Think Tank Trouble, Transition Teams, and Presidents’ Historians
Here’s What You Need to Know
Think tanks have long been considered one of the last bastions of thoughtful, intellectual analysis in the political arena. A recent investigative series by The New York Times and the New England Center for Investigative Reporting has outlined a number of instances in which they claim think tanks have offered particular corporate or political interests a way to influence policymakers with more subtlety than traditional shoe-leather lobbying. This story offers an important lesson: finding and analyzing information on organizations (including think tanks) that might support, oppose, or be persuaded to your cause is critical to achieving public affairs objectives.
Examples of the intersection between think tanks and particular interests identified by The New York Times include:
- Brookings Institution and Lennar Corporation: One of the primary examples of corporate influence of a think tank has been home building giant Lennar Corporation’s relationship with the Brookings Institute. After contributing $400,000 to the think tank, Brookings began aggressively touting the company’s $8 billion San Francisco development plan and even appointed Lennar executive Kofi Bonner as a senior fellow. The Brookings seal of approval no doubt carried some weight with city officials when Lennar sought approval for various elements of the project.
- The Atlantic Council and FedEx: The Atlantic Council, a foreign policy-focused think tank, went so far as to publicly team up with FedEx to push for free-trade policies, essentially intertwining the think tank’s advocacy and a corporation’s government affairs operation. One of the internal memos circulated before a report on the TTIP trade deal was even released actually went so far as to list lobbying efforts as one of the purposes of the report. The Atlantic Council argued that FedEx had only donated $20,000 to the effort.
- Scholars or Lobbyists? The report also found that 75 different think tanks had scholars who also worked as lobbyists, paid consultants, or corporate board members. For example, a Brookings senior fellow for health care policy was advocating for a particular Hepatitis-C treatment while earning a six-figure salary on the board of the pharmaceutical company producing the treatment. A former Senator serving as a visiting fellow on energy issues for centrist think tank Third Way also worked as a registered lobbyist for a waste-to-energy facilities company. These are all relationships that opponents of these lobbying efforts need to know in order to gain an information advantage for their own counter-advocacy efforts.
- Ballooning Budgets: The Brookings Institutions’ budget has grown to nearly $100 million over the past decade, but other major think tanks have also gone on spending sprees. CSIS – whose donors include energy, financial, and defense companies – recently built a new $100 million office tower. The American Enterprise Institute has also announced a new $80 million headquarters.
Many in the think tank community argue there are systems in place to ensure that donors are not able to impede on the independence of the research and reports. Regardless, it is clear think tanks can and are being used as new tools to influence policymakers. Those seeking to influence policymakers must understand how different individuals and organizations can be leveraged to stymie or achieve their public affairs goals.
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