Policy Wonks Spat
An interesting little spat about the importance and impact of think tanks is going on within (a section) of the policy wonk community.
Rob Blackhurst, formerly of the Foreign Policy Centre, has published a piece in the New Statesman titled ‘The sad decline of the policy wonks in which he argues ‘The British policy wonk has never been more in demand’, but that ‘enslaved by corporate sponsors, [the think tanks] no longer have a significant influence on the political parties’.
First off, he implies there are too many think tanks: ‘In London alone, more than 40 think-tanks spew forth glossy tracts on everything from banning the advertising of junk food and allowing the royal princes to marry Catholics to winning the European constitution referendum and cutting single mothers’ benefits’. A consequence of this, he suggests, is over-specialism: ‘As in all crowded markets, think-tanks have had to diversify into niche markets’. Nevertheless, he argues, there is healthy competition and constant stream of work within the think tanks… ‘Underemployed members of the intelligentsia can fill whole working days flitting between breakfast seminars, policy lunches and power drinks in think-tank land, SW1′.
Yet, he argues, ‘the think-tanks are failing in their main aim: to influence the policies of the political parties. Tony Blair is said to complain privately that new Labour think-tanks have failed to come up with policies that match his values in the way that the Institute of Economic Affairs helped Margaret Thatcher tear up the postwar consensus. Instead, Blair turns to John Birt for advice. Aside from a few neat ideas such as baby bonds, for which both the Fabians and the IPPR claim paternity, it is hard to think of any policy for which think-tanks made the running’.
He argues that ‘it is the politicians themselves who do the dreaming’ (he describes Gordon Brown as a ‘think-tank made flesh’) and while many key policy ideas are launched through think-tank speeches, ‘the policy wonks just provided the venue and the vol-au-vents’.
Why does he think this is so? His diagnosis is straightforward:
The problem for most British think-tanks is money - always in short supply, it has to be spread more thinly as they proliferate. You won’t hear ideas being discussed very much in think-tank offices: organising the next event, publishing the next policy paper and chasing funding must come before changing the world. To survive, most have to turn themselves into unofficial lobbyists. Corporate sponsors pay (the going rate is about £4,000) to have their chairman or chief executive at the same event as a cabinet minister - sometimes so that he has the chance for a discreet whisper, sometimes to borrow a bit of respectability.
His concern here is not one of corruption - ‘[it] may sound dodgy, but no great harm is done; after all, everyone knows who’s paying’ - but, rather, ‘how corporate cash skews research agendas’. He claims:
The think-tanks are trapped by their paymasters into a bland managerialism, and thus become depoliticised. Corporate paymasters usually want to avoid partisan political debates. It is less easy to fund a seminar on the future of the National Health Service and the welfare state than one on the regulation of financial services or telecoms - issues that impinge directly on corporate profits. So Demos - which made huge waves in the 1990s, but now seems to have left the political sphere entirely, floating away on its own verbiage - worked with Cable & Wireless on a project about the “future of telecoms regulation”. It duly concluded that Cable & Wireless’s main rival, BT, should be broken up, leading to the Guardian headline: “Break up BT, says Demos. Its sponsor? C&W.”
He also worries about the quality of work and the depth of analysis:
The biggest symptom of empty think-tank coffers is poor-quality research that owes a great deal to Google. The researchers are mostly recent graduates on low wages and the turnover is high. The Fabians’ recent calls for a rewrite of Clause Four and an increase in tax were no more or less profound than a leader column in a national newspaper. Journalists have realised that much of this research sent for them to write about is wafer-thin.
His thoughts heavily echo some those of Martin Jacques, one of the founders of Demos, who stuck the boot into his old organisation in a recent comment piece in the Guardian (’We’re all teenagers now - Age and wisdom have been cast out of our infantilised society‘), the key difference being Jacques clearly thinks they are influential, but a rather negative force:
Once political parties were served by research departments, staffed by people with a range of experience, while the media, for expert commentary, drew on academics and specialists, who were possessed of considerable expertise. That was before the rise of the political thinktanks, which have now usurped the role of the research departments and diminished the use of academics and other experts. The thinktanks mark the triumph of political adolescence over experience. This is not to decry all of their output, but as a cultural form their staff are generally extremely young, utterly lacking in experience, devoid of the wisdom that only life can teach, and profoundly voguish in inclination. In short, they travel light.
Nor is it an accident that thinktanks, which measure their influence by the number of column inches of newspaper coverage they get, not the quality of their ideas, exist in a symbiotic relationship with a media that has become addicted to the soundbite appeal of the latest policy wheeze rather than serious reflection. Nor is it difficult to see how New Labour also belongs to, and helps to articulate, this culture - in its rejection of the past, its deployment of the word “new”, and its obsession with recruiting advisers and spin doctors, often from these same thinktanks’
‘[...] Thinktanks may wheeze, but they are never profound. [...] An adolescent culture is one that lives on the surface, unencumbered by memory, light on knowledge and devoid of wisdom.
Ouch!
Unsurprisingly, the current Demos staff have had a word or two to say about this (see Demosgreenhouse and Guardian letters page).
Jacques’ tirade probably has some elements of truth within it but, ultimately, is a bizarre rant that has little place in a serious paper like the Guardian. Blackhurst’s critique carries more weight and concludes in a more balanced fashion:
Good think-tanks are still vital for good politics. They bridge the gap between the rarefied circles of academia and the bite-sized proposals demanded by politicians and the media. Contemporary politicians - burdened with running departments, pacifying the media and keeping constituents happy - hardly get a chance to see their families, let alone have the time to come up with workable policies.
Ultimately, he argues, the think-tanks ‘dream of importing into the UK the philanthropic culture of the US, which supports industrial-sized think-tanks whose huge endowments give them complete intellectual freedom. But rich individuals in Britain are never going to give the amounts needed. If we want serious, well-researched policy-making, free from corporate whim, the state will have to pay for it’.
Indeed, I am often puzzled as to how the major think tanks can make ends meet. Similarly, given the precarious nature of their funding, I am unsure how anyone manages to carve out a long term career in them. Given this context, it is hardly surprising that think tanks have a youthful flavour.
With limited funding and short deadlines it seems quite right that think tanks should look to be a conduit between government and academe. Research by Google is not always a bad thing - there is a mass of untapped knowledge in universities that could be brought to a wider audience, so why reinvent the wheel?
Indeed, if anything, the truth is probably somewhere between the position of Jacques and Blackhurst. Contra Blackhurst, I would argue think tanks are an influential force and have the potential to be a major player in most policy networks. Why else would Jacques be so upset?!? Aside from anything else, the main think tanks have been the training ground for the Director of the 10 Downing Street Policy Unit for much of Blair’s time as PM (David Miliband, ex-IPPR, 1997-2001; Geoff Mulgan, Demos founder, 2003-4; and, Matthew Taylor, ex-Director of IPPR, 2004-present. The missing figure here is Andrew Adonis, who headed it 2001-3, was a Demos Associate but a peripheral figure)
Yet, Jacques is probably correct when he suggests that many of those who would have advised government in the past have been squeezed out of Whitehall by the think tanks. While some seconded academics have played major policy roles in Number 10 (e.g. Julian Le Grand has been seconded to Downing Street from the LSE since 2003) it’s a far cry from the days when Abel-Smith was a central player in Barbara Castles’ DHSS team…
