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Notes -
Ideological Institutions
The other day I was explaining my understanding of think tanks to a younger friend. They had a reaction of "no way!? Is that really how they work". This is the most common reaction, followed by "yeah of course that's how they work, why are you telling me this like I'm stupid?"
The purpose of ideological Institutions is two-fold:
These may sound like they are at cross purposes, but they are not. A successful think tank does both very well.
Some of you here might have the immediate complaint somewhat along the lines:
Universities can also be ideological Institutions but they don't have their people paying a tax on their beliefs. But this isn't true on two dimensions:
I think the existence of these ideological Institutions has had an overall negative effect on American politics. Similar to news organizations they benefit from ongoing political conflict.
But they are also a necessary set of institutions for balancing out democracy. They act as a way for people who care and hold strong beliefs to feel like they have more of an impact on politics than their single vote would normally allow.
I think this is too cynical. The way I view most think tanks is doing the hard work of translating abstract ideological principles into actual policy. If I have a belief like "the criminal justice system treats wealthy people better than poor people to an unjust degree" I can't just go pass a law that says "the criminal justice system shall treat people more justly with respect to wealth disparities." Someone has to do the hard work of figuring out how my complaint actually manifests in the system (cash bail) and what policies could alleviate it (getting rid of cash bail). Viewed this way, the work of think tanks is necessary in our modern government. No legislator can be a domain expert on every area they are called to legislate on. Think tanks help that by synthesizing a legislators ideological commitments with domain expertise to produce palatable and effective policy.
I thought it was cynical too before I worked in a think tank. After working in one, and interacting with others in it. Their response is somewhere along the lines of "not cynical enough". Some of them don't even think of the first one as a point of think tanks. They just see think tanks purely as extractive entities from rich people that don't know what to do with their money.
What you describe is happening to some degree. I just think it is a minority of the resource spending and allocation. If it is more than 10% you have a rock solid institution. Average is closer to 1%. And bad ones are some negative percentage, in that they spend resources from their ideology only to actively hurt and confuse the cause they care about. PETA is an example of that.
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