David Frum recently left the American Enterprise Institute, leaving troubling questions in his wake. Paul Krugman suggested he was a victim of AEI’s determination to brook no dissent from the Republican line on health care legislation. Charles Murray insisted this was balderdash, claiming that the organization remains committed to intellectual freedom. He thinks it is more likely that Frum’s departure was a result of his disappointing performance as a team player – for example, his failure to contribute regularly to the AEI blog. Frum, for his part, has been mostly mum.
While we find this controversy intriguing in its own right (gossip… inside hardball… what could be better?), we think it misses some broader points in the way the market for think tank services is evolving. Over the last two decades, the top-drawer policy shops (AEI and Brookings) are more dependent on proactive fund-raising – and, by no coincidence, are more amenable to playing partisan games and keener to be in the public eye.
These changes have, in turn, altered the role of the policy wonks who inhabit the space. First, there is much greater pressure to be visible; occupation of elite real estate like the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal is seen as critical to raising money. And while the think tanks still do a lot of quasi-academic research, they are more inclined to hire pundits with great rolodexes (make that great Outlook contacts).
Note, too, that to stay in the limelight, think tanks are adjusting their time horizons. Tomorrow’s issues matter less than today’s. Accordingly, publication in refereed technical journals – especially the ones that make no effort to be journalist-friendly – counts less for promotion and status.
Finally, the market for think tank services seems to be fragmenting: success lies in greater specialization along the liberal-conservative spectrum. That means the full-service policy palaces are less inclined to hire pundits and scholars of varying ideological persuasion. Of course, many think tanks are born specialized; but the pressures to define their missions in narrower ideological terms have also impacted the two venerable biggies.
The big question, of course, is whether money and media are undermining the think tanks’ contributions to public policy discourse. We’re not thrilled with the trend, but neither are we especially alarmed. The barriers to entry to the think-tank business are relatively low and falling. And in this increasingly competitive marketplace for ideas, the reality that cash and interest-group politics loom larger is partly offset by the growing potential for useful policy insights to reach lawmakers and the public.
I attend several think tank presentations per week and I cross ideological borders. Before the recession, most of the functions included breakfast or lunch. Depending on the think tank, there was served what I heard someone refer to as the “official think tank box lunch,” a cold buffet, or in the case of AEI, a hot buffet. There was a wide range of breakfasts also. You might be seated at tables or in rows of chairs. At AEI it was usually tables with tablecloths.
Since the financial meltdown, the fare has gotten poorer at most think tanks, you are more likely to be seated in rows, and there are many more presentations between meal times. Most presentations are now live on webinar, so they can probably show their donors that total attendance is up. I find that when I watch webinars rather than attend live sessions, my attention drifts to other things, but I do not know if that is a factor in think tank cost-benefit analysis.
Another thing that seems to have happened is that think tank sessions are more politically and ideologically diverse than they were before the recession. I do not have a statistically valid sample, but this is my impression, perhaps to be served with a grain of salt. It may be the case that one cannot shove the party line down guests’ throats without food and drink, so a higher quality of presentation is required. Thus I find the presentations to be more intellectually stimulating than they were before. I miss the food and networking opportunities that are more readily available when you are seated at tables. They still do not leave enough time for Q&A, nor do most moderators know how to control speeches by the attendees during this time.
Cash is king, and always has been. Krugman’s comment (if accurately reported, as I did not see it myself) fits with the approach he generally takes. So does the Murray comment, although I regret that Murray has to sideswipe Frum. In moments of extreme partisan/ideological/interest group cleaveage, the opportunity for reasoned debate across the lines will be very small.
Of course there is a more basic point. Anyone can create a think tank. But no think tank is likely to sustain itself unless it represents some interest that has a potential constituency with a big financial appeal. Note, for example, how limited is the support for any serious discussion of of the underlying racial-ethnic issues in the American polity.
Another factor is at work. Any think tank with any degree of self-respect produces honest assessments of public policy. These assessment support the business interests of some companies and thwart the interests of others. The art of think tank fund raising consists largely of finding potential supporters who agree and persuading them that it is in their interest to keep the work going. As a part of this, the institution will indeed turn its attention to the areas of interest to its supporters. a frequent mantra used by think tanks is “you can’t buy our opinion, but you can certainly rent out attention.”
Over the past couple of years, think tanks have had a hard time while DC influence peddlers have had their finest revenue years ever. The reason is that few companies think the government is really interested in actual good policy — DC has become a morass of favoritism and rent seeking, and that is where the companies believe they will get the biggest bang for their buck.
It is similar to a time a decade or so ago, when a representative of a large industrial company told me that his firm used to spend a lot on writing good comments in EPA proceedings, but eventually it realized that the agency had no interest in honest debate, and would always push as far as it could politically. “So,” he said, “we took all that public affairs money out of comment writing and put it into our PAC.”
Interesting to note that Brookings Executive Education division is hooking up with Washington University in St. Louis. I wonder what additional revenue stream or cost avoidance they think it will bring?
It’s a shame AEI or Heritage don’t have similar certificate programs.
[...] Hahn (until recently of AEI) and Peter Passell offer a lesson from the David Frum firing: While we find this controversy intriguing in its own right (gossip… [...]