed to policy decisionmaking positions within the state apparatus. The inclusion of these teams given their association with certain economic policies, as it was the case of Argentina in the 1990s, implies signs for the market and the business community, while their participation in the government administration is generally intended to cover at least one presidential term. The incorporation of these Private Research Centers implies a necessarily ministerial appointment, which defines a direct relationship with the President and, generally places the team above the remaining ministries. In fact, the inclusion of these teams generally leaves its mark on government areas that go beyond the economic area, owing to the fact that specific goals of the Economy Ministry turn into general goals to be sought by the other Ministries, as well as to the creation of cross-cutting projects promoted by the economic wing. A paradigmatic example of this situation was the first term in office of Domingo Cavallo as Economy Minister (1991-1996), where his team of economists belonged to Fundacin Mediterrnea/IERAL. This was quite significant since it was the first time a minister took office, incorporating a large team of technical experts (which had been already set up by the Foundation), and appointing its members to key positions in the ministry. Another example was the incorporation of several economists of FIEL during the ephemeral term of Ricardo Lopez Murphy as Economy Minister in March 2001, or the appointment of members of IDESA to different government areas, mainly linked to social security issues. On the other hand, Academic Centers do not usually show the same interest in becoming directly involved in policymaking processes. In this case, a low level of participation and stability are not in a detriment to fundraising, given the fact that these characteristics promote the development of a strong academic reputation, which represents their main asset. Nevertheless, in spite of this, on several occasions their members take part in government
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management, although always emphasizing they do it in a personal capacity. The track-record and institutional membership of these experts operates as a sort of endorsement that helps to legitimate their appointment on the basis of their renowned expertise in the academic sphere. The participation of experts from Academic Centers in public management represents an empirical validation of the academic analysis of these organizations, at the cost of a low level of risk since interventions are made in a personal capacity. Therefore, the think tank in question maintains its ordinary course of activities and projects by not risking the participation of its whole team of researchers. An example of this is the participation of members of FLACSO in the areas of education, social policies or industry in different administrations, which has not prevented the center from going on with its normal activities. Meanwhile this has posed no costs to the organization since the center has not been identified as directly responsible for a specific government area. Another example is the case of UCEMAs members, who joined Roque Fernndez in his administration as Economy Minister (1996-1999), and later returned to the academic activity where they can be found nowadays. The same situation was registered on repeated occasions with professors of the University Torcuato Di Tella. An overall low institutional participation together with the individual participation of teaching staff and a good academic level, allows Academic Centers to become consolidated as debate and opinion-making spaces, thus making it possible to influence the long-term agenda. However, these think tanks not only have influence on the long-term agenda but also on the rest of think tanks. Their research generally represents the theoretical framework of reference used by think tanks with lower academic capacity, as it may be the case of Political Foundations or Advocacy Groups. Therefore, they can also have an indirect influence through other institutions with higher levels of participation. Political Foundations are the type of think tanks including organizations clearly aimed at directly participating in public policymaking. Thus, for instance, this type of foundations is characterized by their true landing of teams whenever they are summoned to participate in public sector management. An example of this was the participation of Fundacin Novum Millenium in the economic team set up by Domingo Cavallo during his second term in office as Economy Minister (2001). We can also refer to the case of FADE, which gave advice to Jos Luis Machinea and participated with its technical teams in his administration as Economy Minister (1999-2001). It is worth highlighting that both foundations are no longer operating nowadays, and the end of their activities practically coincided with the removal of their members from public management. Other examples of foundations with a strong participation are Grupo Sophia, whose members took part in the National Administration of the Social Security (ANSES), the Institute of Social Services for Pensioners and Retired People (PAMI) and the Federal Administration of Public Revenues, most of them holding management positions in those institutions; or Grupo Unidos del Sud, which is directly supporting its leading member in his parliamentary work at the National Congress. A similar situation is likely to be registered in the case of Fundacin Crecer y Crecer during the future administration of Mauricio Macri as next mayor of the City of Buenos Aires.
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These teams, unlike those mentioned in the case of Private Research Centers engaged in the economic area, are made up by a larger number of professionals with diverse profiles whose role is to ensure that the plans and goals stipulated by the think tank indeed have an impact on different levels of the organization or promotion of legislative initiatives. The participation of Political Foundations in public management is more unstable and often ends whenever there is a change of ministerial authorities a situation in which the whole team gradually withdraws from the administration. This has a direct impact on the permanence of these think tanks since it ends up affecting their funding possibilities. As Political Foundations have possibilities of participating in public management or are actively participating in it, they become more attractive to donors and are usually allocated more funding. However, when they are removed from management positions or a change of administration takes place and from being part of the ruling party they end up joining the opposition- they lose part of this funding, thus reducing their activities to a minimum or practically disappearing. With regards to the last group of think tanks considered Advocacy Groups their participation is related to the function they play. If they are engaged in the promotion of social demands or a greater transparency in policymaking processes, a high level of participation poses greater risks, since their direct involvement implies the endorsement of certain transparency and quality standards which, in case of being unfulfilled, end up becoming a burden which discredits the institution. But, in order to carry out joint activities with public administration areas, Advocacy Groups must participate, get involved and establish links with political actors. Only in this way can they manage to become consolidated as organizations whose participation provides legitimacy and transparency, since it is not possible to ensure a certain level of transparency and social control from a position implying a moderate level of participation. They must indeed participate although avoiding an excessive identification with political actors. However, this difficult-to-achieve balance can lead them to overact with regards to their independence, by exercising a supervision over the public administration that outweighs their role, thus potentially hampering the achievement of goals. In the same way, a greater participation of Advocacy Groups cannot just be the result of their involvement with political actors but can also be achieved through the supervision and follow-up to specific policies or aspects thereof, such as their level of transparency or plurality. In this case, the risks of excessive involvement are similar to those already mentioned, since the organization runs the risk of being identified as opposition to the ruling political power in general, rather than by the characteristics of a specific policy. Therefore, the permanence of these organizations over time is achieved by maintaining a certain coherence in the activities carried out. Such is the case of Poder Ciudadano and Conciencia, organizations that implement stable lines of action, regardless of government changes or political circumstances, thus conferring prestige and allowing for the dissemination of their activities a situation which provides them with funding for their medium-term development. Based on the behavior of think tanks in Argentina, we may talk about an inversely proportional relationship between participation and permanence: the greater the participation, the
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smaller the possibilities of permanence over the medium/long term. Chart 1 schematically illustrates this inverse relationship for the different types of identified think tanks. Chart 1. Participation and Permanence of Think Tanks in Public Policies in Argentina
Participation Political Foundations
Private Research Centers
Advocy Groups
Academic Centers Participation
Permanence
Permanence
Source: Own elaboration.
Political Foundations are the ones showing the highest level of participation although with the lowest level of permanence over time. As it was previously mentioned, these are the cases of Fundacin Novum Millenium and FADE, or certain institutions that reduced their activities to a minimum, such as for example Fundacin Andina, Fundacin Siglo XXI or Fundacin del Sur.4 Private Research Centers are found in an intermediate position, and in a certain way achieve a point of balance between their level of participation and their permanence over time. This balance is achieved both by organizations with a moderate level of participation, such as for instance FIDE, Fundacin Libertad or CIPPEC, as well as by centers which had a more active participation, such as Fundacin Mediterrnea/IERAL and FIEL. Generally, Advocacy Groups usually choose in favor of an intermediate level of participation, without being careless about their permanence over time, becoming involved in public policymaking processes that are related to their goals, so long as these actions do not risk their credibility among society. Most of the Advocacy Groups mentioned in this work, such as for example
4. We are only taking into account Political Foundations that carry out think tank tasks. In case of considering Political Foundations that basically operate as funding sources in election times, the number of organizations no longer in operation would be notably increased.
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Poder Ciudadano, Conciencia, Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), have experienced this situation, taking into account that they were founded in the mid-1980s and are still in operation until today. Finally, Academic Centers are the organizations showing the lowest level of participation, which together with a high academic level and the participation of teaching staff in public management in a personal capacity, allows them to have a certain level of permanence over the medium/long term. Members of UCEMA participated in the economic teams set up during the 1990s, just like members of FLACSO are nowadays participating in other government areas, without detriment to the operation of these academic centers. We can also mention the case of CEDES, IAE and the University Torcuato Di Tella as organizations with low levels of institutional participation. In general, it may be observed that only those Political Foundations that were created during the past decade are currently developing a significant number of activities, while some Private Research Centers and Academic Centers that were founded in the 1960s are still in operation. To sum up, it is possible to state that the different levels of participation pose different incentives and risks, which vary according to the type of think tank being considered, the functions being played and the degree in which their funding sources depend on it. In addition, the influence of election processes and the public agenda on the selection of work areas and projects should be taken into account. Therefore, when analyzing the behavior of think tanks it is necessary to consider a series of endogenous and exogenous factors which have a strong influence on their operation. At the same time, these factors have influence on the tension between participating and becoming involved in public policymaking processes and, on the other hand, building a profile that may allow local think tanks to achieve a regular economic support with a view to maintaining the organization in operation over the medium/long term. Aspects associated with different think tanks, depending on the functions they play, the way they carry them out, as well as their track-record, certainly alter the advantages of aiming at an increased participation or permanence at a given time. Thus, for instance, the risk of losing permanence will turn out to be much more acceptable for a Political Foundation whose raison dtre is to become directly involved in the policymaking process and less acceptable for an Academic Center, whose main goal is to have influence on policymaking by means of a knowledge generation process that is only achieved through permanence over time. In the same way, aspects such as the track-record and permanence achieved by think tanks will affect their assessment of risks and benefits resulting from a higher or lower participation. Newly created think tanks can perceive the benefits resulting from a higher participation more favorably in relation to risks than other think tanks with a longer track-record. Although the characterization of variables for think tanks registered in Argentina together with the functions they play turns out to be a complex task owing to the multiplicity of organizations with different characteristics gathered under this same umbrella term, this work aims
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at shedding light on some of these variables, by defining basic criteria of analysis which may allow to identify behavior trends among think tanks key actors in public policymaking.
Conclusions Main Findings Think tanks have notably increased their participation in the public policy process in recent decades. In the case of Argentina, their participation has turned out to be increasingly relevant as from the 1990s. However, analyses of their form of operation, their goals and incentives and the mechanisms used to have influence on public policies are still scarce. This situation is not confined only to Argentina, since it appears to be a common denominator among Latin American countries. In view of the growing participation and relevance of think tanks, and considering that the goal of these organizations is to have influence on public policies, this work aims at identifying the factors affecting their behavior and permanence over the medium/long term, taking into account that they must operate in a context showing a certain level of instability as is the case of the Argentine political system. By means of the analysis carried out, it was possible to identify internal and external factors that have influence on the behavior of think tanks. To begin with, internal factors are related to the different types of think tanks identified Private Research Centers, Academic Centers, Political Foundations and Advocacy Groups and the functions these may develop dissemination environments, policy legitimators, knowledge networks and support for political activities. These two factors the type of think tank and the main function it develops have influence on their form of operation, their activities and their funding sources. On the one hand, Private Research Centers are characterized by the fact that they mainly operate as dissemination environments mostly aimed at the private sector, political leaders and academic sectors involved in decision-making processes. On the other hand, they operate as policy legitimators, since the projects created by them have a certain ideological position backed by research activities which allow them to support certain decisions made by political actors. Academic Centers can develop functions both as dissemination environments, policy legitimators or knowledge networks. As dissemination environments they are characterized by being apolitical and neutral, while in their role as policy legitimators they serve, the same as Private Research Centers, as points of reference when it comes to taking a position. On the other hand, they can build knowledge networks, creating through research a network of expert actors from the private and/or government sector. For their part, most Political Foundations operate as support for political activities and/or knowledge networks, and only act as policy legitimators in a few cases. They manage to build
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knowledge networks, owing to the fact that they give access to a series of experts with specific skills, who do not often participate in the political activity, but indeed form part of this type of institutions. They give support for political activities by providing contents and programs to a political actor or sector, and in case party leaders undertake executive or legislative positions, think tank members participate in their administration or promote legislative projects. Finally, in their role as policy legitimators, Political Foundations usually represent a valid alternative for political party groups to elaborate and foster policy research to be promoted by their candidates. Lastly, Advocacy Groups are characterized by their main function as dissemination environments and their role has more to do with an endorsement of quality and transparency than with the possibility of having access to specific publics. With regards to the external factors that have influence on the behavior of think tanks, it is possible to identify two of them: elections and the public agenda. These factors also have different sorts of influence on the organizations, depending on the type of think tank in question and its activities. In the case of Political Foundations, elections and, in particular, presidential elections are occasions which offer possibilities to achieve direct management spaces and/or the implementation of programs. Therefore, their behavior is strongly influenced by electoral cycles, and this is observed in the adjustments made to their projects according to political circumstances. The issues making up their work plans are those on the public agenda. In the case of Advocacy Groups, elections are events in which their role relative to endorsing transparency gains increased relevance, either in legislative or executive elections. Thus, during elections Advocacy Groups also increase their level of activity. On the other hand, in the case of Private Research Centers and Academic Centers, elections concentrate the attention of society and donors on circumstantial issues. This forces think tanks to make some adjustments to their work plans, with a view to establishing a correlation between structural issues making up their agenda and circumstantial issues on the public agenda. In the case of Academic Centers, they register an increased level of activity in their function as dissemination spaces, where they can evidence their power to convene private sector representatives and the academic community a situation that allows them to increase their presence and visibility. The public agenda setting can also bring changes in the behavior of think tanks, particularly in the case of Political Foundations. These think tanks tend to focus their efforts on the elaboration of products and organization of activities related to issues that could gather the attention of the massive public, and to such effect they make use of the issues on the public agenda. Advocacy Groups, for their part, take advantage of the coincidence between the issues on the agenda and their specific goals in order to promote social demands, using this situation in their favor. On the other hand, Private Research Centers and Academic Centers are the ones to be less influenced by the public agenda. These think tanks are mostly engaged in structural and medium-term issues, rather than on circumstantial issues. However, as it was already
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pointed out, the successive economic crises faced by Argentina in recent decades had a strong impact on Private Research Centers engaged in the economic area, thus practically determining their research topics. Therefore, in general, this type of think tanks have a low influence of the public agenda on their activities, but in particular, a certain group of organizations evidence a stronger relationship between their activities and circumstantial issues, especially when the latter coincide with structural issues. Besides the specific characteristics of each type of think tank, the function to be developed by them and the impact of external factors on their activities, there are tensions inherent to their own nature that have an impact on their behavior. As it was already pointed out, among the tensions that can be identified as being common to all think tanks, either belonging to developed or developing countries, we can mention those existing between a specific approach to research and a greater visibility of the think tank institution; or between the organizations intellectual autonomy and the access to certain funding sources. In the specific case of Argentina, the combination of the above-described internal and external factors particularly influences one of the most structural tensions for local think tanks: the tension between a higher level of participation in policymaking and the organizations permanence over the medium/long term. By analyzing the experiences in recent decades, we can refer to an inverse relationship between a higher level of participation and the achievement of an increased permanence of the organization over time. Paradigmatic examples of this situation are registered in the case of Political Foundations. These organizations clearly express their adhesion to a certain party or political sector and show a high level of participation in the public policymaking process. So long as the political sector with which they are identified has true possibilities of having access to power positions or is in charge of the Executive Power, these foundations become highly attractive to donors and therefore are granted the financial resources needed to develop their activities. Whenever a change of government takes place and the political sector leaves the administration or fails to have access to the positions its candidates were standing for, political foundations suffer a reduction in financial resources. This strongly affects their operation: without resources there are no research teams, and without research teams there are no proposals and dissemination activities. Consequently, either their activities end up being reduced to a minimum or the organization stops operating. Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that a lower involvement can favor the permanence of think tanks, it can also constrain their level of participation in public policymaking processes, thus moving them away from one of their main goals, which is precisely to have influence on such processes. Several of the above-mentioned examples regarding Political Foundations involved with key political actors in spite of no longer existing or having lost relevance managed to achieve at the time a greater impact on public policymaking processes than expected by other think tanks which have aimed at permanence over much longer periods of time. Anyway, given the volatility of Argentinas political context, along general lines, local think tanks have registered a tendency to choose a more conservative position in recent years, placing
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themselves as Private Research Centers or Academic Centers, or directly as Advocacy Groups. In the first two cases Private Research Centers and Academic Centers the level of participation and identification with a specific political party or sector is often lower than that evidenced in the case of Political Foundations. Their participation is generally indirect, through the elaboration of diagnostics and major intervention lines, or by means of the influence on other think tanks, especially Political Foundations, through their adoption of conceptual frameworks and general schemes of analysis. When experts from these think tanks directly participate in public management, they always do so in a personal capacity, sharing professional gains with the institution and assuming the possible political costs and reputation risks in a personal capacity. The cases of organizations that either took or are taking part in public policymaking show these characteristics. In view of this situation, the direct involvement in the policy game of local think tanks poses high risks for their survival and for the reputation and prestige of their experts. This situation, together with the lack of structures within political parties engaged in setting up technical teams, is another factor having influence on the low quality of public policies in Argentina. Undoubtedly, think tanks are relevant actors in public policymaking processes in Argentina. Understanding their operation and incentives is a necessary requirement to better understand their role in the public policy game, taking into account that the promotion of actions allowing for a quality improvement in such policies calls for the participation and coordination of multiple relevant actors, among them think tanks. This work aims at shedding light on certain characteristics common to all think tanks that may help to better understand their operation, thus contributing to such effect.
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List of Think Tank Acronyms

ACEP. Asociacin Civil de Estudios Populares (Civil Association of Peopless Studies). ACIJ. Asociacin Civil por la Igualdad y la Justicia (Civil Association for Equality and Justice). ADC. Asociacin por los Derechos Civiles (Association for Civil Rights). CECE. Centro de Estudios para el Cambio Estructural (Center of Studies for Structural Change). CEDES. Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad (Center for the Study of the State and Society). CEDI. Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo Institucional (Center of Studies for Institutional Development). CEER. Centro de Estudios Econmicos de la Regulacin de la Univ. Argentina de la Empresa (Center for the Study of Regulation Economics of UADE) CEF. Centro de Estudios para la Estabilidad Financiera (Center of Studies for Financial Stability). CELS. Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (Center for Legal and Social Studies) CEM. Consejo Empresario Mendocino (Mendozas Business Council). CEPES. Centro de Estudios Polticos, Econmicos y Sociales (Center of Political, Economic and Social Studies). CIEPP. Centro Interdisciplinario para el Estudio de Polticas Pblicas (Interdisciplinary Center for Public Policy Studies). CIPPEC. Centro de Implementacin de Polticas Pblicas para la Equidad y el Crecimiento (Center for the Implementation of Public Policies Promoting Equity and Growth). CISEA. Centro de Investigaciones Sociales sobre el Estado (State and Social Research Center). FADE. Fundacin Argentina para el Desarrollo con Equidad (Argentine Foundation for Development with Equity). FCYC. Fundacin Creer y Crecer. (Creer and Crecer Foundation) FIDE. Fundacin de Investigaciones para el Desarrollo (Development Research Foundation). FIEL. Fundacin de Investigaciones Econmicas Latinoamericanas (Foundation for the Latin American Research). FL. Fundacin Libertad. (Libertad Foundation) FLACSO. Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales. Sede Buenos Aires (Latin American University of Social Sciences based in Buenos Aires). FM/IERAL. Fundacin Mediterrnea Instituto de Estudios Econmicos sobre la Realidad Argentina y Latinoamericana (Institute of Economic Studies on the Argentine and Latin American Reality). FT. Fundacin del Tucumn. (Tucumn Foundation). FUALI. Fundacin Argentina para la Libertad de la Informacin (Argentine Foundation for the Freedom of Information). GPF. Grupo Plan Fnix de la Facultad de Ciencias Econmicas de la Universidad de Buenos Aires (Fnix Plan Group of the School of Economic Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires). GUS. Grupo Unidos del Sud. (Unidos del Sud Group) IAE. Instituto de Altos Estudios Empresariales de la Universidad Austral (Institute for Senior Business Studies of the Austral University) ICDA. Instituto de Ciencias de la Administracin de la Universidad Catlica de Crdoba (Institute of Administration Sciences of the Catholic University of Cordoba). IDES. Instituto de Desarrollo Econmico y Social (Institute for Economic and Social Development).
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UCEMA. Universidad Centro de Estudios Macroeconmicos de Argentina (University of the Argentine Center for Macroeconomic Studies). UDESA. Universidad de San Andrs (University of San Andrs). UNLP. Universidad Nacional de La Plata (National University of La Plata). UTDT. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (University Torcuato Di Tella).
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Bibliography
Abelson, Donald. A Capitol Idea. Think Tanks & US Foreign Policy. Mc-Gill, Queens University Press. Montreal, Canada, 2006. Abelson, Donald. Do Think Tanks matter? Assessing the impact of Public Policy Institutes. Mc-Gill Queens University Press. Montreal, Canada, 2002. Baier, Gerald and Herman Bakvis. Think tanks and political parties: competitors or collaborators. ISUMA (2001) Vol. 2 N 1. Available at www.isuma.net. Braun, Miguel, Antonio Cicioni and Nicols Ducot. Policy Implementation Think Tanks in Developing Countries? Lessons from Argentina. CIPPEC. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2002.Available at www.cippec.org.ar. Bresser Pereita, Luiz Carlos. La reforma del Estado de los aos noventa. Lgica y mecanismos de control, In: Desarrollo Econmico (1998) Vol. 38 N 150. Camou, Antonio. Los consejeros de Menem. Saber tcnico y poltica en los orgenes del Menemismo. Cuadernos del Centro de Investigaciones Socio Histricas N5. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1999. Camou, Antonio. Los consejeros del Prncipe. Saber tcnico y poltica en los procesos de reforma econmica en Amrica Latina. Nueva Sociedad (1997 November-December) N152. Colina, Jorge, Osvaldo Giordano and Lucas Ronconi. Fundacin Mediterrnea: a case study of successful business and research interaction to policy bridging. Global Development Network / Economics Education and Research Consortium. 2006. Available at http://www.eerc.ru. Dinatale, Martn. Los que piensan para ellos. La Nacin. Argentina, April 13, 2003. Gicovate, Nicols. Pienso, luego influyo. Debate. December 3 2004. Lowenthal, Abraham. The Craft of Think Tanks Institution Building: Working at the Nexus Between Thought and Action. Informal presentation, Public Policy Scholar, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 2006. McGann, James. Scholars, Dollars and Policy Advice. 2004. Available at www.fpri.org. Oszlak, Oscar and Guillermo ODonell (1984). Estado y Polticas estatales en Amrica Latina: Hacia una estrategia de investigacin, in Kliksberg, Bernardo and Jos Sulbrandt (comps.). Para investigar la Administracin Pblica. INAP. Madrid, 1984.
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Stone, Diane. Recycling Bins, Garbage Cans or Think Tanks? Contesting Three Myths Regarding Policy Analysis Institutes. Comparative Perspectives on Scientific Expertise for Public Policy. Amsterdam, December 16 and 17, 2004. Thompson, Andrs. Think tanks en la Argentina. Conocimiento, instituciones y poltica. CEDES, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1994. Ua, Gerardo, Gisell Cogliandro and Juan Labaqui. Polticas pblicas y toma de decisiones: los think tanks en Argentina. Documento de Trabajo. Fundacin Konrad Adenauer. 2004. Valenzuela, Diego. Radiografa de los tanques de ideas: Los que piensan la Argentina. 2001. Available at: www.ciudadpolitica.com. Veiras, Nora. Nuevo Escenario. Las ONGs al gobierno. Tercer Sector (August 2003) N43. Buenos Aires.
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10. A Narrow and Unstable Interface. Think Tanks and Political Parties in Uruguay1
ADOLFO GARC2
Introduction Although the United Nation Development Programs (UNDP) Human Development Report 2005 ranks Uruguay among the countries with a high human development score, most Uruguayan social scientists accept the fact that the country faces serious problems. Three simple facts help to understand this perception. In the first place, on average, the Uruguayan economy together with that of Argentina has been the least dynamic in Latin America over the last 50 years (Oddone, 2005; Torres, 2003). In the second place, although income distribution is acceptable at regional level, it has deteriorated in recent decades (Brtola, 2005). In the third place, poverty has reached alarming levels: at the present time, one-fourth of the population is living under the poverty line and over half of the children are born in poor households. Many explanations have been suggested with regards to the poor performance of Uruguay in terms of development over the last five decades. This is not the appropriate place to put them forth or discuss them. Rather, this paper aims at contributing to the debate on this problem, suggesting that one of the reasons that may help to explain the Uruguayan decline is the fact that as some recent studies have underscored the link between social sciences and public policies is suffering from serious structural problems. The interface between social research and public policies is narrow and unstable (Bergara et al, 2004). To understand the problems regarding the link between social sciences and policies in Uruguay, this paper will be analyzing the nature of the link between think tanks and political parties. The present work is organized as follows. The main theoretical references on these issues are presented in section 2. The process regarding the set up of the think tank network in Uruguay is described in section 3. The influence of think tanks on the government and the public agenda are analyzed in section 4. Finally, and to sum up, the main features regarding the Uruguayan tradition in terms of relationships between think tanks and politics are presented in section 5.
1. A first draft of this work was presented at the International Forum on the Social Science-Policy Nexus, MOSTUNESCO, Buenos Aires, Argentina, February 20-24, 2006. 2. M.A in Political Science and Ph.D Candidate. Profesor Adjunte at the Instituto de Ciencia Poltica, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la Repblica (agarce@fcs.edu.uy). His main field of research is the relationship between research and policy.
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A Look at the Literature on Social Research, Policies and Development In recent years, development experts have been insisting again on the fact that government quality and development perspectives improve as the interface between research in social sciences and public policies broadens. To state that the development of nations depends to a great extent on the characteristics of the interface between social sciences and public policies does not imply making a concession to technocratic thought. Much has been written over the last two decades about how modern societies have turned into information societies. In the same way, in recent years, development experts have insistently argued that besides an information society and a knowledge-based economy, the development of nations calls for smart public policies, based on adequate information systems and technical expertise. As it has been said, one of the requirements for a dynamic development is a strong and broad bridge between knowledge and public policies. A review of recent literature on bridging the gap between social research and public policies helps to detect some major agreements. In the first place, anyone no longer reduces the role of government leaders to the implementation of expert scientific knowledge. Such a vision would imply a two-fold simplification of reality: on the one hand, it makes the wrong assumption that policymakers have no convictions or ideas of their own about government affairs; on the other hand, it forgets that technical rationality as it has been argued by the school of incrementalism following the steps of Simon and Lindblom suffers from strong political, organizational and cognitive constraints. In the second place, it is acknowledged that the relationship between research and public policies is usually tense and conflictive. This point was clearly put forth by Stone, Maxwell and Keating (2001):
Sometimes research is not designed to be relevant to policy. Sometimes it is so designed, but fails to have an impact because of problems associated with timeliness, presentation, or manner of communication. Sometimes (probably quite often) policymakers do not see research findings as central to their decision-making. The relationship between research and policy is often tenuous, quite often fraught.
In the third place, scholars understand as a general rule that the influence of the center of studies and social research on public policies is not direct but indirect and mediate rather than immediate. Social research usually operates incrementally, by gradually altering the perception of actors regarding the causes of certain social phenomena, within a process that Carol Weiss called as enlightenment. Finally, a quick look around allows to conclude that some nations have managed to build better bridges between social research and public policies than others. Canada, Sweden, Germany and Chile in spite of differences offer good examples as to how it is possible to combine democracy and effectiveness, political competition and technical consistency. Another quick look, this time in a diachronic sense, allows concluding that the quality of the link between social sciences and policymaking in a given nation can undergo major changes over time.
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Think Tanks: Definition and Classification Recently, the expert literature has been insisting on the fact that think tanks are an essential institution to establish the link between social sciences and public policies: They are the bridge between knowledge and power in modern democracies (UNDP, 2003). Experts have not found it easy to reach an accurate definition of what think tanks are. The first studies regarding the North American case used to define them as private, non-profit organizations engaged in policy analysis. As new national cases started to be included, experts began to acknowledge the existence of major institutional differences, and very diverse forms of articulation between think tanks, corporations and the State. Since then, literature has started to identify different national traditions. Stone has presented some of these traditions as follows:
The Anglo-American tradition regards think tanks as relatively autonomous organizations with separate legal identity that engage in the analysis of policy issues independently of government, political parties and pressure groups. Elsewhere, the think tank tradition can be different (Stone & Denham, 2004). In Asian countries such as Japan, South Korea and Taipei, China think tanks are often found inside corporations. Chinese think tanks are government-sponsored and their scholars often work in patron-client relations with political leaders. Many institutes in South East Asia are semi-independent and often have close interaction with government, or with individual political figures (Stone, 2005).
Following this reasoning, the author has argued that a characterization of think tanks should be based on the function fulfilled rather than on institutional characteristics. In particular, the independence of the State is not a characteristic of the think tank kind but of a specific gender the North American tradition:
The notion that a think tank requires independence from the state in order to be free-thinking is an Anglo-American norm that does not translate well into other political cultures. Increasingly, therefore, think tank is conceived in terms of a policy research function and a set of analytic or policy advisory practices, rather than a specific legal organizational structure as a non-governmental, non-partisan or independent civil society entity (Stone, 2005).
What function should be fulfilled by an organization in order to be defined as a think tank? It should be engaged in the generation and dissemination of information and/or ideas about government and policy issues. According to Stone (2005) there are five types of think tanks: i) NGOs; ii) university research centers; iii) government or State-funded; iv) those related to corporations or the business sector; v) those created by politicians or political parties. Relationship Models between Think Tanks and Parties In one of the few works specifically engaged in analyzing the relationship between think tanks and parties, Baier and Bakvis have argued that, around the world, there are very different ways of
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articulating them. In some countries, like Germany, political parties have created powerful internal think tanks, which play an important role in designing government programs. In other countries, like the United Kingdom, parties often resort to external think tanks to set their government agendas and improve the quality of public policies. In other cases, such as that of Canada, there is a broad and influential network of research centers and think tanks but their influence on political parties is indirect. In this case, think tanks operate on public opinion by setting issues and promoting policy alternatives. Parties incorporate these ideas in view of the reaction of the public. In the two first cases, parties and think tanks cooperate with each other. In the latter, parties tend to regard think tanks as competitors (Baier and Bakvis, 2001). This distinction between internal and external think tanks is extremely useful because it focuses the analysis on the relationship between the two key institutions when it comes to linking social sciences and public policies: think tanks and political parties. The first ones because, by definition, they turn out to be essential for the generation of information and ideas; the latter, because to the extent in which they provide the staff charged with decision-making on public policies they play the leading role in terms of government action.
Think Tanks in Uruguay Internal Think Tanks Uruguay has some of the worlds oldest political parties. The Colorado Party and the National Party were set up in the 1830s. The Broad Front (Frente Amplio or FA, in Spanish) a broad coalition of leftist parties (such as the Communist and Socialist Party), center-left parties (such as the Christian Democratic Party) and split-offs from the Colorado and National Parties which has just got hold of the government, was founded 35 years ago, in February 1971. Taking into account the long history of these organizations, it could have been expected that they created their own strong research centers. But this has not been the case. Until now, none of the three large parties has major internal think tanks. The FA has made several attempts, which turned out to be quite unsuccessful. The first effort in this sense was the creation of the Institute Fernando Otorgus (IFO) an initiative launched by General Lber Seregni, FA leader between 1971 and 1996. In spite of the efforts made (IFO organized seminars and promoted some publications), it had quite an insignificant influence. No important issue can be remembered to which a contribution by this center of studies has represented a valuable input. When in early 1996 Seregnis party leadership was replaced by that of the current president of Uruguay, Tabar Vzquez, IFO was dismantled. There are good reasons to believe that IFOs dissolution was part of the strategy used by Vzquez to finally assert his own authority within the FA. Already distanced from party activism, Seregni stroke back with the creation of a new center now with UNDP support whose main activities had an important impact on the public agenda: the Center for Strategic Studies 1815 (CEE 1815). Particularly within the 2000-2002 period, the CEE 1815 organized several seminars on public policies with the participation of technical experts and politicians from all political parties. Its main goal was to evidence the need and possibility of achieving inter-party agreeThink Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America
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ments regarding some particularly important policies (education, energy, public services, etc.). The activities of the CEE 1815 drew to a close in 2003, approximately one year before the death of its founder, Lber Seregni. Unlike IFO, the CEE 1815 was completely independent of the FAs structure. Over the last two years, the FA has been working on the creation of an internal think tank, explicitly aiming at supporting government management and the design of programs. Until now, the only thing we know about this institution is its name: it will be called Foundation Lber Seregni. Some of the parties that make up the FA have created, at some given time, their own think tank. In 1983, the Socialist Party (PS) set up the Institute for Research and Development (IDES). As from 1990, IDES became independent of the PS, and nowadays it stands as a progressive-leaning though pluralist institution. On the other hand, in May 2003, the Popular Participation Movement (the group organized around the National Liberation Movement-Tupamaros) created the Artiguista Center for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CADESYC). Until now, CADESYC has had a relatively intense activity, organizing meetings and seminars and publishing documents including program recommendations for the new government.3 It is worth wondering why the FA has found it so difficult to set up only one think tank that would represent the whole party. This is a particularly relevant question in the case of the FA, given the fact that the Uruguayan left as we will see below has had an especially close relationship with intellectuals and experts. The explanation for this lies in the complex intra-party policy dynamics. All over these years, each line of the government program has been carefully and conscientiously negotiated in each party Congress by the numerous groups making up the FA. In this party scenario, the impossibility to transfer the really relevant discussions to a technical environment becomes evident. Differences in the area of policy diagnostics and alternatives are settled in terms of political criteria. Let us now have a look at the experience of other two major parties. The Colorado Party has undergone a similar process to that of the FA. Over the two last decades, the main groups within the party have sought with varied success to set up their own research centers.4 Of all these initiatives, the most important until now has been the creation of the Pax Foundation. This foundation was launched in 1990 under the leadership of Julio M. Sanguinetti, who once his first presidential term came to an end, decided to organize his own group within the Colorado Party the Batllist Forum. This institution organized different seminars: training of young leaders, modernization of parliament, advisory systems to the Legislative Power, state reform, etc. Anyway, the Pax Foundation had no influence on the design of government programs presented by the Batllist Forum in the last three national elections (1994, 1999 and 2004).
3. The information on IDES was provided by its Director, sociologist Eduardo De Len. Information on CADESYC was taken from its website: www.cadesyc.org. 4. Besides the Pax Foundation, it is worth mentioning the following initiatives. Fundacin Vzquez y Vega: it is related to Jorge Batlle, leader of the group that stands closest to economic liberalism within the Colorado Party, and had an important activity during the 1989 election campaign. "Centro Brum de Investigaciones": created by the Independent Batllist Faction led by Manuel Flores Silva. Grupo de Asesoramiento Prospectivo Siglo XXI" (GAP XXI): it is related to the former Minister of Labour and Social Security, Hugo Fernndez Faingold, and has carried out work in the area of employment, foreign aid granted to Uruguay, social policies and the area of elections. The Pachequist faction has also organized its own center. I would like to thank Santiago Torres, of Sanguinettis office, for the reconstruction of this information.
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In early 2005 following its shocking defeat in the 2004 national elections the Colorado Party decided to set up the Jos Batlle y Ordez Foundation, to promote a philosophical and programmatic debate. This was the first time one of the two old parties attempted seriously at overcoming the stage in which centers were set up around group leaders in order to establish a think tank that would represent the whole party. To such effect, it has resorted to the incorporation of representatives of the different factions into its Board. Anyway, until now, this foundation has carried out very few activities (it does not even have its own website). Moreover, nor the National Party has an internal think tank. However, its historically most important faction the Herrerismo founded the Institute Manuel Oribe (IMO) twenty years ago. The IMO played quite an active role organizing seminars, gathering technical experts and elaborating the program presented by this faction in the 1989 national election. Over the last fifteen years, it has lost dynamism. Recently, it has been reactivated within the context of competition over internal hegemony between the Herrerismo and the other party factions.5 On the other hand, the faction led by Senator Francisco Gallinal (Correntada Wilsonista) has organized its own center for reflection and debate Instituto Aportes chaired by the lawyer and political scientist, Romeo Prez Antn.6 At any rate, the experience of IMO allows us to illustrate a point of major theoretical interest. The set up of an internal think tank is usually a relevant piece within the political survival strategy of a candidate, faction and/or party. The launching of IMO in 1985 precisely took place within the framework of the political strategy of the then Senator Luis A. Lacalle, which was aimed at taking over the leadership of his faction, having a prevailing role within the National Party and winning the presidency of the Republic. The strategy turned out to be successful: in November 1998, Lacalle was elected President. At the present time, Lacalle is trying to win back the National Party leadership he lost in 2004. It is precisely in this context that IMO has been revitalized. The reasons why neither the Red nor the National Party have managed to establish internal think tanks are similar to those that acted against the success of the Institute Fernando Otorgus (IFO) launched by General Seregni in the FA. Political and ideological differences among party factions are hard to overcome. To set up a technical space of high political relevance would imply that some important decisions in terms of programs and policy alternatives would end up being made on the basis of technical criteria rather than on political negotiation. Let us draw a first partial conclusion. The study of internal think tanks in Uruguayan political parties offers a valuable theoretical clue, which has been mentioned in the expert literature but should be furthered in future works on this issue. It is not possible to explain the launching of the Pax Foundation without relating it to Sanguinettis political survival strategy.7
5. For a more comprehensive description of IMOs activity, see: http://patriaimo.org/imo/frames/quienes_somos.htm. 6. As it can be read in its website, Aportes has been established and thought as a technical and programmatic space under the leadership of Francisco Gallinal, aiming at saving the best of the worthy political and human track record of Wilson Ferreira Aldunate. See: http://www.correntadawilsonista.com/aportes/cometidos.php . 7. Sanguinetti ended his presidential term in 1990. That same year he launched his own faction, the Batllist Forum. Also in 1990, his peers set up the Pax Foundation around his leadership. In 1992, he led the campaign against the privatization of state-run companies promoted by President Lacalle. In 1994, he managed to be re-elected.
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It is difficult not to relate Lacalles political ascent in the National Party to the Institute Manuel Oribe or that of Tabar Vzquez to the dissolution of the Institute Fernando Otorgus, founded by his predecessor in leadership, Lber Seregni. Quite often, faction and party leaders seek to enhance their political power by establishing links with politically akin experts. Other times, the way to ensure their spaces of power is to prevent certain relevant issues from being displaced to the technical sphere. So, the point I would like to highlight is that the vicissitude of in-house research centers is closely linked to the political survival strategies of the main leaders. Obviously, it should not be construed from the above-mentioned that experts never take part in the life of political parties. The most traditional relationship mechanism between parties and politically akin experts operates as follows. Parties and their factions often convene experts of their political confidence to be showered with ideas during the process of elaboration of electoral platforms, which is generally carried out one year prior to the election. Once the program has been drawn up, technical groups stop operating. So, the interface between politicians and experts within political parties follows a cyclical pattern that is linked to the election calendar. The lack of internal think tanks does not prevent the existence of links between parties and experts, but makes them unstable and hardly institutionalized. External Think Tanks It might be inferred that given the fact that the relatively strong internal segmentation of Uruguayan political parties prevents them from having powerful internal think tanks, they should have instead broad communications channels with external think tanks. However, that is not the case either, as we will see below. What have been the external think tanks as regards political parties in Uruguay? Throughout the 20th Century, certain research centers in social sciences first public and later on both public and private have played some of the typical roles that literature ascribes to think tanks. Unlike other nations in which corporations have their own research centers, neither workers unions nor business companies have established influential think tanks. Public Centers In Uruguay, for a considerable part of the 20th Century, the role of think tanks was mainly played by public university centers. At least until the mid-1970s, the main areas for the accumulation of scientific works and the generation of ideas and proposals on national development issues and public policies were found within the University of the Republic (UdelaR). This was not just the product of chance. In other countries, university activities are carried out with high degrees of autonomy regarding national problems, challenges and debates. University members focus on their own academic careers and their production has little points of contact with the surrounding social situation. In Uruguay, in turn, university members have always considered it an ethical mandate to get involved in social problems. Save in some quite
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exceptional historical situations, university members in Uruguay have tended to become strongly involved in the affairs of the polis (Garc, 2000). A systematic research on the countrys social problems started to be carried out at the School of Economic Sciences and Administration (FCEA), founded in 1932. It was within the FCEA that the first generation of Uruguayan public think tanks was created. The small research centers created in the 1940s started to generate information, diagnostics as well as to propose some policy reform alternatives. In the late 1950s both the Institute of Finance and the Institute of Economics drew up influential proposals for the reformulation of the exchange rate policy. Over the 1960s, against the backdrop of economic stagnation and political and social polarization, several researchers at the FCEA participated in the elaboration of two important diagnostics of the countrys structural problems: Estudio Econmico del Uruguay (published in 1963) and Proceso econmico del Uruguay (published by the Institute of Economics in 1968). The institutional foundations for the development of sociology were laid in the 1960s when the Institute of Social Sciences was set up at the School of Law. It was there that the first sociologists were trained and some early research in the field of sociology was conducted. Anyway, research in this area failed to have the public impact of research on economic issues during those years. The work that was being developed by research centers at the University of the Republic from the early 1940s onwards was interrupted by the coup dEtat staged in 1973. University research centers resumed their activity as think tanks when democracy was restored in 1984. The creation of the School of Social Sciences (FCS) in 1989 contributed to increase the complexity of the organizational scheme: the most traditional research centers (such as the Institute of Economics) were joined by new centers for the accumulation of information and the reflection on the countrys reality. Within the framework of this second wave of public think tanks, the Institute of Political Science and the Department of Economics of the FCS were set up, among others. The old Institute of Social Sciences of the School of Law became the Department of Sociology of the School of Social Sciences. To sum up, two major waves regarding the setting up of public think tanks were registered throughout the 20th Century. The first one took place in the 1940s and had the FCEA as focal point. The second one was registered 50 years later at the FCS. These university research centers have been the main engines for the development of the social sciences in Uruguay and, therefore, for the generation of information and ideas on government problems. Nevertheless, as of the 1970s, the importance of private centers has been growing non-stop. Private Centers In the case of private centers we may also distinguish two waves. The first one was registered in the mid-1970s, within the context of the establishment of the authoritarian rule. The second one took place in the 1990s, within the framework of the rise of economic liberalism.
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The same as in other places, the Uruguayan dictatorship had a paradoxical effect. By removing a large number of researchers from their teaching positions and research centers, the authoritarian regime managed to halt the process of accumulation of ideas and information that was taking place within the University of the Republic. However, social sciences continued to be furthered outside the public University in private research centers which rapidly started to be set up: the Center for Economic Research (CINVE - Centro de Investigaciones Econmicas) was established in 1974; the Uruguayan Information and Study Center (CIESU Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios del Uruguay), in 1975; Equipos Consultores Asociados (associated to MORI since 1995), in 1976, and the Interdisciplinary Center for Development Studies in Uruguay (CIEDUR), in 1977. Simultaneously, the work that was being carried out by the Latin American Center for Human Economics (CLAEH) since end-1958 gained strong momentum. The track record of this center is particularly important given the fact that it strongly sought to link research and action from its early beginnings. Once democracy was restored, the revitalization of research in social sciences at the University of the Republic did not prevent private centers from continuing their operation, each one of them reproducing their own tradition: CINVE by developing and contributing to the modernization of the Economic Science; CIESU by strongly encouraging the professionalization of Sociology; EQUIPOS by setting the tone in terms of market research and public opinion polls; CIEDUR by furthering interdisciplinary approaches to local development. In the 1990s, the already existing centers were joined by others such as the Center of Economic and Social Reality Studies (CERES), which was set up in 1995. Likewise, private universities were launched, thus breaking the monopoly that had been historically held by the University of the Republic in terms of tertiary education. Some of these universities have successfully encouraged the creation of research centers. The best example of this is the expert center in sociology and social policies of the Catholic University known as the Research Program on Integration, Poverty and Social Exclusion (IPES), whose experience we will be analyzing below. Both the set up of CERES as well as the launching of private universities took place in the context of the rise of economic liberalism. In terms of political and ideological positions, the institutions of this second wave are clearly differentiated from the centers of the University of the Republic and private institutions established in the mid-1970s. They lean towards the center and right-wing of the political spectrum, and they have better relationships with the National Party, the Colorado Party and the Independent Party than with the FA.
The Impact of Think Tanks on the Government and the Public Agenda Influence on the Government Throughout the last half of the century, Uruguayan parties have not adopted the practice of establishing stable alliances with external think tanks, in the style of UK ruling parties over the
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last twenty years. The interface between research centers and the successive governments has indeed been weak and unstable. It could be assumed that Uruguayan parties do not resort to research centers in social sciences because state structures offer them everything they need from the point of view of technical advising. But this is not the case. In spite of the fact that, particularly in the 1960s, some efforts were made to build powerful offices aimed at policy planning in different state agencies,8 the Uruguayan State suffers serious deficiencies from the point of view of its technical capacity (Filgueira, Garc, Yaff and Ramos, 2003). Therefore, in order to explain the weakness of the interface between research centers and governments it is necessary to resort to other arguments. Differences in the field of ideas have played a central role. Until the launching of private universities and CERES in the 1990s, practically all research centers had strong political and ideological differences with the Colorado and National Parties. Indeed, both public and private centers (with the lonely exception of CLAEH, which has traditionally had a more centrist position), had very critical positions with respect to the economic policies implemented by the Red and White governments. The distance between university members and traditional parties began to grow in the early 1930s and was outstandingly intensified in the 1960s. The coup of March 1933, the booming increase of clientelism in the 1950s and 1960s and the countrys economic debacle moved them away from traditional parties. The growing influence of Marxism and the Dependency Theory, and the impact of the Cuban revolution started to draw them closer to left-wing parties (Garc, 2000). Therefore, the development of social sciences and the process of constitution and rise of external think tanks in Uruguay took place within the framework of an intelligentsia increasingly estranged from ruling parties. Most economists who graduated from the School of Economic Sciences and Administration in the 1960s were more willing to cooperate with the workers movement and be active members of left-wing parties than to draw up reports for state agencies. This does not imply that, in spite of ideological differences, there were not specific cases of cooperation between some governments and research centers. In fact, except during the period immediately prior to the democratic breakdown (1968-1973), the countrys main research centers have addressed some demands for advice on specific issues put forth by successive governments. Even in recent years, a trend towards an increase of interaction between research centers and decision-makers was registered. The School of Economic Sciences and Administration,
8. The main areas in terms of expert knowledge generation within the State are: the Central Bank with regards to monetary, exchange rate and financial issues; the Office of Agricultural Programs and Policies of the Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture and Fishing, the Office of Research and Evaluation of the National Board of Public Education (ANEP) and the Planning and Budget Office (OPP). From the point of view of technical capacity, large asymmetries can be registered within the State.
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for instance, entered into technical assistance agreements with different state agencies: the Central Bank, the State Insurance Bank, the Bank of the Republic, UTE (electricity) and OSE (drinking water and sanitation services). It has also cooperated with the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, the Public Health Ministry, the Chamber of Senators and with some departmental governments (FCEA, 2002: 102-108). On the other hand, according to data from its 2005 Annual Report, the School of Social Sciences has implemented agreements with several state agencies: ministries (Ministry of Labour and Social Security; Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Ministry of Housing, Land Planning and Environment; Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining; Ministry of National Defense; Ministry of Social Development); technical offices (Planning and Budget Office, General Board of Statistics and Census, National Office of Civil Service); state-run companies and banks (UTE, ANTEL staterun telephone company, Central Bank, Bank of the Republic, Social Insurance Bank). However, the increasing demand for technical advice registered in 2005 especially at the University of the Republic (UdelaR) upon the change of government has turned out to be quite evident. In terms of the relationship between UdelaRs research centers and government agencies, the victory of the left at the 2004 national election has given way to a substantially different time. For the first time in over half a century, the Government and the University of the Republic are in the same tune in ideological terms. Celebrating this event and laying the foundations for a period of close cooperation between UdelaR and the government, the President Tabar Vzquez and the rector of UdelaR, Rafael Guarga, signed an important framework cooperation agreement on March 3, 2005. It is worth transcribing some passages of the respective speeches. Rector Guarga said:
Our President has graduated from this House, he has been a professor here and has expressed the importance of the University of the Republic both in his life and in the life of the country in multiple ways.He is visiting us on his third day in office () I think that all this () is forecasting a new time in the relationship of the Executive Power and the State with the University of the Republic. This makes us happy, it certainly does. I assure you that we are fully aware of all the responsibilities that this new relationship entails for this institution.
On the other hand, President Vzquez stated:

It is a great honour for me to be here this afternoon with all of you (), the University of the Republic is my home, and this is how I feel (). The progressive government (), cannot, should not, does not want, does not have to turn its back to the University of the Republic. We want to govern with the University of the Republic. Each one, of course, in the area of its responsibilities and specificities.
In the first months of government, the intention to increase the cooperation between the government and the University of the Republic jointly announced by the President and the Rector was evidenced in some of the top issues on the Executive Power agenda such as the
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search for the remains of detained and missing persons during the dictatorship and the social emergency plan. In the first case, the government resorted to archaeologists from the School of Humanities; in the second case, to economists and statistics experts from the School of Economic Sciences and Administration and sociologists and social workers from the School of Social Sciences. The traditional weakness of the interface between the main research centers and rulers which had characterized until now policymaking in Uruguay was partially alleviated by the practice of hiring advisors. When senior government officials have needed professional advice on some aspect of their management they have hired people with expertise on the subject. According to this tradition in government affairs, the relationship between experts and politicians is intermittent and poorly institutionalized. At this point, we can draw another conclusion. When reviewing the situation of external think tanks we had concluded that within political parties, politicians and experts have a spasmodic relationship: experts get in touch with parties when the time comes to draw up programs but then they withdraw. As we have just seen, a similar dynamics is registered within the state sphere: in spite of the fact that state structures suffer from clear problems in terms of technical capacity, government leaders only turn occasionally to external advisors. Impact on the Public Agenda At least until the recent victory of the FA, research centers had not had an important direct participation in Uruguayan public policies. However, on different occasions, they have managed to shape the public agenda and, by this means, to have influence on the political agenda and the strategies of actors involved. This type of influence on public policies is what Baier and Bakvis have detected in the Canadian case. By means of the following four examples we will try to illustrate how this mechanism has operated in Uruguay. The Commission of Investments and Economic Development (CIDE) and the Development Agenda According to the Punta del Este Letter (signed in August 1961), in order to be granted the funds allocated by the US government within the framework of the Alliance for Progress, governments should submit technically well-grounded development plans. Since at that time Uruguay had no expert planning office, the government had to devise it: thus, the Technical Secretariat of the Commission of Investments and Economic Development (CIDE) was set up, chaired by Enrique Iglesias. Experts agree on the fact that this institution created out of such peculiar circumstances and with such a short life (it operated between 1961 and 1965) was the most influential think tank ever in Uruguay. The task implying the elaboration of development plans was much more complicated and slow than the Government expected. There was no essential basic information available neither about the economy (the National Accounts had to be drawn up) nor about society (a
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Population Census had to be carried out since the last one dated from 1908). The work being carried out by planning groups started to be surrounded by a mystery halo and expectations regarding results kept mounting. Finally, in May 1963, the Estudio Econmico del Uruguay [Economic Study of Uruguay] was released, including new information about the social and economic situation and several reform proposals for development. In October 1965, the comprehensive National Plan for Economic and Social Development (PNDES) was launched. Both the report and the PNDES had a strong impact on public opinion. In Estudio Econmico del Uruguay, experts provided quite a dismal overview. The Uruguayan economy had been stagnated for nearly a decade, affected by serious structural constraints. The structures of the State, which had been undermined by years of clientelistic practices, were not fit for the task of elaborating and implementing development plans. From the point of view of planners, the whole country needed a strong institutional re-engineering. The set of reforms was presented in the PNDES. Following its dissemination, deep changes were registered in the Uruguayan public agenda. The country was won over by the obsession for structural changes that were essential to break the stagnation. Economic opening, agrarian reform, modification of the industrial promotion system, creation of a modern civil service, reform of the financial system, among other issues, were to remain on the political agenda and in the programs of political parties for many years.9 The Office of ECLAC in Montevideo and the Education Reform 10 At least in the North American tradition, think tanks are seldom associated with international institutions. However, the technical offices of institutions such as the IDB, ECLAC, UNESCO or the World Bank often perform similar functions: they gather information, produce diagnostics and make policy recommendations. On some occasions let us think, for instance, of the strong influence of ECLACs thinking in the 1950s and 1960s the points of view of these institutions succeed in shaping the political agenda and the visions of elites. Between 1990 and 1993, the office of ECLAC in Montevideo (under the direction of Germn Rama), played a role of utmost importance in revealing by means of successive reports the serious deficiencies and inequities of the education system in Uruguay. Surveys carried out had a strong impact on public opinion which had a mythicized idea regarding the quality of Uruguayan public education. In view of the conclusive character of information presented and taking into account the reaction of the public, political parties incorporated the education reform into their priorities
9. A comprehensive study regarding the experience of CIDE can be read in Garc (2002). 10. Literature on the education reform is quite extensive. An analysis focused on the political dynamics of expert knowledge can be read in De Armas and Garc (2004).
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and government programs. Germn Rama himself was invited by Sanguinetti to cooperate in the elaboration of the Batllist Forums government program, in which, the education reform would indeed end up playing a very important role. After being elected President for the second time, Sanguinetti promoted and was granted Parliaments approval to appoint Germn Rama as president of the governing body in public education. In his new post and during an administration marked by controversy and conflicts with different social groups, Rama implemented the announced reforms. IPES and the Infantilization of Poverty Since they were authorized in the early 1990s, private universities have gradually managed to fill a still minor, though not irrelevant, space in tertiary education. Nevertheless, they have not been that effective in setting successful research programs into motion. The most outstanding exception in the field of social sciences has been the work carried out by the already mentioned Research Program on Integration, Poverty and Social Exclusion (IPES) of the Catholic University. Its first research work entitled Panorama de la Infancia y Familia en el Uruguay, was a resounding success. The authors of this work succeeded in putting a notion on the public agenda which, although not being unknown to experts, had failed to impact the public opinion and political parties: in Uruguay half of the children are born in poor households. The authors of this work (sociologists Ruben Katzman and Fernando Filgueira) had the huge merit of communicating the results of their research in an eloquent manner. They toured the media and attended seminars extensively. A Special Commission of the Chamber of Deputies set up a special work session with them. In short, following the release of this report, the issue of infantilization of poverty has always been included into the public debate and political discourse. The NGO El Abrojo and the Creation of the Social Development Ministry In Uruguay, as in other countries in the region, numerous NGOs aimed at addressing social problems were set up in recent years. In Uruguay, many of them actively participate in the implementation of social policies. However, these NGOs seldom get involved in policy design. And it is still more unusual for these NGOs to operate as think tanks. The most interesting deviated case was registered a few years ago when one of these NGOs launched an incisive public campaign aimed at denouncing the lack of coordination among social policies in Uruguay and at promoting an institutional reform. The opportunity resulted from the public unrest unleashed by the worsening of all social indicators in the framework of the strong economic crisis that followed the capital outflows registered in the first semester of 2002. In early 2003, the NGO El Abrojo, with the support of the School of Social Sciences (UdelaR) and the United Nations, called on the main parties and social organizations to participate in a Social Policy Coordination Table.
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The Coordination Table approved a consensus document which pointed to the existence of problems regarding the coordination of social policies and admitted the need to introduce institutional changes. Nevertheless, political parties failed to agree on the type of institutional reform to be implemented. The only organization that promoted the creation of a Social Development Ministry was the Independent Party, which had unsuccessfully submitted a bill in that direction a couple of years earlier. This document was broadly disseminated in the media and the political system. In Uruguay, the main political parties and social organizations seldom manage to reach important agreements. Meetings were held with politicians, scholars and journalists to disseminate its contents. Although the FA bench in Parliament had not supported the bill for the creation of a Social Development Ministry submitted by the Independent Party, and in spite of the fact that, only a year away from elections, the FA still failed to have a defined position as to how to fix the institutional problems of the social policy system (as it was made evident at the Coordination Table), one of the first measures adopted by the government of Tabar Vzquez upon taking office was the creation of the Social Development Ministry.11
Final Thoughts: Main Features of the Uruguayan Tradition So, what are the central features of the relationship between think tanks and parties in Uruguay? In the first place, it is evident that in Uruguay there have been not many cases of think tanks in the style of the North American tradition. Probably, CLAEH, founded in 1958 and CERES, created in 1995, are the two main examples of this type of institution. The second feature of the Uruguayan tradition is that it has registered few attempts to set up think tanks within political parties. These attempts were more successful at the level of factions than at the level of parties. The most outstanding case is that of the Institute Manuel Oribe, created two decades ago by the most liberal faction within the National Party (the Herrerismo). The vicissitudes of this type of institutions are closely linked to the political survival strategies of leaders of the main party factions. The third distinctive feature of the Uruguayan tradition is that the function of think tanks has been generally fulfilled by research centers located at universities or closely linked to them. Until the 1970s, there was a clear predominance of public centers, particularly those housed in the School of Economic Sciences and Administration (FCEA). Over the last thirty years, private centers have been gaining dynamism and relative importance. At the same time, in the last twenty years, new research areas came into existence around the process of creation of the School of Social Sciences (FCS).
11. This experience is comprehensively analyzed in Garc (2006).
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The fourth feature is to a large extent a consequence of the previous one. Most part of the work carried out by centers has been aimed at strengthening the development of the different disciplines (economics, sociology, political science, etc.). Research carried out by these centers, even when it has focused on public policy analysis, has had a strong theoretical component and has shown a relatively low tendency towards solving specific problems. Research is more closely related to the circles, debates and pertinence criteria for academic production than to the concerns, demands and urgent needs of politicians and government leaders. To say it in the words used by the final declaration of the International Forum on the Social Science-Policy Nexus (MOST-UNESCO): the Uruguayan social sciences have done relatively little to investigate the specific problems that public policies are meant to solve.12 At this point, and before drawing further conclusions, it is worth devoting two paragraphs to the following comment. In order to improve the link between social sciences and public policies, Uruguayan social sciences should further develop their capacity to investigate government affairs. In order to advance in this direction, it would probably be necessary to create new institutions specifically focused on these issues. Researchers working at the research centers of the University of the Republic carry a major teaching burden both at graduate and undergraduate level. The institutional logic is mainly based on international criteria for scientific production. Researchers devote most of their energies to publish articles in arbitrated journals and to join international networks. Something similar happens in private centers. So, until now, there is no center neither public nor private strictly devoted to public policy analysis. It is worth pointing out that the academic bias of research centers and social scientists in Uruguay has been detected by some universities, which have recently started to offer postgraduate courses in public policy. The Institute of Political Science at the University of the Republic offers a Master in Public Policy. Some private centers, such as the Catholic University, CLAEH and CINVE have started to offer management postgraduate courses in different social policies (for example, education or health policies). Yet, there is still no dynamic public policy aimed at rapidly increasing the capacity for policy analysis and management of Uruguayan social scientists. Let us go back to conclusions. In the fifth place, the information suggests that think tanks have been more successful in placing important issues on the public agenda than in providing specific policy advice. Thus, Uruguayan think tanks have apparently had more indirect than direct influence on the political agenda. CIDE and the development agenda in the first five years of the 1960s, the office of ECLAC in Montevideo and the education reform in the early 1990s, IPES and the infantilization of poverty, in 2001, and the NGO El Abrojo demanding coordination of social policies in 2003, are good examples of how expert knowledge can set issues on the public agenda and direct actors towards certain solutions. However, it is not easy to find examples of research centers having a direct influence on specific policies.
12. The draft declaration of the International Forum on the Social Science-Policy Nexus reads as follows: This Forum states its conviction that better use of rigorous social science can lead to more effective policies. Such use requires a new approach to the links between social science and policies for social development. For the knowledge that social science seeks is precisely the knowledge that policy needs. The full text of this draft declaration can be found in the Forums official website: http://portal.unesco.org/shs/en/ev.php-URL_ID=9004&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html.
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The low impact of policy research cannot only be explained by the academic bias which characterizes the research offered by centers. The sixth feature of the Uruguayan tradition is that together with the problems spotted in terms of research offer, there have also been some serious problems in terms of demand. For many decades, strong political and ideological differences were registered between the main research centers and government leaders. Until the recent electoral victory of the Broad Front (FA), ruling parties strongly distrusted university centers. Anyway, this explanation focused on the political and ideological differences between government leaders and researchers turns out to be insufficient. If the Red and the National Party governments had wanted so, they could have encouraged the creation of other internal or external research centers, made up by politically or ideologically akin researchers. However, they failed to do so. The hypothesis that remains to be posed, then, is that for most leaders of the two above-mentioned parties, research in social sciences has not much to contribute to government management. Carlos Filgueira, one of the countrys most renowned sociologists, wrote that information and diagnostics represent hardly relevant inputs for decision-makers (Filgueira, 2005). This is probably one of the main features of the Uruguayan tradition with regards to the link between social sciences and policies. Politicians show an undeniable expertise to compete in elections. Yet, they often resort to political scientists and public opinion experts to design their political strategies and election campaigns. However, they show lesser expertise and demand less support from experts when the time comes to stop playing the role of candidates in order to start playing the role of government leaders. Basically, they ask for advice on what they consider as really important and relatively difficult (to win the elections and be appointed to government posts) rather than on what they consider as less exciting and simpler (State management). The recent political change poses a large question mark over the link between social sciences and public policies. For the first time in decades, the Government and the University of the Republic dance to the same political tune. The President of the Republic and the Rector of the University celebrated this fact and committed themselves to cooperate. Over the first year, the new Government and the University of the Republic have closely cooperated. However, there are good reasons to wonder how long this honeymoon will last. Will research centers which usually follow strictly academic criteria manage to learn to carry out research directed toward the solution of specific problems? Will the new government leaders manage to impose a different style of policymaking or will they end up succumbing to the inertia of path dependency?
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Bibliography
Baier, Gerald and Herman Bakvis. Think Tanks and Political Parties: Competitors or Collaborators?, ISUMA, Canadian Journal of Policy Research, Volume 2, N 1, Spring. See: http://www.isuma.net/v02n01/baier/baier_e.shtml. 2001. Bergara, Mario, Andrs Pereyra, Ruben Tansini, Adolfo Garc, Daniel Chasquetti, Daniel Buquet and Juan A. Moraes. Political Institutions, Policymaking Processes, and Policy Outcomes: The Case of Uruguay, Red de Centros, IDB. 2004. Brtola, Luis. A 50 aos de la curva de Kuznets: Crecimiento econmico y distribucin del ingreso en Uruguay y otras economas de nuevo asentamiento desde 1870, Madrid: Universidad Complutense, Investigaciones de Historia Econmica, N 3 (2005): 135-176. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales. Anuario 2005. Available at http://www.fcs.edu.uy FCEA. La Facultad de Ciencias Econmicas y de Administracin en los setenta aos de su creacin legal (1932-2002). Montevideo: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental, 2002. Filgueira, Carlos. Reflexiones acerca de los desafos de la construccin de un sistema integrado de informacin estadstica. Available at: http://www.fcs.edu.uy 2005. Filgueira, Fernando, Adolfo Garc, Conrado Ramos and Jaime Yaff. Los dos ciclos del Estado uruguayo en el siglo XX, en La Poltica, Tomo II de la Serie El Uruguay del siglo XX, EBO-ICP, Montevideo, 2003. Garc, Adolfo. Una experiencia de incidencia de la ONG El Abrojo: La Mesa Mecanismos de Coordinacin de las Polticas Sociales y la creacin del Ministerio de Desarrollo Social en Uruguay (2003-2005), Civil Society Partnership Program, CIPPEC-ODI. Available at: http://www.cippec.org/espanol/archivos/Caso_Uruguay.pdf . 2006. Garc, Adolfo and Gustavo De Armas. Poltica y conocimiento especializado: La reforma educativa en Uruguay (1995-1999), Montevideo: Revista Uruguaya de Ciencia Poltica, N14 (2004). Garc, Adolfo. Ideas y competencia poltica en Uruguay (1960 1973). Revisando el fracaso de la CIDE. Montevideo: Ediciones Trilce, 2002. Garc, Adolfo. Tres fases en la relacin entre intelectuales y poder en Uruguay (19301989), in De Armas, Gustavo and Adolfo Garc, eds. Tcnicos y Poltica. Montevideo: Ediciones Trilce, 2000. Oddone, Gabriel. El largo declive de Uruguay durante el siglo XX. PhD Thesis, Department of History and Economic Institutions, University of Barcelona, 2005.
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Stone, Diane. Think Tanks and Policy Advice in Countries in Transition. Paper prepared for the Asian Development Bank Institute Symposium: How to Strengthen Policy-Oriented Research and Training in Vietnam, Hanoi, August 31, 2005. Stone, Diane and Andrew Denham. Think Tank Traditions: Policy Research and the Politics of Ideas. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004. Stone, Diane, Simon Maxwell and Michael Keating. Bridging Research and Policy. Paper available at http://www.gdnet.org/pdf/bridging.pdf. 2001. Torres, Sebastin. An Empirical Analysis of Economic Growth for Uruguay and the Latin American Region: 1950-2000. Institute of Social Studies, Working Paper Series No. 373, The Hague - The Netherlands. 2003. UNDP United Nations Development Program. Thinking the Unthinkable: From Thought to Policy. The Role of Think Tanks in Shaping Government Strategy: Experiences from Central and Eastern Europe. Bratislava, UNDP Regional Bureau for Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States. 2003.
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11. Think Tanks and Experts in the Frente Amplios Government

(Uruguay, 2005 - 2008)
JAVIER GALLARDO1, ADOLFO GARC2, PAULO RAVECCA3
The aim of this chapter is to answer a broad set of questions about think tanks in Uruguay. What are their human resources like? How do they fund their activities? What strategies do they use to disseminate the results of their works and to have incidence on public policies? How do they evaluate and measure their political incidence? What is their relationship with the Frente Amplio (Broad Front) Government like? To produce the information that would allow to answer these questions, a form was sent to 21 organizations and in-depth interviews were held both with think tank directors and with politicians from the different parties. All these institutions fulfill the basic role attributed by the expert literature to think tanks: production of information, provision of input and the aim to have incidence on government problems and public policies, although the proportion of time and resources allocated to each one of these three tasks is variable. As it will be noticed, only a few institutions can indeed be ascribed to the Anglo-Saxon tradition systematically studied by authors such as Donald Abelson.
Think Tanks in Uruguay: Human Resources, Funding, Incidence Table 1 shows the list of surveyed organizations. The year of creation and a brief description of activities are provided for each one of them. As it may be noticed, we distinguish between three types of organizations: university institutes, private centers and advocacy groups.
1. Javier Gallardo (gallardo@fcs.edu.uy) is PhD in Political Science (University Candido Mendes, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). He is Professor of Political Theory at the Political Science Institute of Uruguay. Texts published on the left and the political system in Uruguay; on the Republican tradition and Republicanism in Uruguay; on democratic theory and political deliberation. 2. Adolfo Garc (agarce@fcs.edu.uy) is MA in Political Science and PhD Candidate at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of the Republic (Uruguay). He is Associate Professor at the Political Science Institute of Uruguay and his main field of research is the relationship between research and public policy. 3. Paulo Ravecca (paulorav@yorku.ca) studied Political Science at the Political Science Institute of Uruguay, later becoming Assistant Professor of that institution. After working as a political scientist for some years, he did a MA in Political Science at York University (Toronto, Canada). Currently, he is doing a PhD in Political Science at the same department. His research interests are wide and include critical political theory, political economy and international relations; State, public policy and development.
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Table 1. Name, Year of Creation and Main Topic of Think Tanks in Uruguay
University Institutes DECON Department of Economics FCS - UdelaR (1988) Research and graduate education in Economics ICP Institute of Political Science FCS UdelaR (1988) Research and education in Political Science at undergraduate and graduate level UM Multidisciplinary Unit FCS UdelaR (1991) Research and graduate education in Economic History, International Relations and Population DS Department of Sociology FCS - UdelaR (1958) Research and education in Sociology at undergraduate and graduate level IECON Institute of Economics FCEyA - UdelaR (1957) Research on Economics, especialization in development IPES Investigacin sobre Pobreza y Exclusin Social (2000) Research on poverty, exclusion and social policies CLAEH Centro Latinoamericano de Economa Humana (1957) Incidence, research and education in different social and human sciences Private Centers CIESU Centro de Informaciones y Estudios del Uruguay (1975) Research and consultancy on poverty, exclusion, childhood, family. CINVE Centro de Investigaciones Econmicas (1975) Economic research and consultancy. CIEDUR Centro Interdisciplinario de Estudios sobre el Desarrollo del Uruguay (1977) Research on development policies CERES Centro de Estudios de la Realidad Econmica y Social (1985) Research and consultancy on economics and public policies RUMBOS (2005) Promotion of State policies. Focus on demographic studies and population policies. Advocacy Groups EL ABROJO Institute of Popular Education (1988) NGO engaged in the fight against poverty and exclusion REDES - Amigos de la Tierra Social Ecological Network NGO devoted to the defense of the environment and the promotion of social ecology. CNSmujeres National Follow-up Committee to Cairo and Beijing Commitments (1996) NGO Network promoting womens rights and gender equality GGUU Gurises Unidos (1992) NGO engaged in the defense of children and adolescent rights. SERPAJ Service for Peace and Justice (1991) (Human rights) NGO focused on the defense and promotion of human rights ICD/PIT-CNT Institute Cuesta Duarte (1989) (organized workers) NGO engaged in social research aimed at the defense of workers rights. ICD Institute of Communication and Development (1986) NGO focused on the construction of citizenship and the promotion of democracy and transparency. CURI Consejo Uruguayo de Relaciones Internacionales (2003) NGO focused on the profesionalization of the Uruguayan foreign policy UT - URUGUAY TRANSPARENTE Comisin Uruguaya de Lucha contra la Corrupcin Uruguay Transparente (1995) NGO - Uruguayan Chapter of Transparency International, aimed at fighting corruption and promoting transparency in the civil service.
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Human Resources The surveyed organizations employ nearly 600 professionals. As it can be seen in Chart 1, university institutes are, in general, the largest organizations. Many of them employ several tens of researchers and professors most of them part time. Private research centers work with a considerably lower number of members. For their part, the average volume of NGOs is not very different from that of private centers. It is worth noticing the size of El Abrojo (over 100 people engaged in the different projects). Anyway, most part of these human resources is devoted to the implementation of social projects within the framework of government programs. The proportion of resources devoted to social research or political incidence is significantly inferior. Finally, it is worth mentioning that some organizations have no hired technical staff (it is the case, for instance, of UT and CURI). They develop their activities through the action of a team of professionals making up the board of directors, with the assistance of a reduced administrative body. Chart 1. Human Resources. Total of Professionals and Subtotal of PhD by Institution
120 90 60 30 IPES GGUU CUESTA DUARTE CNS MUJER EL ABROJO SERPAJ CIESU CERES CLAEH CINVE RUMBOS DECON CIEDUR REDES MULTI CURI ICP CD DS UT 0 IE
UNIVERSITY INSTITUTES
PRIVATE CENTERS Total PhD
NGOs
Source: Think Tank and UAE survey form (FCS).
Approximately a hundred professionals have PhD courses already finished or underway. At the same time, nearly 20 of them studied in the US. Public university institutes concentrate a broad majority (over 80%) of professionals with PhD courses (already finished or underway). Funding Uruguayan think tanks obtain their resources from different public and private, domestic and exogenous sources. When using just the main funding sources as criterion, five different situations can be observed. A first group of organizations is basically funded from the National Budget. This is the case of academic centers forming part of the University of the Republic. Apart from these resources, public university centers have managed to improve throughout the last decade their capacity to attract extra-budget resources by means of agreements signed with public and private organizations. The low wages earned by professors and researchers certainly encouraged this
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search for agreements. In order to speed up the formalities of agreements, some schools have set up parallel institutions that operate as foundations. University centers have also attempted to obtain resources from international cooperation (European Union or United Nations projects) and international organizations (such as the Inter-American Development Bank or the World Bank). A second group of organizations mostly obtain their resources by selling services to different State agencies (either at national or municipal level). This is a common situation among NGOs specialized in social policies (such as El Abrojo). The ruling government has often resorted to NGOs for the implementation of policies designed by technicians from the Ministry of Social Development. However, some private research centers (such as CIEDUR) have also managed to obtain a major part of their budget by selling reports on specific problems. According to CIEDUR, In the last two years, state funds resulting from social emergency-related projects promoted by the Ministry of Social Development registered a significant increase. Table 2. Main Funding Source (2006 data)
University Institutes Budget funds Services rendered to the State Private enterprise support International funding IPES ICP | DECON | IECON DS | UM CIEDUR CERES CINVE | CIESU* SERPAJ | ICD CNSmujeres | GGUU UT | RUMBOS CUESTA DUARTE EL ABROJO Private Centers Advocacy Groups
Own funds
CLAEH
Note: The Institute Cuesta Duarte is funded by means of the contribution of the central union (PIT-CNT) on which it is dependent. Source: Think Tank survey form.
A third type of institutions mostly obtains funding from abroad (international organizations, foundations, etc.). This is a very common situation among advocacy groups (such as SERPAJ, CNSmujeres or Gurises Unidos and Uruguay Transparente). Private centers engaged in research or consultancy also manage to obtain significant funds from abroad (this is the case of CIESU and CINVE) or from international agencies (RUMBOS). Several think tank directors pointed out that the comparatively good standing of Uruguay on some human development indicators makes it difficult to obtain funds, given that international cooperation usually privileges those countries with more unfavorable indicators. An additional problem is that, as it was mentioned by the director of one of the surveyed organizations, Institutional grants have been reduced, which makes it difficult to maintain stable lines of research; granted funds many times fail to contemplate reasonable institutional reproduction costs so as to cover the necessary investment levels and to maintain stable research teams. CERES, on the other hand, is the only case in the box of think tanks that are funded thanks to the support of private enterprises. Of course, CERES also has excellent links with internaThink Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America
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tional organizations such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and World Bank. Furthermore, particularly under the presidency of Jorge Batlle, this institution provided input for some policies, especially in the economic area. Anyway, its funding model is that of NorthAmerican think tanks. However, CERES is not the only institution that has contact with private enterprises. For instance, Gurises Unidos reported an increase in the support provided by enterprises exercising social responsibility in the task of promotion of children rights carried out by this organization. The fifth and last type of organizations supports their operation by means of funds of their own. This is the case of CLAEH which is mainly funded by resources derived from education fees paid by students attending its growing offer of courses (courses at university and graduate level, workshops). Anyway, CLAEH also obtains resources by means of agreements signed with the State, with foundations and international agencies. Think tanks do not seem to have insurmountable problems when it comes to funding. In a way or another, with more or less effort, they manage to continue operating. To obtain funding for projects is not something impossible. That which is really difficult, according to some testimonies, is to obtain support for those projects that the organization itself is willing to implement. One of the interviewees was particularly eloquent in this regard: I dont know if we find it difficult to obtain funding. The problem in fact is to obtain funds for the initiatives the organization is willing to carry out. That is quite another thing. Such a constraint can be found in all kinds of projects, particularly State-funded ones: Of course, funds are not flowing like water... However, there is an increasingly stronger State bias towards a logic of funding conceived as outsourcing, which funds specific operations but fails to fund the operation of your organization. Organizations claim support to fund the development of their infrastructure. Paradoxically, according to the same testimony, the tendency to employ NGOs for the implementation of policies could have a negative impact on the development of the third sector:
There are increasingly more organizations with less capacity for thinking, political and technical autonomy, and with more operative capacity for pre-defined services. They (rulers) later complain about the fact that when they ask for proposals on how to reformulate programs, NGOs have no proposals. Of course they dont have proposals! They dont have proposals because they dont develop their think tank capacity. This outsourcing has created a model in which organizations end up being service providers without critical capacity.
Of course, the lack of technical density and critical thinking evidenced by some NGOs precedes the rise of the left to power, and should be at least partly explained in the context of the strong centrality of political parties in the Uruguayan political system. In this sense, another interviewee gave relative importance to the weakening of NGOs under the current government, pointing to the structural frailness of the third sector in Uruguay:
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I strongly disagree with the idea that there are lots of NGOs in Uruguay. I think that there are quite a few (...) in fact, we are mistaking what is traditionally known as a social organization for a myriad of service cooperatives (...) Ninety per cent of what I see are cooperatives of technical experts who have no kind of legitimated representation of the sectors they claim to represent.
Dissemination Mechanisms We asked think tanks about what mechanisms they use to disseminate the results of their works and exert influence. As it may be noticed in the following table, all surveyed organizations generate publications and organize open seminars. Most surveyed organizations have an active participation in the media. Both policy briefs and the promotion of regular meetings with politicians and/or high-level officials are less extended. They both tend to be more usual among advocacy groups, which are those organizations with more clearly defined incidence policies. Table 3. Main Dissemination Instruments of Uruguayan Think Tanks
University Institutes Open seminars Meetings with politicians Publications Presence in the media Policy briefs
Source: Think Tank survey form.
Private Centers CERES | CIEDUR CIEDUR | RUMBOS | CIESU CERES | CIESU | CIEDUR | CINVE CERES CERES | CIEDUR
Advocacy Groups EL ABROJO | ICD | SERPAJ GGUU | UT EL ABROJO | SERPAJ | GGUU ICD | UT | SERPAJ GGUU | CUESTA DUARTE EL ABROJO | UT SERPAJ | GGUU SERPAJ | GGUU
IECON | CLAEH | DS | ICP CLAEH IECON | CLAEH | UM | DS DECON | ICP IECON | UM | ICP UM
Perception of Policy Incidence No organization has systematic mechanisms to measure its incidence on the political system. This is a surprising paradox. Organizations that, by definition, give a high value to information and emphatically recommend political actors to make decisions on reality-based data, lack the instruments that may allow them to systematically evaluate the impact of their own activity. Anyway, most think tank directors were able to produce a trial evaluation of the level of incidence of their organization. Only a few institutions consider that they have a low level of incidence. In general, the prevailing conviction is that the work of the organization is wellknown and respected by Government members. It seems clear that the stage of the policymaking process in which think tanks consider they have a greater impact on is that of problem diagnosis. Most organizations have a reactive rather than proactive attitude. Unlike Anglo-Saxon style think tanks, Uruguayan organizations prefer to answer demands instead of trying to introduce challenges into the Government agenda or public debate. This should not call our attention given the fact that most think tanks
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under consideration are academic-oriented institutions. As it can be seen in the above table, advocacy groups such as REDES, CNSmujeres and UT and some private centers such as CERES and RUMBOS are the institutions showing more inclination towards autonomous action and more focus on political incidence. Table 4. In which of the Following Stages do you believe that your Organization Manages to have more Incidence?
University Institutes Diagnosis Public Opinion Government Agenda Alternative Design Implementation Evaluation
Note: Answer given by UMs Population program Source: Think Tank survey form.
Private Centers CERES | CIESU | CIEDUR | CINVE RUMBOS
Advocacy Groups El ABROJO | CUESTA DUARTE SERPAJ | UT
IECON | UM | DS | CLAEH ICP
GGUU
CIESU
CNSmujeres
Notwithstanding the fact that as we have seen above, most think tanks consider that the work of their organization is respected by political actors, they tend to think that, in general terms, Uruguayan politicians give little importance to the use of research in public policies. This represents relevant cultural information which has been identified both by historical reflection works and by political science research. Several conclusive testimonies were given in this regard. There follow two highly eloquent ones:
We estimate that globally Uruguayan politicians give a reduced or very reduced value to social research, particularly if it is of national origin. () The Uruguayan political system has a bad quality in terms of decision-making and fails to use data and research as a basis for decision-making. We lack a generalized culture in terms of information-based decision-making. We believe that in the present situation some politicians strongly demand social research while others ascribe a secondary role to it; in any case, they value it but fail to consider it as an input for decision-making.
Maybe owing to the attitude of political elites, nearly all private centers register certain dissatisfaction in the way their articulation with the political system is figured out. This way of figuring it out is marked by the supremacy of the political interplay over the technical processing of issues. Beyond discussions on the inseparably techno-political character of public issues, the truth is that technical inputs play a specific and differential role, which apparently is not being acknowledged in the policymaking process.
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Peculiar Features of Think Tanks in Uruguay The information provided allows us to insist again on a focal point. There are not many organizations in Uruguay that can be considered as think tanks in the Anglo-Saxon sense of the expression: we refer to private institutions, specialized in policy analysis, with a strong vocation to have incidence on policymaking. University institutes are the oldest organizations and also, generally, the largest ones. This is due, at least partly, to the fact that they also fulfill education functions. They have an academically qualified staff, with a large number of graduates. Most of them have chosen European or Latin American PhD programs. Public centers are mainly funded from the National Budget, although revenues derived from the provision of different types of services to public or private organizations have been increasing. In general, they do not have aggressive incidence strategies. However, Uruguayan scholars like those from other Latin American universities that were influenced by the principles of the university movement launched in Cordoba in 1918, consider it an ethical mandate to become strongly involved in public debate and social problems. Thus, many of them often participate in the citizen debate through the media. With a view to clarifying issues of public interest, scholars also build their own professional reputation. But, unlike what happens in the tradition of Anglo-Saxon think tanks, experts participating in the media do not express the point of view of the organization they belong to. Although the institutional membership of scholars is always mentioned, this is not implying the existence of systematic research on the subject behind their participation. The difference is subtle but relevant. Generally, scholars speak in a personal capacity, giving opinions on political (and policy) issues, which does not necessarily mean that the institution they belong to is speaking through them. Indeed, it often happens that scholars belonging to the same institution publicly support different points of view on the same topics. On the other hand, most private research centers were created as survival strategies of scholars that were expelled from the State sphere, owing to political reasons, and they maintain such initial character. Generally, they are smaller than university centers and perform more consultancies and advising than research itself. A large part of their resources derive from international funding, although they also often interact with the business world and the State. All of them share an inclination towards incidence although, with the exception of CERES, they lack very aggressive strategies. In recent years, more institutions of this type were created within the context of the strong development experienced by NGOs in Uruguay. CURI, UT and RUMBOS are some examples of organizations that have the aim to influence on certain public policies as mandate. Probably, the number and political influence of this type of organization will continue to increase over the next years.
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The Interface with the Frente Amplio Government There were good reasons to believe that the cooperation zone between the intelligentsia and political power, in general, and experts and policymakers, in particular, was going to register an important extension during the Frente Amplio4 government (Garc and Yaff 2004; Garc, 2006). The survey carried out confirms, in general lines, this hypothesis, although it suggests that the relationship between experts and their organizations, on the one hand, and government agencies, on the other, is quite mixed, complex and contradictory. Numerous testimonies agree on the fact that the Frente Amplio government has indeed achieved an important level of cooperation with experts and their organizations. The recruitment of technicians has been intense, particularly at the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the Ministry of Social Development and the Planning and Budget Office. According to one of the interviewees:
Technicians have entered en masse into the public management sector and have done so with their expert knowledge and disciplinary agreements. Maybe the most outstanding fact regarding this interface would be the rise of a new, quite numerous and Im afraid that diverse (among other things, in terms of academic level, recruitment, etc.) leftist technocracy. They are the interface, now.
Anyway, the increasing contact between Government and experts shows important asymmetries both on the side of policymakers (not all rulers demand technical inputs with the same intensity and frequency) and the side of think tanks (some institutions are outstandingly more demanding that others) and required knowledge (some knowledge areas and epistemic communities are more wanted than others). The Demand There is broad consensus that the University of the Republic (UdelaR) has been the institution most demanded by the current Government. The School of Social Sciences and the School of Economic Sciences have played an outstanding role in some of the flagship initiatives of the new administration such as the Emergency Plan (PANES). According to the director of one of the most demanded university institutes:
Upon the change of Government there has been an increased professional involvement between the Government and the University, with greater demands of the first one placed on the research teams of UdelaR. The shift of academic team towards the government sphere has also implied a new relationship between government and University.
On the other hand, we have the case of NGOs. Several NGO directors recalled that the Frente Amplio government has shown a strong distrust of civil society:
4. The Broad Front (Frente Amplio, in Spanish) was founded in 1971 as a coalition of leftist parties. With the passing of time it has turned into a true political party, modernizing its ideology and moderating its election platform. As of 1990 it governs the city of Montevideo, capital of Uruguay. In 2004, the Broad Front candidate, Tabar Vzquez, was elected President in the first round of presidential elections.
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At first, we noticed that some government actors showed distrust for those initiatives that could be brought by civil society, which was even publicly disqualified many times (). In order to talk about an interface there should exist communication mechanisms between civil society and government actors. These are very few and refer above all to the contact established with people in charge of different offices and areas. It is understood that the qualitative modification in the interface between social research and government was mainly the result of hiring consultants although not in an organic way, which fails to strengthen the existence of an organized civil society. We have noticed that as the strategic designs of reforms started to progress, there has been an increased openness towards civil society.
The survey carried out ratifies that which has been stated by the expert literature regarding the variety of factors that may influence the demand for social research by policymakers. In the first place, there are factors of a personal nature, which depend on certain characteristics (values and beliefs) of the people involved in the policymaking process. It has been repeatedly pointed out by literature that some policymakers are more willing than others to use social research in the context of their government activity. This, in turn, is closely related to the composition of the team of politicians, and more specifically, to their academic education level and profile. One of the interviewees used this argument to explain why the Frente Amplio government demands more social research than previous governments, made up by the Red and the National Party leaders:
There is a difference in the composition of the political team. In the case of White and Red politicians, although things have been changing, the composition of the political team was quite traditional. The main legitimating profession was, and currently is, that of lawyers (). A degree in Law is the profession that legitimates you to become a politician (); the major political leaders of traditional parties are all lawyers. However, this is different in the case of the Frente Amplio, where a professional career is also legitimating, but there is a much broader range of aspects.
In the second place, some interviewees pointed out that the demand for research also depends on circumstances, situations. In a context of economic crisis and budget constraints, it is harder to find resources to fund research. Some interviewees insisted on this point, giving as example the 1999-2002 economic crisis. A former Minister at the time explained that it was very difficult in that context to obtain resources to fund policy research. But, apart from the economic situation, it is worth considering the political situation: The use of policy research depends on specific needs; many demands are strongly related to political situations. It seems clear that some political situations favor the use of social research more than others. In certain circumstances, politicians make more demands than in others. Interviewees mentioned three circumstances which favor the use of social research: i) A new government team tends to resort more intensely to social research than an experienced government team. An experienced ruler may tend to think that he/she already knows what is happening, and does not need advice nor new information. The newly arrived ruler, in turn, feels that he/she is walking on drifting sand, distrusting both the bureaucracy and the regular State technical services (tending to suspect that they are loyal to the outgoing
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party rather than to the new ruling party). This is why the new government team usually seeks technical support outside the State sphere, resorting to academic centers that are of confidence. If this argument was correct, the rotation of parties in power could favor the use of expert knowledge in policies. ii) The greater the will to introduce changes in public policies, the greater the Governments demand for social research. Innovation in public policies calls for technical inputs: information, detailed study of possible alternatives, impact projections, etc. This is applicable in the case of the current Frente Amplio government, particularly in the social area. But it is also applied to some of the reforms carried out during the second presidency of Julio M. Sanguinetti (1995-1999) such as the education reform, or during the presidency of Luis A. Lacalle (1990-1994).5 iii) The participation of international organizations in policy reform processes increases the demand. This was pointed out on several occasions during the interviews carried out. Both multilateral credit institutions and international cooperation demand a strong technical component from the domestic counterpart they are negotiating with. In particular, they demand the set up of measuring mechanisms which may allow to assess the impact of implemented policies. In the third place, there are also structural conditions that influence the use of social research. In this sense, at least two of them were pointed out during interviews: i) Available resources. Not all offices can fund social research. Staff wages cover a large part of the budget. Offices usually have little margin to hire consultancy services or research works. ii) The role in the policymaking process. Not all offices play an equally relevant role in the policy process. It should be expected that those playing a major role would tend to demand knowledge more intensely than the others. Agencies within the Executive Power show differences among themselves. For instance, it is admitted that the Ministry of Economy and Finance plays a leading role in the definition of government policies. But, there is also an outstanding difference between the role of the Executive Power and that of Parliament in the policymaking process. It is perfectly possible to have the case of a politician who is really willing to obtain technical advice but lacks the means or incentives to resort to it. As we will see below, something of this happens with legislators. The Demand from Parliament There is a great asymmetry between technical resources available in the Executive Power and the Legislative Power. Although the Executive not always has the quantity and quality of technical resources that are needed among its permanent staff, it can easily resort to institutions
5. A good overview of reforms carried out during the period 1985-1999 can be read in Lanzaro (2000).
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that may provide it with the required information and advice. The more usual mechanism is for the parliamentary committees to carry out free consultations with experts. One of the interviewees referred to the contrasting situation between Parliament and the Planning and Budget Office:
As opposition legislator I had great difficulty in terms of assessment because there were no funds, nor the habit to hire it. Parliament never had a system of its own. A great drawback of the Uruguayan Parliament is that it is one of the parliaments around the world that has the worst technical backup system. A major difference between Government and opposition is registered here. Because if you are part of the Government bench, you have a mechanism of your own, the State apparatus at your service. So, what we noticed from the opposition is that the Government always had an extraordinary advantage, since key legislators participated in groups within the Executive Power, in processes for the creation of projects. That is exactly what I started to do later on, when I became part of the Government.
This is a very important testimony: legislators of the ruling party manage to obtain assessment from technical experts of the Executive Power. So, opposition legislators remain in a situation of strong disadvantage. This helps to understand why it is so difficult to set up a more modern assessment system at Parliament. The party having a majority and therefore the means to carry out this type of initiatives is the one that has less incentives to do so, given the fact that its legislators manage to obtain support from the technical teams of the Executive Power. As of the data resulting from the survey of Uruguayan legislators carried out by ICP in 2007, it is possible to have a better understanding of the dynamics of demand. Chart 2. Frequency of Demand for Think Tanks among Deputies
80 60 40 20 0 Monthly Quarterly Annual No contact Monthly Quarterly Annual No contact Monthly Quarterly Annual No contact Semestral Semestral Semestral
BROAD FRONT UdelaR Private - U
NATIONAL PARTY
COLORADO PARTY
Private Centers
Party Centers
Source: Survey ICP-FCS
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Chart 3. Frequency of Demand for Think Tanks among Senators

100 80 60 40 20 0 No contact No contact No contact Annual Annual Monthly Quarterly Monthly Quarterly Monthly Semestral Semestral Quarterly Semestral Annual
BROAD FRONT UdelaR
NATIONAL PARTY
COLORADO PARTY
- Private-U
Private Centers
Party Centers
Source: Survey ICP-FCS
In the first place, the demand for think tanks among legislators can be rated as low. Some testimonies from university institutes point in the same direction: according to CLAEH, which has a long experience working with the Uruguayan political system, the demand for executive tasks is more frequent than the demand for legislative ones. This information cannot be surprising: to a certain extent, Parliament has delegated its legislation function to the Executive Power (Bergara et al, 2006). In the second place, legislators of the ruling party (both Deputies and Senators) demand the support of think tanks less often than opposition legislators. This is consistent with the argument we have just set forth regarding the strategies of ruling party legislators. In the third place, the demand for think tanks is stronger among Senators than among Deputies. In this sense, we should highlight the activity of National Party Senators. Let it be taken into account that the National Party is the main contender against the Frente Amplio and the majority of leaders that aim to be presidential candidates for that party are Senators. In the fourth place, the same pattern is noticed in both chambers: National Party legislators prefer to resort to party think tanks and private research centers, Red Party legislators to private centers and Frente Amplio legislators to institutes of the University of the Republic. Each party channels the demand towards the institution in which it has more confidence. This confidence is not only, nor mainly the result of the institutions technical or academic reputation. In fact, political confidence is of great importance. The Frente Amplio has more confidence in UdelaR. The National and Red Parties show a certain distrust of UdelaR (because they consider it as enemy territory, conquered by leftist groups throughout several decades) and tend to have more confidence in the private universities created in the 1990s and in private research centers. However, according to some interviewees, politicians not always choose to request advice from ideologically and politically alike institutions. On the contrary, traditional parties have chosen many times to resort to UdelaR. This strategy has allowed them to legitimate political decisions that could have been condemned by the opposition. By means of this procedure, rulers avoid criticism from rival parties, thus reducing the eventual political cost of their decision.
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According to some testimonies, the political use of expert knowledge is quite frequent in Uruguayan politics. By resorting to think tanks linked to the opposition, rulers manage to create a technical armor for their political decisions. Nevertheless, the use of expert knowledge to legitimate already adopted decisions is nothing new. On the contrary, it is one of the most wellknown contributions in the literature of Carol Weiss. In any case, the example we have been dealing with should be considered as a probably more sophisticated species within this kind. However, technical expertise itself seems to be influencing some policy areas of the current Government. An example of this is shown in the social field. The incorporation of researchers from UdelaR and other spheres to the policies of the Social Development Ministry by means of inter-institutional agreements accounts for it. We are talking about agreements between institutions, and not about hiring people. In spite of the fact that UdelaR is generally associated with a leftist sensitivity, it is far from being a homogeneous space. It has researchers of all ideological stripes. Therefore, the fact that part of the current Government (for example MIDES and the Civil Service) is signing agreements with academic departments and programs of UdelaR, without knowing for sure what specific names will be involved in the joint work, supposes that there is not a strict ideological filter of technical knowledge and its bearers. The Offer It is not possible to build a broad and prolific interface between decision-making and research provided there is not an offer in social research capable of addressing the demand. Throughout the interviews, some variables having incidence on the offer of research available started to spring up. In the first place, there are (or there may be) asymmetries in the development of the different disciplines. It is possible for a policymaker to demand certain type of knowledge that is not properly developed in the country. A country may have excellent economists but lack sociologists or experts in social policies. Asymmetries can also take place within the same discipline. The relative development of the different technical knowledge can be related to the evolution of demand, or even with the tradition in terms of educational training. Some of the existing asymmetries and their origin were clearly set forth by one of the interviewed Government leaders:
There is technical strength (...) although human resources are lacking in some areas (). There is unequal development (). Uruguay developed a very strong legal culture. This is a historical asset. Therefore, we find that consultancy in that field normally has, in a way or another, good results (). But many times there is confusion between what you want and what you get as an answer (). This confusion between the left in power and those who provide support is registered in several areas: since it was other logic of thinking and other models that prevailed. Provided that for many years the macro economics was considered as the real thing and sectorial policies didnt matter, sectoral experts therefore are weak. Provided that for many years it was said that what really mattered was the short-term and the long-term is the result of a good performance in the short-term, therefore experts in long-term development policies are either nonexistent or extremely weak.
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Naturally, not only are there asymmetries in the development of the different stream of Eonomics. Something similar takes place in the field of Political Science. The capacity for description and analysis of social policies contrasts with the scarce studies on agricultural and industrial policies or development studies (Garc, 2005). This is related to another important asymmetry that, according to some interpretations, has characterized Uruguayan social sciences: we refer to the contrast between the development of theoretical reflection and the capacity to address practical challenges. Referring to this point, a former Minister made a severe comment on Uruguayan social scientists: They are academically well trained but they are all philosophers. In the second place, there is (or there may be) a major difference between the potential offer and the actual offer. There may be an important accumulation of technical knowledge which the Government cannot make use of. To achieve an active participation of public policy experts, either as advisors or directly responsible parties, may not be as simple as it looks. The public service usually brings about problems for experts with high levels of education (with master or PhD degrees from internationally acknowledged universities), who earn (or may reasonably aspire to earn) high wages doing research or consultancy in private research centers or universities. To attract this type of human resources to the policymaking process is a major challenge for those who consider it necessary to incorporate social research into public policies. The problem here is multiple: Government tasks are complex, state wages are low and budget funds available to hire social research are very few. Moreover, the public exposure of technical experts in controversial issues may place them in unpleasant situations they are not prepared to face. In the third place, it seems clear that the participation in both political and technical positions is really more convenient for younger experts than for those having an outstanding academic or professional track-record. For junior experts to get in contact with the State and the world of policymaking is like finding an excellent takeoff platform: they manage to enter the labor market, they incorporate new skills and knowledge and they generate social capital. The overview is not exactly the same for senior experts. For them, to assume technical or political positions implies higher costs. To go deeper into the reasons that lead them to make the decision to directly participate in a Government would require an additional investigation. However, there are good reasons to think that there is a coexistence of different rationalities and a mixture of convictions and calculations. Many experts have preferred to give up their bulk of income or take more risks at the professional or personal level than would seem reasonable, in order to make their dream of cooperating with the first Frente Amplio government come true. Something similar had happened two decades earlier, during the first presidency of Julio M. Sanguinetti (1985-1989). According to Hugo Fernndez Faingold, who served as Minister of Labor and Social Security at the time, numerous experts gave up very well-paid jobs (at international organizations or the private sphere) to give their support to the first democratic Government following 13 years of dictatorship. Naturally, it is not all about altruism. By participating in high-level Government positions, experts enjoy the direct and indirect, intangible and material benefits of the exercise of power.
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In particular, the participation in Government allows them to test their theories and hypotheses against empirical evidence under quasi-experimental conditions: It is like joining a lab, where researchers can test whether their policy paradigms work or not, said the director of a university center. Besides, it can be inferred in fact it was suggested in some interviews that independently of the level of income they may get for cooperating with the Government, experts also become capitalized in other ways: they get a reputation, accumulate merits, and make relations. Nor should we underestimate the attraction exerted by power on those who are not used to it. In this regard, an interviewee stated the following:
In general, in the cases I know in Uruguay, I dont think that the participation of technical experts in politics has had such high costs. In general they end up joining other alternatives and, besides, the concept of remuneration should be measured from a broader perspective.
Another variable that, at least in theory, could create a gap between the potential offer and the actual offer is the level of political and ideological empathy between experts and the Government. It is possible that experts would not be willing to cooperate with a Government that fails to coincide with their political preferences. The likelihood for this to happen will increase the greater is the degree of polarization of the party system, and the stricter are the control and censoring mechanisms among peers. For instance, some experts in education issues related to the Frente Amplio were strongly questioned by their colleagues and teachers unions for having cooperated with the formulation and implementation of some aspects of the education reform carried out by Germn Rama during the second presidency of Sanguinetti (1995-1999). In any case, we should avoid considering that political differences pose an insurmountable obstacle to the cooperation between experts and politicians. A former Minister expressed this idea very clearly: I never felt that political preferences were a stick to be used as measure of whether they were going to participate or not in a certain Government. The Interface in Five Specific Policy Areas One of the main conclusions of this work is that the link between experts and their organizations and the Frente Amplio government is neither homogeneous, nor uniform nor identical, whatever the issue or political field being studied. The information obtained allows us to assert the coexistence of extremely different situations. Let us transcribe the passage of an interview to a university center director, who describes very well the diversity of existing situations:
The main reforms of this Government (tax, health and the so-called State reform) do not seem to be based on previous large research processes, but rather on a more or less articulated set of consensus, as the case may be, within the ruling body itself. Focused social policies (PANES, community teacher, INFAMILIA, etc.) seem to be mostly based on available information. When there is no information, they try to produce it. Development policies (this is what is now being referred to as productive country) cannot be certainly based on local research, given the fact that in the last two decades the issue has been absent from the local social science agenda. Rather, they are based on the personal background that influential politicians in each area may bring with them.
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In fact, there are very different situations. In this section, we will be briefly presenting five policy areas we consider to be emblematic because they allow to visualize different articulation mechanisms between technical skills and government agencies. By reviewing these cases it is found that the question regarding the relationship between the Government and the world of experts must be reformulated. It is not enough to try to answer the question regarding the intensity of the relationship with experts and think tanks; moreover, it is necessary to ask which are the experts and think tanks with which policymakers are interacting in the different areas, and why the organizations that manage to leave their mark on policies are these and not others. It is also worth asking about the policy effects resulting from the predominance of a body of experts and skills over others. Economic Policy It is likely that never before in the history of economic policy have economists played such an important role in the Government. The three main actors within the economic team are three renowned economists: Danilo Astori, former dean of the School of Economic Science, who is the Minister; Mario Bergara, PhD from Berkely University (US), who is the Under-Secretary; Fernando Lorenzo, PhD from the University Carlos III (Spain) and former director of CINVE, who heads the influential area of Macroeconomics at the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF). The three of them have strong ties with the countrys main economic think tanks. Nevertheless, the economic team has not implemented the policy to resort to the support of institutions but has chosen to recruit a vast group of economists, mostly with graduate studies in US or European universities. This network of economists plays a fundamental role in multiple public policies across different ministries. This is probably the most influential epistemic community among the ones operating during the period comprised in this investigation. However, its positions in terms of policies are usually questioned by other expert networks. For example, the Network of Leftist Economists, made up by economists having a critical position concerning the Government, strongly criticized the tax reform prepared by the economic team. Another conflict between epistemic communities erupted when some of the most outstanding experts in innovation, science and technology questioned the initiative to sign a FTA with the US, promoted by the Economy Minister and his team. It is worth recalling the comment of an interviewee regarding the importance not only of the use of expert knowledge but of its type of inclusion into the policymaking process. Indeed, a Government member with high technical qualifications can proceed to use certain technical languages and tools, leaving a priori skills and perspectives aside. For many, and according to an interviewee, the MEF already has the recipe and is far from being willing to dialogue. Therefore, it is not simple to define in a few words the extent to which social research is used in the economic policy of the Frente Amplio government. It is clear that the economic policy has a strong technical component. But the characterization of this interface depends on what specific knowledge and what epistemic communities are being considered.
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Social Policies The case of the Ministry of Social Development (MIDES) shows differences and similarities with that of the Ministry of Economy and Finance. Let us start by analyzing the main differences. In the first place, although it has also resorted to individual hiring, the policy of MIDES has consisted in establishing agreements with institutions such as the Institute of Economics of the School of Economic Sciences or the Department of Sociology of the School of Social Sciences. In the second place, unlike the MEF, which has chosen to be almost only supported by economists, MIDES has had the interaction of professionals of different sorts (sociologists, political scientists, social assistants, among others). There are also some outstanding similarities between MIDES and MEF. The first one to be mentioned is that, in both cases, the main policies implemented have had a strong technical component. Both the Emergency Plan and the Equity Plan were designed and implemented with the strong support of experts in social policies. The second similarity is that, the same as with the economic policy, the final design of policies has been undertaken by the technical and political team of the Ministry itself. The difference lies in the fact that MIDES went on to incorporate teams of UdelaR into the process. However, from the point of view of civil society, this form of operating is being questioned, given the fact that it would lead to throw away the accumulation and experience of NGOs and private centers in the subject. The director of an important NGO with expertise in social policies addressed this topic emphatically:
Nowadays we handle more money than before. We are bigger with this Government, it is true, we have more people, we handle more resources. But we have fewer incidence. Size and incidence are different things: you can be big but simply become a big service provider. In the previous government we had a high incidence capacity on many policies. But not in this one. For instance, at no time did they ask our advice for the design of the Emergency Plan, nor for the design of any of the programs within the Equity Plan. Where does the Ministry of Social Development resorts to when it has to deal with operative issues of the Emergency Plan? To the School of Social Sciences [at UdelaR]. Private universities are out of the question. The same as NGOs. The University of the Republic is a loyal friend of the Frente Amplio; it is thus conceived: at UdelaR they have fellow comrades.
In the case of social policies there appears again, although in a much less pronounced form, a phenomenon that had already been noticed when analyzing the economic policy: the Government chooses which experts and institutions to consult and when to do so. Nevertheless, it should be made clear that MIDES has launched open calls for institutions to develop social policies. The institutions or people that finally fail to participate in the processes may think that this is a wrong choice and the expression of the low technical capacity of the government team. Anyway, the point we want to make here is that everything indicates that the perception of the interface between the Government and experts can be contaminated (and biased) by the specific experience of each organization.
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Health Policy The health system reform that is being implemented is one of the most ambitious reforms of the Vzquez administration. It simultaneously aims at improving equity of access to health care services and at increasing the global efficiency of the system by means of the construction of a strong public regulation system. Obviously, a reform of such characteristics cannot be designed and implemented without a strong technical support. However, as in the case of the policies to fight poverty of MIDES, the health reform brings many doubts and some resistance among economists and some medical corporations. To understand the reform process it is worth paying attention to the figure of economist Daniel Olesker, number three at the Public Health Ministry, who has undertaken the hard task of leading the complex reform process. Olesker does not form part of the alliance of economists led by Astori, Bergara and Lorenzo from the MEF. In fact, he is closer to the positions of the Network of Leftist Economists than to those of the economic team. Nor has he formed part of the health economics team created in the 1990s in some private centers like CINVE and CLAEH. Apart from the strong political support of the Public Health Minister, Mara Julia Muoz, he is given the confidence of health sector trade unions, which he advised for many years from the Institute Cuesta Duarte. His distance from MEF and his historical affinity with workers labor unions have turned him into a rather unreliable person among businesspeople and certain interest groups. Olesker faces criticism from his fellow economists regarding both the design and the implementation of the health system reform. Those who question the design consider it conceptually wrong to aim at regulating the operation of the State system. Those who question the implementation argue that, in order to make the reform progress and avoid the resistance of some actors with veto power, the Public Health Ministry has made so many concessions that the reform will probably not bring about the expected effect. The Ministry would be operating more as a trade union than as Government: it pushes and threatens; it negotiates and gives in. However, the reform also has its zealous advocates. In the first place, the return of the the State to the management and regulation of certain policy areas is regarded by some social actors and experts as the overcoming of the already dated neo-liberal dogma. In the second place, beyond the concessions that have been made, the reform seems to be heading towards greater equality in the access to health services, and the streamlining of the system. The fact that the Public Health Ministry has tried to contemplate the interests more directly affected by the reform, brings another key issue to the analysis of the political dynamics of expert knowledge: technical considerations may and usually are affected should they be? by the distorsions resulting from pressures exerted by the power politics of the different groups involved. Sometimes, the technical rationality imposes a restriction on political dynamics. Other times, it is just the opposite: the complex alembic of political processes in pluralist systems operates as a restriction on the technical logic.
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Science, Technology and Innovation Policy At different times throughout this text we have mentioned that the Government has a particularly close relationship with UdelaR. Nevertheless, the most interesting thing about the analysis of the policymaking process in science, technology and innovation of the Frente Amplio government is that it complicates and plays down the idea that there is an alliance between this left party and the public university. One of the five focal points of the Frente Amplio election platform had the suggestive title of Uruguay inteligente (translated as Intelligent Uruguay). The Frente Amplio thus addressed the strong demand for policies aimed at the promotion of innovation which had started to arise as of the 1990s and which had registered a significant increase following the 1999-2002 economic debacle. Therefore, the election proposal of public policies aimed at advancing towards an Intelligent Uruguay was warmly supported by the community of scientists. The new Government rapidly set up a Ministerial Cabinet for Innovation and appointed an Operative Team, made up of members broadly supported by the scientific community. But the honeymoon did not last long and problems soon arose. The Government and the University of the Republic evidenced different points of view regarding how (with what specific incentives and specific institutions) to promote the development of innovation, science and technology. The government team demanded to have a strong incidence on the orientation of the national scientific activity to ensure the adjustment between national development needs and the work of researchers. The University, for its part, argued that public policies in this field could not get to the point of aiming to politically discriminate what kind of production is really relevant from the point of view of development and what research is irrelevant and should not be particularly encouraged. Negotiations were very hard. Scientists made their point of view publicly known by means of the circulation of an open letter. The Rector publicly expressed his regret over the lack of capacity of government speakers to dialogue. In the middle of this arm wrestle, some of the appointed high officials resigned their posts. The case is quite revealing of some of the more classic characteristics of the relationship between experts and politics in Uruguay. It cannot be denied that the countrys scientific community, which struggled for many years to persuade the political system about the importance of science, technology and innovation policies, knows at least as well as Frente Amplio Ministers which are the more adequate policies and institutions to achieve the goal of an intelligent Uruguay. However, the proposals put forth by scientific community speakers are construed by the Government as the expression of corporate interests. Meanwhile, the Government is self-appointed the role of interpreter of the General Will. It is surprising to find that the Frente Amplio distrusts leftist scientists, who were, for many decades, key allies and still represent nowadays one of its most outstanding niches of voters. The Frente Amplio basically acts vis--vis university members defending its role as ruler and claiming the legitimacy derived from popular vote. The attitude of this party, in its relationship with experts, is the expression of a republican, party-centered national political tradition. We will be resuming this point later on.
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Environmental Policy Although the case of the environmental policy comes last in this brief review, it is far from being the least interesting one. On the contrary, it can be considered as the most dramatic one. The way in which the relationship between experts and the Government has been developing in this specific area has resulted in a sort of break in relations between the Frente Amplio and the main Uruguayan organization specialized in environmental issues. The name of this institution is REDES - Amigos de la Tierra. It is an NGO that forms part of an international network focused on social ecology. It played a leading role in 2004 when it managed to articulate a large political and social coalition that promoted a plebiscite for the nationalization of water services. The consultation with citizens was held on the same day as the national election: 2 in 3 voters supported the initiative. Its main members have long voted for the Frente Amplio and have strongly cooperated with its Program Committee and legislators while it was an opposition party. Nowadays they say that they are in short circuit with the Government. They maintain that in several key issues such as transgenics and forestation, the Frente Amplio now in power has undertaken a radically different position from the one it had always defended. They state that, in spite of the strong political and personal ties existing between the members of REDES and the Frente Amplio elite, the institution had a greater incidence capacity in previous Governments than during the current administration. Paradoxically, the explanation for the incidence capacity enjoyed by REDES in previous Governments lies most probably in the strategic alliance with Frente Amplio sectors. In this way, social opposition and political opposition became articulated, thus forming a strong front. Clearly, the shift of the Frente Amplio from its original positions leaves NGOs without friends in the political system. This breaking of the bridge between the social left and the left as a party can be seen from different perspectives. Undoubtedly, it represents a time of crisis, uneasiness and disappointment, maybe for both parts. The subjectivities at stake end up being affected. And the future in terms of articulations and alliances remains uncertain. Ecologists feel betrayed: in a way they represented the intellectual support (in their area of competence) for the rise of a party that, once in power, develops policies that are contrary to those they aimed at implementing. At the same time, government members are exposed to the disapproval and fingers of blame pointed at them by (former) fellows. It is difficult to think that, in a way or another, this fails to affect them politically or personally. Ecologists consider that this change of position is mainly due to the weight of interests of large multinational companies that benefit, for instance, from the conditions in which the country is willing to attract investments in pulp mills. Without failing to acknowledge the weight of interests, it is possible to consider an additional hypothesis: two expert networks acting like the advocacy coalitions studied by Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith (1993) have also confronted each other in the case of national politics against the cellulose industry. On the one hand, there is the network of ecologists that questions the environmental and social consequences of an excessive forestation and the development model the project implies. And, on the other hand,
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there are the economists of the Ministry of Economy and Finance defending two concepts they consider to be fundamental for national development: foreign investment and stability regarding the rules of the game. Environmentalists have lost and economists have won this arm-wrestling match. The latter had a strong political influence within the Frente Amplio before the election. But once Vzquez sealed a strong alliance with Astori, the network of economists articulated around MEF leaders managed to control numerous policies. If this interpretation is correct, the Frente Amplio has then not given in to the large multinationals in the cellulose business, but to the guidelines of the economic team! We return to the same point here: political ups and downs have a strong incidence on the dynamics of expert knowledge. In this case, the changes in the correlation of forces among the different Frente Amplio sectors ended up strongly reducing the influence of a powerful and well connected NGO like REDES. The triple articulation among knowledge-interests-political sectors, plus the road blocks on the Argentine side of the river (a substantial ingredient to understand the atmosphere created in Uruguay around this issue) have led to the radical legitimation of a project that is contrary to positions that had been publicly undertaken by the Frente Amplio over the years. It is hard not to understand the unrest of the members of REDES, whose main concern, as they have pointed out, is not only the protection of wildlife but also to think about national development in terms of environmental sustainability. Politics and Expert Knowledge: from Conjuncture to Structure Many of the circumstantial factors that, if our argumentation is correct, favor the use of social research are present in this Government: it is a new government team that aims to promote a large program of innovations in several public policies, being deeply rooted in intellectual and professional sectors and naturally linked to the countrys main university and academic centers. In relation to this favorable conjuncture, the use of social research, the demand for experts and the intensity of contacts with the world of think tanks has increased during the first years of government. However, the testimonies gathered suggest that the relationship between experts and the Frente Amplio government has been far from being simple. It is true that the relationship between the State and the main university (UdelaR) has registered a significant increase. Nevertheless, neither conflicts between both parts were nonexistent nor has an equally close relationship been established with other institutions. In some cases, the relationship between some organizations and the State has deteriorated even more as it can be inferred from testimonies. The director of one of the academic programs of the School of Social Sciences managed to capture the state of the relationship by means of a splendid image:
Its like a Victorian couple that finally manages to be alone. What follows is: excess of politeness or excess of confidence, ignorance regarding the limits of the agreement, lack of regulated mechanisms to evaluate the quality of contact, unmatched expectations, great clumsiness, great passioncertain final disappointment.
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As we have seen when analyzing some of the policy areas, it is not simple to generalize. To understand what the relationship between the Frente Amplio government and think tanks is like it is better to situate the analysis at a lower level of abstraction and wonder about the relationship between a specific government agency and a specific type of expert with regards to a specific policy. When adopting this approach, it remains clear that policy areas are usually the setting for real battles between different expert networks. The case of the environmental policy clearly illustrates this point. At least in part, the feeling of discontent of some think tanks regarding their relationship with the Frente Amplio government is explained by the specific outcome of these battles. No Government listens to all think tanks having ideas to be proposed. Governments select who they want to listen, when and on what topics. The organizations selected appear to be content. Those that were not taken into account feel rebuffed. The organizations cooperating more with the Government (university institutes) considered that there is a relatively fluid relationship of cooperation; while, private centers and advocacy groups expressed that there is a serious problem of incommunication. Table 5. Which of the Following Statements better reflects the Situation of the Link between Social Research and the Political System in Uruguay?
University Institutes There is a serious problem of incommunication: the interface is too narrow and unstable. There is a relatively fluid relationship of cooperation, although there are conflicts like everywhere else There is a very fluid relationship. Short-circuits are very infrequent IECON | CLAEH | UM | DS Private Centers CERES | CIEDUR | CINVE Advocacy Groups EL ABROJO | GGUU REDES | UT SERPAJ
RUMBOS | CIESU
Note: GGUU considers that "it has improved over time". Source: Questionnaire.
The feeling of discontent is greater in some policy areas than in others. This can be related to the personal characteristics of policymakers. Even within a leftist tradition that is, along general lines, rationalist and enlightened, it is not hard to notice very different considerations regarding the importance of social research. Some Ministers are more inclined to experts and their knowledge; but others are not. There are sectors within the Frente Amplio that are more prone to technical codes (like Asamblea Uruguay and Vertiente Artiguista) and others that are outstandingly more reluctant to use them (Movimiento de Participacin Popular). The study of the relationship between experts and public policies during the Frente Amplio government allows to go beyond the conjuncture and go deeper into the influence of some structural characteristics of the Uruguayan political system that constrain the relationship between expert knowledge and political system, and make the dynamics of expert knowledge even more complex than in other political systems.
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A Republican and Party-Centered Political System In this regard, it is worth considering two structural data. The first one refers to the specific historical relationship of a path-dependent kind, it might be said between erudite thinking and politics in Uruguay. The surprising thing in this sense is that Uruguayan intellectuals and the more active circles of ideas showed, from the early beginnings, a high sensitivity toward politics, having got fully involved in public affairs and party activism. Thus, the doctoral generation of the 1870s, unlike their Fusionist predecessors, who were opposed to historical parties if not skeptical about the fate of the country, led an intense political life, joining their forces to form a republic of parties and build a nation on modern constitutional and democratic foundations. Later on, in 1900, the new university generations, after demanding on different occasions greater technical and scientific basis for legal provisions and government trends, ended up joining, almost without exceptions, some of the traditional parties. This phenomenon would be repeated among the intellectuals and experts of the 1960s, who following the efforts of CIDE to give an increased technical rationality to public policies, and in the midst of the revolutionary movement of the time, joined the Frente Amplio and its strategy to break the traditional two-party system, thus giving a new impetus maybe without intending to to party politics and the voting culture. Even the university centers that remained active during the 1973-1984 military dictatorship showed a strong interest in issues related to the activity of parties and the conventional exercise of Uruguayan democracy, as evidenced by some of its prolific editorial lines at the time of democratic restoration. Now, even if this pro-party attitude among Uruguayan intellectuals less cultivated, in fact, among their regional peers contributed to build the political common sense of the Uruguayan society, it also brought certain reflective negligence and lack of critical distance regarding common political practices. In short, the Uruguayan erudite strata, highly identified, as we have seen, with the strategic and prudential rationality of professional politics, shows neither the learned disdain of some regional academies for mass or competitive politics, nor some effective affinity with the Anglo-Saxon tradition of think tanks, whose political influence results from their thematic or ideological activism, their capacity to encourage the discussion of ideas or to set an agenda for citizen needs. The second aspect to be taken into account deals with the centrality of Uruguayan politics and its impact on the expert knowledge. Such centrality is based on two basic factors. On the one hand, there are the republican foundations of the countrys political structure, which go back to the original invention of a political union based on civic identities rather than on social ascriptions, being also clearly reflected in the preponderance of citizen powers or legislative assemblies over technical and bureaucratic rationalities. And on the other hand, there is the political ascendancy of one of the strongest party systems in the region, zealously defending its representative legitimacy and decision-making prerogatives against the expert groups and autonomous rights of civil society. This will result in the underestimation of knowledge and skills that are independent of the political and Government arts or, what is the same thing, a devaluation of the expert tradition in public management or the resources for technical operational effectiveness, thus prompting either a low level of political recognition of expert knowledge, or an instrumental contingent, odd treatment of expert skills. Therefore, in spite of the
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efforts made in the 1960s to promote a technical modernization of politics, and beyond some indications as to an increase of the political role of expert knowledge under the current Frente Amplio government, Uruguay still maintains its most typical republican features, that is to say, a tendency to value the powers of a civil nature over technical rationality and operational effectiveness, thus paying tribute, for better or worse, to the political rationality of a democracy of parties, that is strongly rooted in citizens, subjected to the transactional demands of a pluralist political network, incompatible with the action of absolute majorities or the marginalization of minorities and sensitive to the policy of reciprocal vetoes or to the alterations of the most purist technicalities, which usually conspires against the anti-political illusions of erudite environments, delegitimizing the expert recipes prepared on the fringe of if not against political rationality. Anyway, the fact is that Uruguayan political groups in spite of their obvious difficulties to mend the damaged social fabric and establish new grounds for relationships between the State, the marketplace and civil society still enjoy high levels of civic self-esteem. After successive alternations in Government, they have managed to renew confidence in their political resources and party traditions in order to give an aggregate form to general interest or to represent social pluralism in the public sphere, thus accepting without much enthusiasm and without mobilizing greater financial resources the work of their own and intermittent centers of ideas, resorting to expert knowledge more for strategic needs than for a true recognition of the imperatives of technical reason, and distrusting not only the extra-democratic power of technical and bureaucratic strata but also the political bodies lacking the direct endorsement of citizens or a varied voting public.
Conclusions In Uruguay there are only a few organizations designed in exactly the same way as US or Canadian think tanks. But there are other institutions that fulfill the roles conventionally attributed to them. The characteristic thing about Uruguay is that it shows a greater development of university institutes in relation to other institutions. Anyway, in recent years, incidence organizations have been growing in number within the framework of a general process aimed at strengthening civil society. The predominance of academic-like organizations (university institutes and private research centers) is reflected in the type of activities more often carried out to establish contact with the environment (open seminars, publications). Other forms of incidence, more characteristic of Anglo-Saxon think tanks, are less frequent. For instance, the drafting of policy briefs is not common. In any case, some organizations have created reserved mechanisms of exchange with politicians. Most organizations surveyed consider that their work is well rated by the political system and that they have an important level of incidence on public policies, particularly in making diagnosis of problems and setting discussions on the public agenda. However, none of the institutions has standardized instruments to evaluate their own incidence.
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Has a major change been noticed in the relationship between think tanks and the State following the arrival of the Frente Amplio to the Government? In this respect, we have registered two opposite views: some argue that no change has been registered; while others state that a deep change has taken place. Our research suggests that none of these two views manages to correctly reflect the current state of the interface. It does not seem reasonable to deny that an important change has indeed taken place. However, it is obvious that some structural factors still remain the same. The most important change that has been registered is that of an unprecedented approach between the University of the Republic and the State. Although it is true that the University of the Republic does not have a monopoly over technical knowledge, it houses some of the countrys largest and most influential research centers. The country is one thing when the university and the State are disconnected from each other and another qualitatively different thing when they are both joined together. The Government has a good relationship with some institutions of UdelaR. But this does not mean that, in general, it has a better relationship with the sub-system of think tanks than other Governments. According to the testimonies gathered, the Frente Amplio government has links that are not conflict-free with other important institutions, in particular with some advocacyoriented NGOs. The arrival of a new party to Government allows to control the effect of the political affinity variable in the political dynamics of expert knowledge. It seemed quite reasonable to infer that most part of the existing difficulties in the relationship between research and public policies resulted from the lack of political empathy between the ruling parties (the Red Party and the National Party) and intellectuals and experts (most of them linked to the Frente Amplio). The information generated within the framework of this research work suggests that the political affinity between rulers and experts is not the only variable accounting for the dynamics of social research. Therefore, neither has the lack of political harmony been an insurmountable obstacle to the participation of experts nor does the ideological convergence assure a fluid link between said experts and rulers. When the argument focused on the political and ideological affinity becomes attenuated, the explanatory factors of a structural nature come to the fore. The political dynamics of expert knowledge in Uruguay should be understood by taking into account the main characteristics of the countrys political system. Think tanks are an additional type of political actor in an essentially pluralist and republican country. In this context, the political power of experts in Uruguay is, usually, inferior to that of other social actors, such as business corporations and unions, and to that of political parties, which continue to be the leading actors in the general operation of the system. In order to understand the political dynamics of social research, there is another element that should be taken into account. It is not only the political system that is pluralistic. The subThink Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America
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system of think tanks and expert networks is also quite diverse and plural. In the field of ideas there is coexistence and competition among academic centers located in private universities, NGOs, Anglo-Saxon type think tanks and institutes located at the public university. At the same time, these organizations are crossed over by a large variety of expert networks: economists, experts in social ecology, political scientists, experts in innovation, sociologists, lawyers, etc. In turn, within the different disciplines there are multiple communities of interpretation in dispute over hegemony in the field. These different networks fail to have identical views on what the most recommendable public policy trends are. So, in order to understand the dynamics of knowledge, we should learn to discover and interpret the battles over political incidence that are daringly fought by the different intellectual communities.
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Bergara, Mario (coordinator), Andrs Pereyra, Ruben Tansini, Adolfo Garc, Daniel Chasquetti, Daniel Buquet and Juan Andrs Moraes. Political Institutions, Policy making Processes and Policy Outcomes: The Case of Uruguay. R-50. Research Network Working Paper. Inter-American Development Bank. Research Network. Washington, 2006. Caetano, Gerardo, Jos Rilla and Romeo Prez Antn. La partidocracia uruguaya. Cuadernos del CLAEH 44 (1987): 37-61, Montevideo. Gallardo, Javier. La Democracia y los Centros de Investigacin en el Uruguay, paper prepared for the project Plataforma Democrtica, sponsored by The Edelstein Center for Social Research and the Institute Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, 2007. Garc, Adolfo. Una interfase estrecha e inestable. Partidos polticos y think tanks en Uruguay, in Garc, A. and G. Ua, eds., Think tanks y polticas pblicas en Latinoamrica. Dinmicas globales y realidades regionales. IDRC y KAS. Buenos Aires: Editorial Prometeo, 2007. Garc, Adolfo. La Ciencia Poltica en Uruguay: un desarrollo tardo, intenso y asimtrico. Revista de Ciencia Poltica Vol 25 N1 (2005): 2332-244. Pontifica Universidad Catlica. Santiago de Chile. Garc, Adolfo and Jaime Yaff. La Era Progresista. Fin de Siglo. Montevideo, Uruguay, 2004. Haas, Peter. Introduction: epistemmic communities and international policy coordination. International Organization 46 (1) (1992): 1-35. Lanzaro, Jorge. El presidencialismo pluralista en la segunda transicin, in Jorge Lanzaro (coord.). La segunda transicin en el Uruguay. CSIC-ICP-FCU. Montevideo, Uruguay, 2000. Sabatier, Paul A. and Hank Jenkins-Smith. Policy Change and Learning. And advocacy coalition approach. Boulder (Co.): Westview Press, 1993.
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Garce, A., Uña G. (2010) Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

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Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Edited by Adolfo Garc and Gerardo Ua

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

1. Is Anybody Listening? Assessing the Influence of Think Tanks

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Al-Qaeda 20 32 47 84 87 114 146 150 232 231 288 271

Anti missile defense 12 30 66 38 31 115 61 119 63 73 71 169

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Anti missile defense 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 8 1 1 5

Total 0 1 3 10 9 12 26 31 96 123 129 296

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Number of testimonies 1 2 3 4 5 8 9 9 10 14 22 33 120

8. Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, 20 May 2004. 9. Ibid.

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Irak 3 8 17 24 42 53 60 104 119 124 246 247

Afganistn 0 1 6 12 11 17 22 64 34 60 102 106

11/9 0 7 9 41 28 35 39 137 76 58 140 164

Terrorism Anti missile defense 1 10 10 44 41 60 68 179 120 136 262 291 4 2 4 5 6 4 26 26 8 18 24 43

Irak 1 5 9 16 37 25 34 71 48 104 104 138

Terrorism Anti missile defense 3 3 10 28 34 57 50 63 72 89 93 161 1 2 4 2 12 1 6 10 16 10 5 18

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Terrorism Anti missile defense 1 6 14 18 26 34 32 40 59 60 63 73 0 2 0 10 0 1 1 9 4 7 2 3

Total 5 16 41 69 81 100 127 164 193 208 212 251 1,467

Irak 6 21 26 33 43 66 167 190 107 188 213 342

11/9 8 19 14 21 50 60 80 111 132 104 124 298

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Irak 9 47 42 55 118 90 122 142 164 133 179 295

11/9 8 23 36 49 56 99 69 97 77 102 114 186

Table A4.7 Television Exposure of Selected Think Tanks: ABC

Terrorism Anti missile defense 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 5 13 15 21 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 2 0 1 3

Total 0 0 0 1 1 2 2 13 25 35 57 109 245

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Table A4.8 Television Exposure of Selected Think Tanks: CBS

Terrorism Anti missile defense 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 2 5 8 6 11 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 1

Table A4.9 Television Exposure of Selected Think Tanks: CNN

Terrorism Anti missile defense 0 0 0 0 2 2 6 6 4 0 17 13 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 3 0 1

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Table A4.10 Television Exposure of Selected Think Tanks: NBC

Terrorism Anti missile defense 0 0 0 0 1 2 1 1 2 10 12 28 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

2. Think Tanks and Political Parties in Canada: Competitors or Collaborators?

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

USA (Brookings model)

USA (Vanity model)

Rarely associated with a party. Infrequent, but occasional exchange of personnel.

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America

Think Tanks and Public Policies in Latin America