Exercising power through expertise and more: the role of private policy research institutes and think tanks networks

Panel Chairs:

Dieter Plehwe, WZB (Social Science Research Center Berlin), Germany, plehwe@wzb.eu

Benoit Monange, Institute of Political Studies of Grenoble, France, benmonange@hotmail.com

Abstract:

This panel proposes to investigate private policy research institutes as archetypical institutions with regard to the knowledge power nexus. Beyond the recognition of the role of think tanks in politicizing science we would like papers to advance the understanding of the various roles think tanks play as key organizations and key social technologies (compare Stone 2007) in support of (possibly conflicting) power elites and governance regimes. Papers can focus inter alia on different processes and dynamics including (de-)legitimating roles with regard to expertise and / or the strategic development of discourse communities and coalitions. We would like the panel to help better understanding the mediating role think tanks and think tank professionals obtain (between experts, politicians, interest groups, media etc.) and ask if the rise of a new professional class can be observed.

Different approaches are of particular interest to better understand the role of think tanks and experts in this perspective. The focus can either be narrowed to think tank analysts themselves by asking how those policy experts recycle or reinvest legitimacy gained in the academic sphere to weigh in the public debate. Another important puzzle is the question how think tank analysts are able to maintain "academic" or "scientific" standards, reputations, and credibility while engaging in advocacy or partisanship. Widening the focus think tanks can be observed in the context of wider  networks, possibly conceptualized as infrastructure of "policy discourse coalitions" (Fischer 1991) thus positioning them in intertwined sets of elite institutions and identifying their role in the diffusion of particular policy instruments, recipes or advice. Last but not least, focusing more closely on their discursive production through a Foucaultian frame, think tanks can be analyzed as participating to the production of a "governing science" (Payre 2009), which combines the political uses of knowledge production with a scientific rationalization of politics.  This list of possible themes and questions is by no means complete. Welcome are papers that involve a process perspective and in any case go beyond think tank stereotypes invoking innovation and effectiveness by way of asking what kinds of knowledge, expertise and advice are advanced by think tanks and to what end.