Think tanks, politics and science

Teppo Eskelinen

The soil on which think tanks emerge

• Ever less clear demarcation between academia, independent research units, NGOs, lobby organisations, etc.

• Pressures to popularise social science• Change in politics: from “big ideologies” to

governance• In Finland: practically, part of the attempt to

involve citizens in politics

A think tank identity?

• Clearly, some think tanks are closer to research, some to NGOs/charities, some to lobbies.

• Is there a need to find a ”think tank” identity, or rather to acknowledge the pluralism of producers of social scientific knowledge and the related problems of reliability?

The demarcation (1)

• Think tanks can exist only for propaganda reasons (for example climate change denialism)

• The difficulty to demarcate between propaganda and social scientific schools of thought (For example, marxism vs liberalism)

• Think tanks typically have no criterion of “peer review” for assessing methodological choices

• Rather, open choice whether or not to use such; or attempts to create something resembling peer review

The demarcation (2)

• The choice between social scientific schools of thought is always “political”, there is no “value-free” social science… there is little reason to draw a sharp distinction between “fact” and “value” in social science.

• Social science does not appear as having a sharp demarcation criterion, but rather having “scientific values”; of course , the institutional form of a think tank leaves you free not to honor these values…

• Integrity?

The demarcation (3)

• Scientific research does not resolve political disputes, but it can show immediately wrong or suspect claims.

• Think tanks can do the same, but pick their topics more flexibly

Difference to politics

• A key demarcation is also the difference to politics

• Think tanks: doing politics with a longer-term vision, social scientific concepts, systematic analysis.

• Often politics has problems communicating a long-term vision, only day-to-day politics

What we do?

• 1 “Social visions”: conceptual innovation, wider normative ideas

• 2 Analysis based on somewhat lighter methodology than typical social science; for example analysis based on expert interviews

• 3 Under-explored topics with social relevance