Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
AND GLOBAL
POLITICS
Key Spaces in the Structure of Power
Edited by
Alejandra Salas-Porras and Georgina Murray
Think Tanks and Global Politics
Alejandra Salas-Porras · Georgina Murray
Editors
Think Tanks
and Global Politics
Key Spaces in the Structure of Power
Editors
Alejandra Salas-Porras Georgina Murray
National Autonomous Griffith University
University of Mexico Nathan, QLD
Mexico City Australia
Mexico
We are very excited to be able to bring you our controversial book about
think tanks and their machinations. We have worked from a broad defi-
nitional base of what a think tank is, which includes those organizations
that specialize in researching and disseminating public policy ideas. But
our lens focuses on the world of politics through the eye of power: who
has it, who uses it, and who controls it. This takes our definition of think
tanks further than the standard meaning to elaborate on the role they
play in constructing, reproducing, and (in a few cases) challenging pre-
vailing relations of authority and influence. So we add to our queries a
question about their roles in key organizational networks that enable
them to produce and disseminate policy ideas to assist elites in the con-
struction and exercise of, as well as challenges to, power—particularly
through knowledge production, concentration, and mobilization. They
are, we suggest, the permanent [but covert] persuaders.
We move from the existing “liminal” position occupied by think tanks
in the literature, which makes them look neutral, objective, and inde-
pendent, distanced from particular interests, to a new perspective that
focuses on their relationships with structures of power (at the global,
regional, and national levels). Traditional analytical distancing from sites
of power may have enhanced the think tanks’ ability to persuade, as it
allows them to disguise, or at least make less obvious, their connections
and commitments to power, power elites, and particular interests in gen-
eral. We have taken it upon ourselves to look forensically at these covert
v
vi Preface
institutions and their relations with power, to assist with the academic
process of examining their accountability.
We do not suggest that all think tanks take the same paths or have the
same objectives or interests. They do not. They follow different paths,
and this is where the expertize of our international authors from Mexico,
Australia, Canada, Europe, and the United Kingdom are able to provide
us with unique insights into how think tanks operate in different loca-
tions. They give us a drone-like comparative look across their different
locations, functions, and order—thus one group of think tanks special-
izes in neoliberal persuasion on policy makers in executive or legislative
branches, while a second group targets the way public opinion is targeted
to produce a groundswell impact that ultimately makes their bargaining
position more effective. A third group—more internally oriented—aims to
persuade members and participants of a particular idea or policy approach,
to develop forms of cohesion and solidarity among elites, reconciling divi-
sions, mobilizing members, and projecting a unified vision to increase
their leverage vis-à-vis policy makers, labor and government officials.
Some think tanks combine to different degrees these and other mecha-
nisms to convince or put pressure on policy makers. Opposing the right
are the alternative policy groups and left-wing think tanks that devise simi-
lar strategies to gain credibility, but are focused instead on rolling back the
neoliberal agenda; they operate from opposing activist communities.
In short, this book focuses in all those organizations that create ideas
to influence policy and activist communities, particularly think tanks and
employer (business) associations.
We would like to thank all the authors (and their partners) who gave
us their valuable time and expertize to complete this book. We would
also like to thank Prof. Heidi Gottfried, president of the ISA Economic
Sociology branch that financed the workshop for the authors in this
book to meet in Vienna in 2016. This workshop was the basis on which
this work was produced and we are grateful for her support.
Finally, we want to dedicate this book to working people everywhere
when they are subject to unfair duping by these factories of persuasion
that make the fight for equity just so much more difficult but that much
more necessary.
vii
viii Contents
Index 265
Editors and Contributors
ix
x Editors and Contributors
Contributors
for Social Economics, and The Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Change.
He recently co-edited with, the late‚ Fred Lee‚ The Handbook of Research
Methods in Heterodox Economics, Edward Elgar.
Karin Fischer teaches development studies and global sociology at
Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria. She heads the Department
for Policy and Development Research at the Institute of Sociology. Her
research interests are uneven development, neoliberal transformation,
and class formation from at ransnational perspective. She has published
numerous books, book chapters, and articles on north-south relations.
Her monograph on the history of class formation in Chile (Eine Klasse
für sich, 2011) was published in Spanish by Ediciones Universidad
Alberto Hurtado 2017.
Matilde Luna is a researcher at the Institute of Social Research of the
National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She holds a
Ph.D. in Political Science and is a member of the National System of
Researchers. Her academic work has focused on business and politics,
the generation and diffusion of knowledge, and associative performance.
Recently, she has co-edited the books ¿Quién gobierna América del
Norte?: Elites, redes y organizaciones (Mexico: UNAM/SITESA, 2012)
and ¿Cómo se gobierna América del Norte? Estrategias, instituciones y
políticas públicas (Mexico: UNAM/SITESA, 2014).
David Peetz is a Professor of Employment Relations in the Centre for
Work, Organisation and Wellbeing at Griffith University, Queensland,
Australia. He previously worked at the Australian National University
and in the then Commonwealth Department of Industrial Relations,
spending over 5 years in its Senior Executive Service. He has been
a consultant for the International Labour Organisation in Thailand,
Malaysia, Geneva,and China, and has undertaken work for unions,
employers, and governments of both political persuasions. He is a co-
researcher at the Interuniversity Research Centre on Globalization and
Work (CRIMT) based in Canada. He is on the Board of the Union
Education Foundation and has written on union training, membership
and delegates, gender, working time, workplace relations, wages and
industrial Relations policy, individualism and collectivism, sustainability,
and many other topics. He is the author of Unions in a Contrary World
(Cambridge University Press, 1998) and Brave New Workplace (Allen &
Unwin, 2006), co-author of Women of the Coal Rushes (UNSW Press,
xii Editors and Contributors
xiii
xiv Acronyms and Abbreviations
xvii
List of Tables
xix
CHAPTER 1
A. Salas-Porras (*)
National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico City, Mexico
G. Murray
Griffith University, Nathan, QLD, Australia
Conceptual Framework
The literature on think tanks (e.g. Kandiah and Seldon 2013; Medvetz
2012; Shaw et al. 2014; Stone and Denham 2004) has struggled to
reach a broadly accepted definition of the concept due to the hybrid and
ambivalent character of these organizations, which adopt very diverse
forms, roles and characteristics. The differences in the definition of think
tanks refer to the level of autonomy of these organizations, not only
6 A. Salas-Porras and G. Murray
from the financial and organizational groups they may be affliated with
(e.g. NGOs, Business Lobby Groups or Labour Assoications) but also
from the ideological viewpoint: how overt are the think tank’s affini-
ties and commitments within the economic and political interests and
doctrines, and to what degree do these doctrines lead to activism, the
construction and definition of agendas, and the shaping of public opin-
ion? Yet all think tanks combine in different ways to do varying degrees
of research activities, advocacy and activism, and they all compete to
voice their ideas to a community of public officials, legislators and politi-
cal elites. On the one hand, this combination entails an intermediate role
in the structure of power, where several fields interlink and overlap, mak-
ing their situation elusive and murky. On the other, the multiple roles
played by these organizations (research, advocacy, dissemination and
defence of policy ideas, production and legitimation of knowledge) make
a clear-cut definition more difficult (Plehwe 2015).
The line that divides think tanks focusing on scientific and academic
research from those that emphasize dissemination of ideas or politi-
cal activism becomes increasingly faint, although in one way or another
they all try to connect knowledge with public policy, and their experts
with politicians. The knowledge they produce has varying ideological
content, depending on the social agenda pursued by each think tank. In
other words, knowledge is produced in organizations with strong aca-
demic objectives, approaching policy problems from diverse theoretical
perspectives but with a keen eye on their ability to impact on the process
of policy-making.
Think tanks constitute spaces where public policies are designed, dis-
cussed, planned and evaluated. But the knowledge produced by think
tanks is influenced closely by their special links to business, labour or
other interest groups, putting forward and defending policies in their
favour and building consensus around such policies. Therefore, these
spaces cannot be understood as isolated from particular interests and
preferences, exhibiting a neutral commitment to scientific knowledge as
might be the case with scientific research centres—although even those
are often linked to public policy networks, either at the level of individual
researchers or the institutions themselves.
The dominant narrative, very much influenced by Weberian and lib-
eral theoretical approaches, contends that think tanks respond to changes
in the economic model, which in turn generate changes in public admin-
istration and the bureaucratic and legislative apparatus. As rationalization
1 THINK TANKS AND GLOBAL POLITICS … 7
Over the past two decades, institutionalism (e.g. Powell and DiMaggio
2012) has become increasingly important in the study of think tanks,
raising additional tensions between those who try to find the connections
of ideas to institutions and those who link knowledge, power and insti-
tutions. From this perspective, Abelson (2002) asks about the relevance
of think tanks and how they become involved in the definition of public
policies. He assesses their influence on their ability to help define public
policies by weighing their presence in the media (citations) and hearings
before Congress, concluding that their influence varies notably through-
out the process: from the definition of the agenda, the formulation of
particular policies and the formation of a favourable public opinion. This
institutionalist approach also focuses on the history of each think tank
and the changes think tanks undergo over time. Their narratives tend to
be descriptive, except when they explicitly try to account for the emer-
gence of these organizations in different countries or regions.
Another analytical line of the institutionalist approach focuses on
the involvement of think tanks in policy communities, and in particular
how they produce knowledge and the mechanisms whereby they shape
knowledge–power relations. This line of research draws on the concept
of epistemic communities introduced by Haas (1992), which can help
us understand how think tanks build knowledge communities in areas of
public interest, as well as the ways in which such communities are pro-
duced and reproduced in the multiple venues, meeting and discussions
of an increasingly intricate network. This network greatly facilitates the
circulation of elites. As they design and evaluate public policies, they
generate inter-subjective processes, breeding consensus. The ideas and
visions of public policy are elaborated and re-elaborated in the interac-
tions that integrate national, regional and international actors. Within
the context of these networks, think tanks create spaces of discussion and
reflection where epistemic communities emerge—that is, communities
of experts, policy wonks, technocrats, academic, intellectual and business
elites, concentrating on the knowledge and information relevant to the
most important issues of public interest. This is how a common vision of
the different policy problems happens, but more importantly, patterns of
reasoning and mutual understandings among elites become increasingly
homogeneous and naturalized (Salas-Porras 2012).
In a similar constructivist vein of institutionalism, Rich (2011, 2004)
and Campbell and Pedersen (2011) argue that think tanks not only
produce ideas but also reflect and elaborate on this dominant thinking.
1 THINK TANKS AND GLOBAL POLITICS … 9
of power: first, redefining the institutional rules that certify and legiti-
mize the knowledge they produce and disseminate; and second, con-
structing dominant policy discourses on the basis of this knowledge.
According to Medvetz (2012), the dynamics of the field of think tanks
revolves around the tension between, on the one hand, a universalist
claim to reason and intellectual proficiency and, on the other, the pur-
suit of worldly power. He highlights that the inherent difficulties in
accurately defining think tanks stem from the intermediary position they
hold, the various roles they simultaneously play and the murky charac-
teristics of the space they control. They achieve a stronger position in
the field of power when they accumulate the right combination of dif-
ferent kinds of capital: academic prestige and credentials, argumentative
proficiency, fundraising ability, quasi-entrepreneurial styles, presence and
access to the media.5
Despite some differences between Campbell and Pedersen (2011) and
Medvetz (2012), they agree on the key role played by think tanks in the
production and reproduction of knowledge. But whereas Campbell and
Pederson use a comparative approach to understand the role of think
tanks in the context of different knowledge regimes, Medvetz concen-
trates on the US experience, and how think tanks change as they com-
pete to control the norms required to produce and legitimize public
policy knowledge. Although they agree on some of the most important
characteristics of American think tanks, Campbell and Pederson high-
light their tendency to compete for funds and demonstrate the superior-
ity of the ideas and policy proposals they put forward, as well as to gain
credibility and legitimacy from public officials, legislators and the public
opinion in general, whereas Medvetz argues that coordination between
American think tanks only occurs as they struggle to define the rules
needed to produce, disseminate and legitimize public policy knowledge,
in the process changing their affiliations and level of autonomy or het-
eronomy (i.e. dependence on certain interests). In addition, according
to Medvetz, think tanks and experts invent new ideas and articulate pol-
icy discourses. In this way, they cut across the arbitrary division between
practical and scientific knowledge. As a result, think tanks construct the
norms and conventions that connect intellectual and political practices,
besides regulating the circulation of knowledge, delimiting the ideas
valid for public policies, and encouraging their experts to cross the fron-
tiers between different social spheres (political, economic and media).
To participate in public debates, it is necessary to follow the rules
12 A. Salas-Porras and G. Murray
In Chap. 4, Matilde Luna and José Luis Velasco assess the extent to
which transnational governance networks really represent a global pub-
lic opinion. In the absence of institutions that sustain and guarantee this
claim, they must constitute themselves and act in accordance with two
opposing principles: coherence and openness. Both their legitimacy and
efficacy depend on their ability to strike an appropriate balance between
these principles. To analyze the practical challenges stemming from this
requirement, they focus on the Trilateral Commission (TC), a network-
like think tank that brings together leaders of several influential think
tanks and outstanding personalities from business corporations, political
organizations, and academic institutions and media firms. The TC has
been an important player in the transnational arena. The analysis shows
that this think tank is highly coherent but excessively endogamous:
rather than reflecting the diversity of the global public opinion, it only
reunites an exclusive group of pro-US leaders, members of transnational
corporations and partisans of free trade. Thus, the TC is a coherent but
closed network, very powerful but scarcely representative. Ironically,
a network that promotes the idea of ‘soft power’ in the international
arena—a power founded on persuasion rather than force and material
interests—heavily depends on the hard power of established hierarchies.
The closed European Bilderberg Conferences also give us another
marker regarding the direction of elite think tanks’ organization and
coordination, an issue analyzed in Chap. 5 by Aleksander Miłosz
Zieliński. The Bilderberg meetings are examined to highlight the impor-
tance of informal governance for elite cohesion. Zieliński contends that
in order to analyze the intersection between economy and politics, it is
necessary to take into account formal and especially informal institutions,
like the Bilderberg meetings, in which powerful people from both fields
interact with each other. Using original material, which provides a list of
participants of Bilderberg meetings at two points in time, he compares
the characteristics of the group attending in the years 1954–1959 with
those of the group meetings in the period 2008–2014. He describes the
composition of these groups according to national origin, age and gen-
der, as well as the professions and sectors of industry from which they
come, and the positions of political power they hold. He later exam-
ines the changes that have occurred regarding the dominant industries,
nationality, gender and the age of the participants.
The US Business Roundtable—which is analyzed by Bruce Cronin
in Chap. 6—provides an interesting extension on the legitimizing claim
16 A. Salas-Porras and G. Murray
core subject of this chapter, which discovers the links of these networks
to the Mont Pèlerin Society founded by Friedrich August von Hayek,
Milton Friedman and others in 1947. Partisan think tanks were founded,
and are run or directed, by hundreds of Mont Pèlerin Society members,
which have subsequently developed threads of informal and formal net-
work structures. This chapter compares five Latin American networks of
the neoliberal right, and the European Stockholm and New Direction
Networks. Commonalities can be explained partly by the strong pres-
ence of organized neoliberals in both networks. About two-thirds of
interlocks between think tanks in the networks are Mont Pèlerin Society
members. While the founding and networking as such can be considered
an example of ‘strategic replication’ necessary to advance discourses in
the global, regional and national knowledge power structures, cross-
national organizing ties the separate elements together, and allows the
transnational diffusion and translation of neoliberal ideas, concepts and
social technologies in policy-making. The authors find two different
types of think tanks in the networks: public policy-oriented institutes and
ideological class struggle organizations. Transnational partisan think tank
networks have become an institutional form, which needs to comple-
ment transfer and diffuse models that focus on national institutional con-
figurations or the mechanism of global elite planning groups.
In Chap. 8, William Carroll and Elaine Coburn present a comparative
analysis of eight transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs)—five
from the Global South and three from the Global North—along with a
basic conceptual framework for understanding them as sites of cognitive
praxis—that is, forms of collective action ‘focused primarily and strategi-
cally on producing and mobilizing critical-reflexive knowledge for social
transformation’. The groups examined in this chapter seek (1) to create
empirically grounded knowledge that challenges hegemonic narratives,
(2) to advance alternative social/ecological practices and policies and (3)
to build capacity for social change from below. In all these respects, they
differ sharply from conventional think tanks, even when they do not fully
realize their counter-hegemonic aims. Each group addresses and works
with a specific constituency—a combination of movements, counter-pub-
lics, general publics and subaltern communities—but also aims its com-
municative efforts at ‘targets’ that may include mainstream media, states
and intergovernmental bodies. As they have pursued their distinct pro-
jects, TAPGs have devised a wide array of approaches to (co-)creating
alternative knowledge (often in partnership with allies) and to mobilizing
18 A. Salas-Porras and G. Murray
that knowledge for social change. In this way, each group makes a dis-
tinctive contribution to alternative knowledge formation and transforma-
tive politics. Despite these distinctions in vision, practical priorities and
ways of producing and mobilizing alternative knowledge, on the whole
TAPGs converge around a ‘master frame’ that advocates and envisages
global justice and ecological well-being, and that resonates with the con-
cerns of global justice activism. These case studies shed light on an emer-
gent form of counter-hegemony that complicates the transnational field
of policy planning by introducing radical alternatives, both in theory and
practice.
In Chap. 9, Sue Bradford thinks left-wing, left-funded, non-corpo-
rate-funded think tanks are not only possible but are necessary to provide
a sensible balance. She writes interestingly as an activist turned politician
then turned back into activism again, to give us a perspective that pro-
vides an alternative forum with an alternative set of goals and material
proposals. Her detailed dream is a road map for ‘a major left-wing think
tank in Aotearoa [New Zealand]’, but this has implications for others
elsewhere in what she outlines as a plan for action for further non-par-
tisan think tanks. She has started a new left think tank, Economic and
Social Research Aotearoa (ESRA), launched in New Zealand, in 2016.
Conclusion
We began this introduction with a very broad definition of think tanks
as all those organizations that specialize in researching and dissemination
of public policy ideas. But looking at world politics through the lens of
think tanks has revealed that this definition needs further elaboration in
order to stress the role they play in constructing, reproducing and chal-
lenging prevailing relations of power. An all-encompassing definition
underscoring the connection between think tanks and power—either
coercive or consensual—should add that these organizations specializ-
ing in producing and disseminating policy-making ideas are also mecha-
nisms by which elites construct, exercise or challenge power, particularly
through knowledge production, concentration and mobilization. Given
this connection between knowledge and power, think tanks are especially
good at generating consensual power, becoming ‘permanent persuaders’
but doing so as inconspicuously as possible.
This is because this ‘liminal’ position occupied by think tanks in the
structure of power (at the global, regional and national levels) makes
1 THINK TANKS AND GLOBAL POLITICS … 19
In short, this book focuses on all those organizations that create ideas
to influence policy and activist communities, in particular, think tanks
and employer (business) associations. Trade unions and the state are
beyond the scope of this book, not only because they have been stud-
ied elsewhere but mainly because creating ideas is only a small part of a
wider repertoire of their action. We are interested in how these organi-
zations are established and resourced, how they create ideas, what ideas
they create, why they do it, in whose interests they act and how they
distance themselves from those interests, what effects they have and what
limitations they face. All of this occurs in a range of contexts, situations,
countries and regions.
The conclusions reached by this book will revisit our definition of
think tanks in the light of our findings, answer the general questions
addressed in the book and point to future avenues of research.
Notes
1. He does not use the concept of the think tank, but rather that of the pol-
icy planning organization.
2. Confusingly, American liberal means a left-leaning individual whereas in
Australia a liberal is a conservative on the right wing.
3. According to Colin Crouch (2011, p. 145), the defence of the neoliberal
model is based on arguments stressing the virtues of the market, but in fact
they give enormous power to large corporations, the interests of which are
at the centre of institutional reforms.
4. Bourdieu (2005) defines the field of power as the network of relations
between organizations and agents competing to control resources in dif-
ferentiated spaces (economic, cultural, social and symbolic). Thus the
structure in each field—that is, the pattern of relations predominating in
each field—guides the strategies followed by occupants (agent and organi-
zations) to maximize capital—social, economic, political and cultural. Each
field represents an arena of struggle, whereby the structure of power and
the predominant groups are reconstituted.
5. In Medvetz’s (2012, pp. 45–46) words, think tanks ‘seek to occupy a limi-
nal structural position by gathering and juggling various forms of capital
acquired from different arenas: scholarly prestige and credentials, compe-
tence in specifically political forms of expression, money and fund-raising
ability, quasi-entrepreneurial styles, and access to the means of publicity.
This game is won, not just by gathering large amounts of capital, but by
establishing the right mixture’.
1 THINK TANKS AND GLOBAL POLITICS … 21
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CHAPTER 2
Alejandra Salas-Porras
Although think tanks have spread throughout the Global North since
the beginning of the twentieth century, they are a relatively new phe-
nomenon in Mexico. Since the 1990s, however, they have proliferated
rapidly, building networks that now play a key role in coordinating
elites in the country in order to influence public policies and strategies.
Particular policies that have been promoted over the past three decades
include those associated with the retreat of the state from the economy,
privatization and other neoliberal reforms, NAFTA and the set of new
rules this agreement has entailed. Policy experts affiliated with these
think tanks have become increasingly visible in the news media, and have
drawn together closely intertwined policy groups that decide on the
standards required to create and legitimize policy knowledge in different
areas.
Despite the greater visibility of these organizations and policy
experts in the news media, as well as in the most relevant public dis-
cussions, along with their influence on planning the economic and
A. Salas-Porras (*)
National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico
political reforms of the last three decades and the growing literature on
think tanks in both the Global North (Abelson 2000; McGann 2007;
Medvetz 2012; Rich 2004, 2011; Stone and Denham 2004) and Latin
America (Fisher and Plehwe, in this volume; Mendizabal and Sample
2009), little academic work has been undertaken on Mexican think
tanks. This chapter seeks to fill this void by analyzing their most impor-
tant characteristics: who controls them; the networks they have con-
structed over the past 25 years; the strategies they pursue to influence
policy-making; the most influential ideological orientations; and the
extent to which the Mexican think tank network is linked to regional or
international networks. I argue that the landscape of Mexican organi-
zations undertaking policy research has undergone a profound transfor-
mation over the past three decades, partly due to a political economy
increasingly centred in the market. Furthermore, these organizations
have become particularly visible during public debates aimed at accel-
erating and legitimizing the neoliberal reforms of the past 25 years.
However, as these reforms have increased poverty, the concentration of
wealth, insecurity and other problems, alternative policy ideas and think
tanks have appeared.
Total 56 100.0 40 30 –
Independent 20 35.7 12 8 1984–2013a
Academic 11 19.6 9 7 1930–1974
Business associations 8 14.3 8 8 1917–1999
Consulting firms 6 10.7 3 2 1990–present
Parties 6 10.7 4 4 –
State agencies 5 8.9 4 3 1925–1986
aExcept FMDR, which was founded in 1963
Fig. 2.1 Mexican think tank network in 2015. Source Own research. Numbers
in parenthesis indicate the group to which the think tank belongs. The thickness
of the line indicates the number of directors and/or researchers in common
In short, while some groups defend and promote a free market, indi-
vidual liberties and economic liberalism in general (Groups 1, 3 and 6),
other groups cohere around social equality and justice (Groups 5 and
7). Only Group 1 is basically committed to disseminating the neoliberal
doctrine, while the remaining groups focus on influencing policy-making
in different spheres, corresponding to Fischer and Plehwe’s classifica-
tion (see Chap. 7 in this volume). However, these and the rest of the
groups are all connected by those think tanks that have high centrality
and intermediation measures, as can be seen in Table 2.2, which shows
the ten most central think tanks of the largest component controlling the
main connecting nodes between all groups. Seven of these think tanks
are independent and three (CIDE, COLMEX and CEDAN) are aca-
demic think tanks. Except for Groups 2, 11, 12 and 13, all the groups
are present in this core. Group 6 is represented twice (see Fig. 2.1) by
two think tanks (México Cómo Vamos and México Evalúa) created in
the past few years (2013 and 2009, respectively) but have moved rapidly
to the centre of the network.
Although there is not sufficient space here to analyze all the groups
identified in the network, three in particular are worth examining in
more detail, since they are representative of the trends taking place in the
field of power of Mexican think tanks.
Group 1 pulls together six think tanks, five of which are independ-
ent; two (Fundación FIL and RELIAL) are part of Latin American net-
works (see Chap. 7) with one (Banxico) a state think tank. All endorse
a free-market ideology and strongly advocate individual liberty. The
most central think tank of the group is the Instituto de Pensamiento
Estratégico Ágora (IPEA), founded in 2008 and self-defined as ‘a pri-
vate, independent, apolitical and non-profit think tank’. The activities of
IPEA are preoccupied with defending the rule of law, economic devel-
opment, high standards in education, governability, democracy and civil
society, and social cohesion, focusing on the development of youth,
research and public policy proposals. The board of trustees includes the
CEOs of large Mexican companies and subsidiaries of foreign corpora-
tions (for example, Bimbo, Concord, Yakult, Cinépolis and FEMSA).
The list of foreign partners includes the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, the
Atlas Economic Research Foundation, the Institute of International and
European Affairs, the Europa Institute and the Acton Institute (from
Argentina). Since 2009, this think tank, together with the Ludwig Von
Mises Institute, has presented the Legion of Liberty award for those
‘individuals who have proven to be the absolute defenders of individual
liberty in any given part of the world’6; 66% of funding comes from pri-
vate corporations.7
For the six think tanks comprising Group 5 (three academic, two
independent and a state think tank), social justice, civil rights and gen-
der are the most important issues in their agendas. Centro de Estudios
Espinoza Yglesias (CEEY), sponsored by the Espinosa Rugarcía
Foundation, has the highest centrality in this group. It was created in
2005 as a ‘private, independent, apolitical and non-profit think tank’
with the purpose of generating ideas through research and the improve-
ment of public debates and policy-making. Although it values the free
market as the best mechanism to achieve economic development, it
acknowledges its limitations and the need for public intervention when
necessary. It has faith in education, gender equality and economic pros-
perity as the keys to social mobility; individual property rights are just
2 THINK TANK NETWORKS IN MEXICO … 41
has agreed on several contracts and the organization of events with leg-
islators. Parliamentary hearings have become an increasingly common
practice, providing experts and think tanks with the opportunity to push
legislation in a given direction, as in the case of the anti-corruption legis-
lation mentioned before, as well as in the reforms to the laws and by-laws
in the telecommunication and energy sectors.
The previous strategies to influence policy-making compounds the
effect when they overlap with the use of media. An active presence in
TV and radio broadcasting, newspaper columns and magazine edito-
rials has become crucial for propagandizing ideas, influencing public
opinion and building consensus around the reforms and public policies
promoted. According to Kuntz (2012, quoted in Stone 2015, p. 5), it
is a widespread strategy among think tanks ‘to influence public opinion
first, then governments will follow’, particularly in the case of independ-
ent think tanks interested in socializing the results of their research, their
proposals and their political philosophy. Out of the 56 think tanks in our
database, at least 46 participate regularly in news media programmes and
discussions, and 13 of the 20 independent think tanks—notably IMCO,
CIDAC, COMEXI and ETHOS—do so. ETHOS has organized numer-
ous activities to disseminate its ‘model of responsible government’ in
Mexico and Latin America in the media.13 IMCO is probably the inde-
pendent think tank that has the most intense presence in the media,
including news programmes on radio and TV, several newspapers and
magazines, such as El Economista, Este País and El Financiero, and TV
news programmes on Foro TV, MVS Radio and many others. In all these
spaces, IMCO presents research results on competitiveness, transparency,
corruption and other issues.
CIDAC has also considerably expanded its participation in the printed
and digital media, offering regular institutional briefings to newspapers
and interviews on TV news programmes. This think tank is presided
over by Luis Rubio, who regularly writes columns in national (Reforma)
and US newspapers (The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The
Los Angeles Times), where he writes on problems of justice, competi-
tion, individual rights and liberties. He is also a member of the Trilateral
Commission, which links him to American and international elites.
In short, although it is very difficult to demonstrate the impact of all
these think tanks in the process of policy-making and in the transforma-
tion of the Mexican political economy, all the strategies and activities
analyzed converge around how they try to redefine the limits between
2 THINK TANK NETWORKS IN MEXICO … 47
Concluding Remarks
The transformations that have occurred in the landscape of Mexican
think tanks have led to the constitution of a field of power overlapping
and mediating with other fields (parliamentary, corporate, media and
information and knowledge, among others), but amplifying enormously
the voice of a small group of experts and brokers who have doubtlessly
become part of the ruling elite. This group plays a key role in constitut-
ing, disseminating and naturalizing a neoliberal-technocratic discourse.
Its members procure enormous financial, social and intellectual resources
to organize multiple forums and events, whereby they promote, defend
and legitimize the market-centred policies advanced over the last three
decades (privatization, deregulation and the retreat of the state from the
economy). In the process, they more or less deliberately reinterpret his-
torical experiences and refashion national identities.
At the same time, several think tanks within the network and field
of power build up an increasingly coherent social liberal discourse that
challenges some of the main tenets of the neoliberal project. They put
forward policy proposals to tackle the problems stemming from the neo-
liberal policies pursued, particularly the problems of corruption, insecu-
rity, concentration of economic, social and cultural resources, and social
and human rights. All these groups struggle for the control of the cul-
tural resources embedded in the network, in particular, the criteria by
which knowledge and ideas can be certified and validated.
The field of think tanks is becoming ever more powerful within the
national structure of power, due to three processes that feed back into
one another: an increasingly dense network woven by the organizations
48 A. Salas-Porras
Notes
1. Several authors acknowledge the confusion created when this concept is
translated. For example, Desmoulins (2009, p. 2) notes that in French
there is no equivalent to the term ‘think tank’, which has been translated
as ‘réservoir intellectuel’, ‘boîte à penser’ (Béland 2000, p. 253) or ‘insti-
tut de recherche’, ‘laboratoire d’idées’, ‘cercle de réflexion’ and ‘boîte à idées’
(Desmoulins 2009). In Spanish, it is common to use the English term
(Tello Beneitez 2013), but terms like ‘tanque de pensamiento’, ‘tanque
pensante’, ‘laboratorio de ideas’ and ‘centro de pensamiento’ are being used
more often.
2. Bourdieu (2005) defines the field of power as a network of relations
between organizations and agents competing to control resources in dif-
ferentiated spaces (economic, cultural, social and symbolic). The struc-
ture of each field—that is the predominating pattern of relations—guides
2 THINK TANK NETWORKS IN MEXICO … 49
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CHAPTER 3
Georgina Murray
What is a think tank? Superficially, think tanks are not difficult to define. In
Australia, the typical think tank has members who write, run forums, hold
conferences, appear before parliamentary committees, evaluate, support or
critique government policy, give educational lectures and increasingly use
the media to express their opinions. Think tanks provide ‘expert’ invited
and uninvited commentary on policy and current events (Carlisle 2005),
and these organizations generally claim to be non-partisan and non-profit in
nature—although clearly most are neither (Cahill 2010; Dunlap and Jacques
2013; Smith and Marden 2008). Indeed, their uniting characteristic is their
desire to influence policy/and or politics, and their consequent need for
funds to do so. They are what Gramsci (1971, p. 334) calls ‘permanent per-
suaders’, that is, the frontline fighters in a war of insinuation, a battle to get
their ideas into the popular consciousness as the commonplace understand-
ings. In some countries (e.g. Canada and the United States), think tank par-
tisanship is discouraged by regulation tied to tax exemptions (Leeson et al.
2012), but this is not the case in Australia, where the dominant political out-
look is neoliberalism and many Australian think tanks openly acknowledge
G. Murray (*)
Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
and promote this political perspective (Cahill 2013, pp. 71–80; Mendes
2003) because it returns to them long-term financial gain.
So the description of think tanks is not difficult: they are the perma-
nent persuaders emanating from a politically left–right continuum but
they are most numerous as representatives of the political right. Think
tanks have been researched extensively, both internationally (Cockett
1995; Denham and Garnett 1996; Harvey 2005; Klein 2007; Stone
1996) and nationally (Beder 2003, 2006a, b, p. 129; Ellam 2006;
Leeson et al. 2012; Smith and Marden 2008; t’Hart and Vromen 2008).
So the issue is not the description; rather, it is how to analyse the signifi-
cance of these think tanks. The first question is whether think tank ide-
ologies create the politics—that is, are think tanks creating the ideas that
make us think and act in the ‘commonsense’ ways of neoliberalism?
This common sense involves the acceptance of a ‘utopia of a pure
perfect market’ (Bourdieu 1998) that leads on to a new, harsher disci-
pline upon labour that works for management, shareholders and lenders.
Neoliberalism also aims to reduce the intervention of the state in welfare
and to extend the power of financial institutions, including central banks
and the pursuance of strategies (for example, free trade) that drain the
economies of non-core countries.
A second question relates to whether these well-funded Australian
neoliberal think tanks are clones (Beder 1999, p. 30;2001; Pusey
1991) of internationally messianic bodies such as the American Atlas
Foundation (Beder 2006b; Cockett 1995; George 1997; Klein 2007;
Mittasch2014)? Or is this clone idea just cloaked idealism in the
Hegelian philosophic sense, meaning that the neoliberal ideas from think
tanks create our material reality? Instead, do the material conditions, that
is, the blocks threatening capital expansion in a welfare state; corpora-
tions that have the funding and incentives to simultaneously spread their
legitimating ideology and demonize their opposition to make the ideas
of think tanks spread? Are think tanks just competing agents among a
plethora of other politicized institutions—politicians, media, corpora-
tions, lobby groups—which create ‘the contextual’ conditions that move
capitalism forward (Cahill 2013; Marsh 2007)?
In sum then the questions asked asked by this chapter are: Do think
tanks create the politics, or do the politics create the think tanks? What is
the significance of think tank funding in relation to think tank interests? And
what is the history of neoliberal ideas, and how did these old ideas replace
the Keynesianism that was their twentieth-century nemesis? This chapter
examines Australian think tanks to try to find an answer to these questions.
3 THE AUSTRALIAN THINK TANK: A KEY SITE … 55
think tanks but the overall growth transnationally of think tanks world-
wide. His think tank figures cover from 1900–2010 and they show the
enormous growth of think tanks internationally, with
How could they do this? Professor Sharon Beder (2006a) argues that
the right-wing think tanks have had the advantage of both larger num-
bers and a related larger pool of funding. But the number of think tanks
is easier to establish than the amount of their funding. A global group
called Transparify (2014) has estimated that by 2014 there were 6800
think tanks globally, and that in Australia the number was between 11
and 100.
Transparify (2014) was only able to document funding accountability
for three Australian think tanks: the Australian Institute of International
Affairs (giving it only a 2/5 transparency, with a rating of 5 being the
highest); the Centre for Independent Studies (0/5 transparency rating);
and the Lowy Institute (2/5 transparency rating). Do this small think
tank number and financial opaqueness mean that these think tanks are
hegemonic? (Gramsci 1971: 334)? No but Robert Neubauer (2011)
argues that neoliberal think tanks have advantageous access to corporate
money and corporate media support that gives them more power.
By hiding these funding sources, think tanks cloud their accountability,
but point critical researchers to the importance of funding and to other
sources for verification (Norington 2003). The conservative Hugh Morgan,
the CEO of Western Mining and later the chair of the Business Council
of Australia, is reported to have said to the reporter Paul Sheehan that he
thought funding think tanks was ‘the way to reshape the political agenda …
we have to change public opinion’ (quoted in Duncan 1985: 69).
Amounts of corporate funding for Australian think tanks have also
been noted by Norington (2003): $2 million given to the United States
Centre from Dow Chemicals; $10,000 to the Sydney Institute (TSI)
from Philip Morris and smaller sums from Shell, Boral, AMP, Australia
Post, Macquarie Bank and BT. A total of $229,105 was given to the
Menzies Centre from the federal government; approximately $15,000
58 G. Murray
each from Western Mining, BHP, Telstra, Dick Pratt and others to the
IPA; and a $34 million federal government endowment to the Grattan
Institute. Corporate backers for the CIS include BHP Billiton, Western
Mining, Neville Kennard, Robert Champion de Crespigny and ICI
(Norington 2003). This greater corporate funding gives neoliberal think
tanks a lead not only in their ability to pay in-house ‘experts’—that is,
trained journalists, academics and conservative activists—but also to train
their own ‘experts’, who then go into advocacy organizations, govern-
ment offices and media outlets (Gutstain 2009).
The neoliberal collective voice is that of the bourgeoisie, that is the owners
and the controllers of capital: first as a small dissident classical economic
liberal cry but becoming hegemonic (as in dominant bourgeois state rule
(Gramsci 1978)) by the 20th century replacing the ‘moral truth’ that was
the previous domain of the churches. (Beder 2006b, p. 35)
Ideas found in right-wing think tanks come from two main sources:
classical economics and neoliberalism. I deal with these sequentially but
briefly by not including the offshoots of the theories (for example, public
choice theory).
Dudley North, Adam Smith and David Ricardo. These men saw capital as
a system that freed individuals from the yoke of feudalism, aristocrats and
kings. Classical liberal economics arose as an antithesis of the bourgeoi-
sie, in a dialectical sense, to mercantilism, which had been the dominant
theory and strategy of accumulation of the British aristocracy (Rubin
1929) in the period just prior to, and through, the eighteenth century.
the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the
class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its rul-
ing intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production
60 G. Murray
at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental pro-
duction, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack
the means of mental production are subject to it. (Marx 2004, p. 64)
Starting in the mid-70s, the IEA model began to be copied around the
world, and Antony found himself in great demand as a consultant to such
fledgling groups. By the late ’70s his mailbag was so large that he incor-
porated the Atlas Economic Research Foundation to be a focal point for
intellectual entrepreneurs wishing to establish independent public policy
institutes. Today it lists some 50+ institutes in some 30+ countries that it
has helped to establish, develop and mature. (Blundell 1990)
In answer to our original question, ‘How come the public have come
to accept economic liberal ideas as common sense?’, this has occurred at
least partly because of extremely effective, well-funded and opportunistic
think tank operatives like Tony Fisher, who have systematically marketed
their ideas over a 50-year period. But Australian business was waiting for
the ‘expert’ neoliberal framework as articulated by a top business inter-
viewee in a study on Australian corporate power (Respondent 57, quoted
in Murray 2007, p. 155). He shared that
the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) and the Institute of Public
Affairs (IPA), the HR Nicholls Society and the Mont Pèlerin Society …
have all made important contributions to providing an intellectual frame-
work and support basis for community attitudes to start to change. Once
those changes were there then the Business Council of Australia (BCA)
and the Chambers of Commerce all changed their positions as well.
insinuate themselves into the networks of people who are influential in par-
ticular policy areas. They do this by organising conferences, seminars and
62 G. Murray
Australian think tanks have been around since the Australian Institute of
International Affairs (AIIA) was established in 1924. The next to appear
was the IPA, which was established in 1942 by the Victorian Chamber
of Manufacturers to ‘combat socialism’ and was used extensively by the
United Australia Party (UAP) under Robert Menzies (Crisp 1970). The
IPA publishes the work of liberals such as von Hayek (whom the IPA
Centre brought to Australia in the 1970s), Friedman, Nick Greiner, a
former premier of New South Wales, Gary Sturgess, former director-
general of the NSW Cabinet Office under Greiner, and the media baron
Rupert Murdoch (see Beder 1999, p. 30). Its council has included
Rupert Murdoch as well as other conservative business leaders. Like
many of the US conservative think tanks, the IPA has good connec-
tions in the media via right-wing commentators with regular columns in
major newspapers. It also has good political connections. Staff members
include former senior public officials and former politicians. For exam-
ple, former Treasury secretary John Stone is a consultant to the IPA,
and Dame Leonie Kramer, Chancellor of the University of Sydney, has
headed one of the IPA’s units (Beder 1999, p. 30).
Table 3.1 presents examples of think tank groups, showing their politi-
cal focus, their budget sources and key staff members and offering com-
ments as to how they came about. An important lacuna here is some
missing information about the funding of think tanks. This is because,
according to John Roskam of the IPA and a former adviser to state and
federal Liberal Party ministers, the public cannot handle this information:
It’s not for us to reveal our supporters … Whether we like it or not, the
Australian democracy is not so sophisticated that companies can reveal they
support free market think tanks, because as soon as they do they will be
attacked. (Hannan and Carney 2005, p. 6)
When asked whether this meant that the justification for secrecy was
on the grounds that the Australian electorate was immature, Roskam
replied, ‘Yes, absolutely!’ (Roskam 2005, p. 6).
Table 3.1 Examples of central Australian think tanks
Name Political focus Budget and funding sources Key staff and members Comments
Policy HR Nicholls Right—“To promote Unknown Board—Adam Bisits (President); Founded in 1986 with
advocate Society discussion about the Kyle Kutasi (Vice President); 40 interested members.
Think Link: http:// operation of industrial Michael Moore (Secretary); Founding members
tanks www. relations in Australia Tim Andrews; Des Moore; Alan Chair John Stone and
hrnicholls. including the system Anderson; Hon. Peter Reith; Ken Peter Costello, Barry Purvis,
com.au of determining wages Philips, etc. and Raymond Evans.
and other conditions Its members include industrial Raymond Evans (personal
of employment.” lawyers, politicians, employers, farm-
assistant to WMC’s CEO
ers, business people, and academics
Hugh Morgan) a member of
(Beder 2006a: 133) the Mont Pelerin Society and
1990s BCA president
Institute of Right—in 1942 aimed 2012: $2.5 million—a big J. Roskam (CEO). 31 staff including Founded in 1942; Organized
Public Affairs to “combat socialism” source is the tobacco indus- J. Bolt (son of Andrew Bolt). Has by the Victorian Chamber
(IPA) and “oppose the Labor try (Beder 2006a: 135). Also 500 members. Board includes John of Manufacturers; set up in
Link: www.ipa. Party.” IPA is the from private sources plus a Roskam; M. Hickinbotham; Rod other states after 1943.
org.au main source of fund- $50,000 grant from Howard Kemp; G. Hone; J. Barlow; Michael Publications in 12,000
ing for the UAP (the government (2004); Donors: Kroger; H. Clough; Rod Menzies; schools, 475 companies, and
late Robert Menzies’ WMC, Philip Morris, BHP W. Morgan; T. Duncan’ M. Folie; for 2000 individuals
party). Advocates free Billiton and Visyboard B. Hetherington; A. Pigeon; M. Based in Melbourne.
market economics, anti- O’Shannasy
big government, and
anti-Kyoto Protocol
(continued)
3 THE AUSTRALIAN THINK TANK: A KEY SITE …
63
Table 3.1 (Continued)
Name Political focus Budget and funding sources Key staff and members Comments
Centre for Right—Public policy Struggled then big injec- G. Lindsay (CEO) former presi- Founded in 1976; Sydney
Independent and free enterprise tion of funds from mining dent of Mt Pelerin. Twelve staff; based
Studies (CIS) companies. 2005 revenue: 1800 members. Board members Supports a philosophy of
64 G. Murray
Link www.cis. $2 million. Other donors include Peter Yates; Steven Wilson; Adam Smith, Friedman,
org.au include McDonald’s Christopher White; Gary Weiss; etc. Lindsay has overseen
Australia, Philip Morris, Alison Watkins; S. Kala; D. Robb; the development of the
the late Dame Elisabeth G. Ricketts; J. Philips; N. Moore; CIS into Australia’s largest
Murdoch, Fairfax. Website R. Mead; Robert McLean; Jenny independent think tank cov-
invites contributions by: Lindsay; J. Green; R. Grant; P. ering the three major policy
donating; becoming a mem- Farrell; R. Eddington; P. Dodd; areas—economic, social, and
ber of the CIS; including the M. Chaney; M. Rennie (DC); C. international
CIS in your will Roberts (DC), and M. Darling “Experts”– four in-house
adjunct fellows and 15
research scholars
Sydney Right—a breakaway $Privately funded Gerard Henderson (formerly Founded in 1989 by Gerard
Institute group from the IPA. Some funders have included director IPA and chief of staff Henderson —the Sydney
“Boasts of links with Shell; Boral; AMP; Australia to PM John Howard) and Anne branch of the IPA
similar institutes Post; Macquarie Bank; BT Henderson. Two staff. Board:
around the world & Philip Morris, Coca-Cola Meredith Helicar (Chair); R.
including American Amatil, FAI Fergusson (Deputy Chair);
Enterprise Institute[], P. Murnane; N. Johnson; Professor
the Manhattan Institute P. Drysdale; P. Charlton; J. Yat Sen
(NY), The European Li; C. Livingston; J. Gersh; L. Ralph
Policy Forum and Dr J. Munroe
(London) etc.” (Beder
2006b: 135–136)
(continued)
Table 3.1 (Continued)
Name Political focus Budget and funding sources Key staff and members Comments
The Australia Left—Public Policy Unknown Membership, ACTU; NSW Founded in 1994. Located in
Institute Think Tank. Focuses Environmental Protection Agency, Canberra
on issues such as the BP, AGL; Greenpeace, Australian
role of the market; Conservation Foundation, The
climate change; media Kantors
regulation; health;
consumer affairs; and
trade
The McKell Left—The McKell Funded by members’ dona- John Watkins (Chair); Sam Founded in 2012. Located in
Institute Institute named after tions. Receives no money Crosby (CEO); Directors: Jennifer New South Wales
William McKell, the from government or political McAllister; Mark Lennon; Peter
27th Labor Premier parties Bently; Verity Firth; Michael
of NSW & Governor- Easson; Sarah Kaine; Bruce Hawker;
General of Australia. Tara Moriarty; Tim Ayres; Ric
McKell conducts an Sissons; Scott McDine; and George
annual survey, The State Newhouse (Managing Director)
of NSW, which charts
the views of residents
on social and economic
issues
After the Queensland election Tony Abbott said ‘the lessons are not to
give up on reform, but to make sure that everything you propose is fully
explained and well-justified’. He’s right. (Roskam 2015)
a class project that coalesced in the crisis of the 1970s. Masked by a lot of
rhetoric about individual freedom, liberty, personal responsibility and the
virtues of privatization, the free market and free trade, it legitimized draco-
nian policies designed to restore and consolidate capitalist class power.
Beder (1999, p. 30) suggests that successful think tank marketing of the
economic liberal ideology in Australia has ‘enabled the conservative, cor-
porate agenda of deregulation, privatisation and an unconstrained market
to be dressed up as …virtue’. The head of the CIS, Greg Lindsay, credits
his centre’s considerable economic liberal victories to its
advocacy of welfare change [which the] centre has been pushing its ideas
in the area since 1987, examining how single mothers – once their children
get older – can move from welfare into the workforce. It has also looked
at how people with disabilities can be encouraged into some form of paid
work. (quoted in Nahan 1996, p. 3)
The IPA and the HR Nicholls society were behind the push of the
Howard government in 1996–2007 for the radical deregulation of the
labour market in what became the controversial Work Choices legislation
(Hannan and Carney 2005). According to CEO Ray Evans:
3 THE AUSTRALIAN THINK TANK: A KEY SITE … 67
Techniques
Evan Thornley (cited in Hannan and Carney 2005), an internet entre-
preneur who has returned to Australia from the United States, suggests
that the IPA and CIS have lifted their language and thinking—indeed,
‘completely imported’ them—from American think tanks. The key US
think tanks function as
Ad and PR agencies who are in the business of word branding. They make
a pitch on behalf of the brand, and they do it relentlessly so that eventu-
ally the word or the term they are pitching assumes a new meaning and is
accepted. (Hannan and Carney 2005, p. 6)
When the idea that has become a term becomes a word that enters the
general vocabulary – used by talkback radio callers, taxi drivers and poli-
ticians – the think tank has done a little bit more to advance its agenda.
(noted in Hannan and Carney 2005, p. 6)
The CIS had to actively lobby and network with others to bring about
change. Networking links and contributors on the CIS website include well
known neoliberals and conservatives such as F.A. Hayek, Lord Acton, Nick
Greiner, Wolfgang Kasper, P.P. McGuinness, Rupert Murdoch, former
Abbott Coalition government-appointed Human Rights Commissioner
and now federal Member of Parliament Tim Wilson and many others
(Lindsay 2015). Illustrative is a meeting between CEO Lindsay and Lord
Anthony Fisher, where ‘the ex chicken farmer’ Fisher who was then head
of the British Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) is reported to have dis-
cussed a plan to open a replica of the IEA in Australia with Lindsay; appar-
ently Fisher ‘wished me luck’ (Lindsay 1996). Lindsay went to his first
Mont Pèlerin meeting in Hong Kong in 1978 where he was introduced to
Milton Friedman and the public choice advocate James Buchanan.
On the event of the IPA’s birthday, former prime minister Tony
Abbott acknowledged that he had received ‘a great deal of advice’ on the
policy front from the institute. The relationship between Abbott and IPA
CEO John Roskam has been described as a ‘bromance’. Then Abbott
went further, saying he promised the institute he would act on its advice:
‘I want to assure you,’ he said, ‘that the Coalition will indeed repeal the
carbon tax, abolish the department of climate change, abolish the Clean
Energy Fund. We will repeal Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination
Act, at least in its current form. We will abolish new health and
3 THE AUSTRALIAN THINK TANK: A KEY SITE … 69
Mike Secombe (2014) suggested that, unlike the other popular pledges
made to voters, these promises would be ‘over-delivered’. Secombe iden-
tifies the key characteristic of the IPA as ‘the way it does propaganda’. In
the IPA Annual Report in 2013,
it clocked up 878 mentions in print and online. Its staff had 164 articles
published in national media. They managed 540 radio appearances and
mentions, and 210 appearances and mentions on TV.
Funding
Twenty-three years ago, Ian Marsh (1994) estimated that Australian
think tanks had a collective budget of $130 million; they employed 1600
people, published 900 reports and discussion papers, and held almost
600 conferences and symposia each year. The think tanks have been
very cagey in updating these figures or giving credence to anyone else’s
update. Peter Botsman, from the left-leaning Evatt Foundation, claims
that:
70 G. Murray
The Centre for Independent Studies is the best in the country by far when it
comes to resources, capacity and the ability to get the cabinet and the shadow
cabinet into the same room. (quoted in Hannan and Carney 2005, p. 6)
but to compare that with the Centre for Independent Studies is like say-
ing there is a casino with all the international high rollers over there and
there is a game of tiddlywinks being played over here … The problem for
all think tanks on the left is that the finances are always very precarious.
Clive Hamilton has done a lot with very limited resources. But on the left
or the centre-left when you’re strapped for cash … if you make one wrong
decision you lose your money, whereas the Centre for Independent Studies
and the Sydney Institute can make five or six mistakes a year and it doesn’t
matter. (Hannan and Carney 2005, p. 6)
record as saying that he got his big financial break from Hugh Morgan,
the CEO of Western Mining: ‘Morgan had a financial “whip around”
amongst mates for seed money for the CIS. He raised $200,000 that was
to be spent by the CIS over five years’ (da Silva 1996).
The bulk of CIS (and other think tank) funding would seem to come
from wealthy individuals and corporations. Financial supporters of CIS
projects have included the late Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, J.O. Fairfax
and McDonald’s Australia, while BHP, Shell, ICI and Western Mining
are some of the companies that provided funds when the centre started
in 1976. The CIS’s current subscriber base includes 70 companies and
1200 individuals (Hannan and Carney 2005, p. 6)
University Links
As universities increasingly become dependent on external (to govern-
ment) funding, their susceptibility to neoliberal thinking and to their
need to create income streams using think tanks have grown exponen-
tially. In our sample, 39% of the think tanks were ‘neutral’ university
ones (see Fig. 3.1). These university think tanks are playing increas-
ingly key roles in policy debates. For example, the Centre for Policy
Studies (CPS), run by Professor Peter Dixon (formerly employed by
the International Monetary Fund (IMF)), has been influencing state
policy since 1975. Another notably influential university think tank is
Flinders University’s National Institute of Labour Studies (NILS), which
in the late 1980s and early 1990s provided academic legitimacy to the
Business Council of Australia’s industrial relations reform agenda. Since
the departure of Dick Blandy, Judith Sloan and Mark Wooden, NILS has
returned to its original role of being a ‘labour’ research institute without
ideological alignment (Peetz 2015).
My view is that the BCA play[s] a vital role in key debates … about labour
market reform … success will ensure that the needs of the continued pur-
suit of labour market reforms, of which much progress has been made
[and which must] remain on our agenda.
When the CIS head Greg Lindsay was asked about being a ‘firm favour-
ite’ of prime minister John Howard, he replied, ‘If we are a firm favorite,
that’s nice.’ The IPA is said to regularly act as a policy arbiter for the
federal government: John Roskam, its then head, said part of the IPA’s
role was to ‘push the boundaries of debate so political parties can move
in that direction. By not moving as far, politicians are seen as pragmatic
and considered’ (Hannan and Carney 2005). Retiring Federal govern-
ment treasurer John Dawkins (1983–1996) described this close relation-
ship between think tank, lobby group and government as follows:
Such was the intimacy of the relationship that it has been useful on occa-
sions to have the BCA appear to be a critic of the government’s perfor-
mance. It suited the government to have the endorsement of the BCA
when it needed it, but to be able to create some distance on other occa-
sions. While it was useful to have the BCA as part of the cheer squad, it
was useful for other reasons for the BCA to not be identified as author of
the policies, and sometimes to appear as a critic of the government’s per-
formance. (Williams and Ellis 1994)
This ties in with Gramsci’s (1978) and Block’s (1987) ideas that the rul-
ing classes do not rule directly through coercion. Whatever the politi-
cal persuasion of governing politicians, the ruling class manages to see
that its interests continue to be viewed as the interests of all. Members
of the ruling class know that members of the state—both politicians and
bureaucrats—sufficiently identify with capitalist class interests because
they share these interests (Block 1987). Gramsci broke society into two
spheres: ‘political society’ (that is, those who can and do rule through
force) and ‘civil society’ (that is, those who must rule through consent).
Civil society is operational in the public sphere, where NGOs, trade
unions and political parties try to renegotiate the power of the bourgeois
state in the sphere where the dominant ideas and beliefs are shaped. This
is where think tanks are located, and they are able to exercise ‘hegem-
ony’ in the reproduction and insinuation of their ideas throughout the
74 G. Murray
Conclusions and Discussion
In answer to the key question ‘How did Keynesianism give way to the
neoliberalism?’ An answer is that, with the post 1970s changing eco-
nomic conditions (the move to stagflation, oil embargoes etc) in
Australia, neoliberal think tanks were able to capitalise on these changing
insecure conditions to enlarge their numbers and grab the popular dis-
course to fund, fight and win the war of ideas (Beder 1999, pp. 30–32).
Think tanks and lobby groups have pushed neoliberalism because these
ideas benefit ruling-class interests, and in turn ruling-class interests keep
them funded—it is cyclical (Block 1987; Cahill 2004). As Strinati (1995,
p. 165) argues:
strangled for funds and are hence liable to be used for corporate ideo-
logical interests. We might also fight for think tank funding to be made
transparent, as t’Hart and Vromen (2008, p. 145) argue. Think tanks of
all persuasions could be made to declare, through a mandatory declara-
tion system, their interests and funding sources (Rich 2002; t’Hart and
Vromen 2008, p. 145).
The second question asked in this chapter was, ‘Do think tanks cre-
ate the politics or do the politics create the think tanks?’ The evidence
supports Cahill (2013), who suggests that neoliberal think tanks are not
stand-alone bodies responsible for the neoliberal revolution we experi-
ence daily. Rather, think tanks are just one social organization among a
number of institutions—the media, the state, the education system—that
have the means to organize and influence thought, both locally and glob-
ally. This is not to suggest that think tanks are always successful when
their ideology does not line up with the experiences of the public (as in
Work Choices in 2005), but they may only consider this a temporary set-
back when they have longer-term economic and social interests in play.
References
Ackland, R. 2014. Propagandists Masquerade as Think Tanks. Sydney Morning
Herald, May 2.
Beder, S. 1999. The Intellectual Sorcery of Think Tanks. Arena Magazine 41
(June–July): 30–32.
Beder, S. 2001. Neoliberal Think Tanks and Free Market Environmentalism.
Environmental Politics 10 (2): 128–133.
Beder, S. 2003. Power Play: The Fight for Control of the World’s Electricity.
Melbourne: Scribe.
Beder, S. 2006a. Suiting Themselves: How Corporations Drive the Political
Agenda. London: Earthscan.
Beder, S. 2006b. Free Market Missionaries: The Corporate Manipulation of
Community Values. London: Earthscan.
Block, F. 1987. Revising State Theory: Essays in Politics and Postindustrialism.
Salt Lake City, UT: Temple University Press.
Blundell, J. 1990. Waging the War of Ideas: Why There are No Short Cuts.
Heritage Foundation. http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/waging-
the-war-of-ideas-why-there-are-no-shortcuts. Accessed 11 Mar 2015.
Bourdieu, P. (ed.). 1998. Neoliberalism: The Utopia (Becoming a Reality) of
Unlimited Exploitation. New York: The New Press.
76 G. Murray
The case of TC both illustrates this challenge and shows how diffi-
cult it is to face it. On analyzing its membership for the triennium 2012–
2015 and the agendas of its annual meetings from 2005 to 2015, we
observe that the TC is a coherent but closed network, and also very
powerful but scarcely representative. This means that although it is capa-
ble of expressing the views and interests of powerful elites, it fails to
articulate the diversity of the global public opinion that is relevant to its
mission.
We begin by briefly characterizing the TC and mentioning the chal-
lenges that—like most other transnational governance networks—it faces
as it attempts to represent a sector of global public opinion. In “The
Logic of Representation”, we analyze its integration and composition,
especially its Executive Committee. This analysis shows that the TC’s
membership is excessively coherent but insufficiently open: Many indi-
viduals and organizations that should actively be represented in the TC,
given the declared aims and ideological inclinations of the Commission,
are in fact excluded from it.
In “Efficacy: The Annual Meetings”, we argue that by structuring its
membership and representation in this way, the TC restricts its own effi-
cacy. So our main conclusion is that the excessively coherent representa-
tion that exists within the TC is accompanied by a form of deliberation
that is immoderately restricted and exclusive. The result is that, seen as a
global governance network, the TC is very powerful but scarcely repre-
sentative. The TC’s capacity to make itself heard in the highest circles of
power is remarkable, but its capacity to articulate global public opinion is
much less effective.
Self-defined as a ‘non-governmental, policy-oriented discussion
group’ (TC 2016), the TC functions as a transnational governance net-
work. It is a highly informal group; the actions, aims, and structure of
which are largely self-generated, rather than imposed and guaranteed by
formal political institutions. In view of these characteristics, we approach
it as a complex associative system (CAS). This approach focuses on the
logics that underlie the functioning of these systems and the principles
that regulate and orient their political design (Luna and Velasco 2010,
2017). We assume that CASs, as will be briefly discussed in the next sec-
tion, have emergent properties that distinguish them from other associa-
tive experiences. Therefore, these systems should be studied not simply
4 POWER WITHOUT REPRESENTATION … 83
voluntarily and may leave it at any time. Third, members are interde-
pendent, since the resources that each of them controls are necessary
for the success of the system. Finally, CASs are dynamic with a member-
ship that expands or contracts in the course of the interaction, with aims
and goals that are defined and redefined as the system progresses, and
with a dispersed structure of authority. Because of these properties, these
systems involve a series of tensions between strong, opposing trends; of
these tensions, the most important is that between autonomy and inter-
dependence (Luna and Velasco 2010, 2017).
CASs may act at different levels, from the local to the transnational.
The TC is located at the latter extreme. During its more than 40 years
of existence, it has consolidated itself as a global governance network.
Networks of this kind bring together a great variety of public and private
actors interested in transnational public issues. Usually, some participants
in these networks are representatives or agents of local or national gov-
ernments, national and transnational business firms, and local and inter-
national nongovernmental organizations; however, others are prestigious
or influential personalities acting in their own right. As governance
organisms, these networks serve to ‘make demands, frame goals, issue
directives, pursue policies, and generate compliance’ (Rosenau 2004,
p. 31).
Networks of this kind may be composed of smaller, regional units.
That is precisely the case for the TC, which is made up of three regional
groups. Of course, an entire global governance network—or one of its
smaller units—may perform certain strictly national functions. Such is
the case with the TC’s North American Group (NAG), which as well as
having played a central role in the region’s economic integration (Salas-
Porras 2012; Luna and Velasco 2013) has also functioned as a channel
for recruiting members of the US political elites.1
Like other CASs, the TC is autonomous, even though it remains con-
nected in several ways to the organism that promoted its creation, the
CFR. Similarly, although each participant has their own power base, they
are not hierarchically connected among themselves: All are autonomous
and free to leave at any time. But each of them brings their own portion
of power, resources, and influence. Finally, as the TC’s history shows, its
membership has constantly evolved, with the inclusion of ‘representa-
tives’ from new member countries; its agenda has changed in reaction
to the changes in the global sphere. In other words, like other CASs, the
86 M. Luna and J.L. Velasco
To analyze the TC’s openness and closeness, one must bear in mind
that a central component of its ideology is the notion of interdepend-
ence, which is seen both as a reality and as an ideal. Thus, the organiza-
tion itself claims that, ‘The most pervasive characteristic of the current
[international] situation is the steady expansion and tightening of the
web or interdependence’. At the same time, it holds that, ‘The requi-
site [international] cooperation for both the short and large term must
be based on the shared conviction that it maximizes overall gain and
increases the welfare of all those involved’ (Cooper et al. 1977, p. 287).
Closer to the US Democrats than to the Republicans, and highly
critical of the conservative ‘state-centered’ view, the TC has promoted
regional integration and globalization from a ‘multicentric world’ stand-
point. It has been a key promoter of the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) and the so-called NAFTA-Plus (the Security and
Prosperity Partnership, launched in Texas in 2005). It has also strongly
supported the development of the European Union (EU). More
recently, it has promoted the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agree-
ment among 12 Pacific countries, signed in February 2016. Regional
agreements have been seen through the lens of international liberal-
ism and complex interdependence, concepts developed by international
relations scholars who are also distinguished members of the TC, such
as Joseph Nye. According to these views, cooperation and persua-
sion—rather than force, threats, and bargains—are the privileged means
through which state and other actors should pursue their goals in the
international arena.
The TC has a lasting commitment to a limited liberal democracy.2
Its famous report on the ‘crisis of democracy’ insisted that the main
risk facing this democratic regime was intrinsic: ‘the operations of the
democratic process do indeed appear to have generated a breakdown
of traditional means of social control, a de-legitimation of political and
other forms of authority, and an overload of demands on government,
exceeding its capacity to respond’ (Crozier et al. 1975, p. 8). Therefore,
democracy has to be saved from itself by preventing the excessive exten-
sion of democratic practices.
The TC has been strongly criticized from both the left and the right.
From the right, it has been accused of conspiring to take over the US
government and wanting to establish a world government.3 Authors
from the left have depicted it as an ‘opaque’ organization, an upper
room or ‘cenacle of the international political and economic elite …
4 POWER WITHOUT REPRESENTATION … 89
the activities of the commission and to define the main lines of action for
its regional chairmen and deputy chairmen. These meetings also make
decisions on the recruitment of new members. This committee is impor-
tant in itself, since it constitutes the formal leadership of the TC. But it
is also important as an indicator: Its composition obviously reflects the
criteria that guide the selection of members and the composition of the
organization as a whole.
The criteria used to select new members are far from clear. In fact,
only three of them are publicly known: the maximum number of indi-
viduals per country, the rule that active government officials cannot be
members of the group, and the provision that ‘membership is by invi-
tation of the national and regional Executive Committees’. Apart from
these general rules, the US group has a rotation system, stipulating that
between five and ten of its members should be relieved every year. No
similar system is defined for other national or regional groups. Each
group decides how to choose its members and how to raise and spend its
funds.
Therefore, the logic of representation implicit in the TC has to be
inferred from the characteristics of its membership. To do this, we use
the affiliation information reported by the TC itself (which includes both
current and past affiliations). These affiliations can be classified into four
main sectors: business; politics (government and legislature)4; think tanks
and universities; and the media. Yet, the boundaries between these sec-
tors are rather fuzzy: Many of the people coming from the think tank
and university sector also participate in the business and political sec-
tors. Moreover, many consulting firms—providing financial, legal, and
lobbying services—which we classify as part of the business sector, often
perform functions similar to those that one usually associates with think
tanks and universities.
The TC as a whole has around 400 members: a maximum of 175
from Europe, a maximum of 120 from North America, and over 100
from the Asia-Pacific region. Regional membership is, in turn, divided
into national quotas. According to the original plan, each region was to
have an equal number of members, but this plan was modified as new
countries were included into the groups in order to broaden the scope
of the organization. Thus, for example, the original Japanese Group
became the Asia-Pacific Group, which since 2009 includes people from
China and India; the NAG includes Mexican members since 2000; the
European Group has grown as the EU has expanded.
4 POWER WITHOUT REPRESENTATION … 91
has promoted the creation of think tanks and has lobbied for the political
and cultural integration of Europe according to the principles of peace,
democracy, liberty, solidarity, political pluralism, and respect for human
rights. The Jean Monnet Association, for its part, has worked for the
construction of Europe. Other members are presidents of several uni-
versities and research centers, such as J. Braga de Macedo, director of
the Center for Globalization and Governance in Lisbon and chairman of
the Forum Portugal Global; M. Monti, president of Bocconi University,
Milan; Carlo Secchi, former rector of the same university; and Peter
Sutherland, chairman of the London School of Economics.
Finally, 16 members of the Asia-Pacific Group participating in the
EC are affiliated with think tanks or universities. Unlike those repre-
sented through the European Group, most of these think tanks oper-
ate at a national rather than regional level. Most of them deal with
economic issues but—as said before—also with political matters. The
Asia-Pacific Group includes three important Japanese think tanks: the
Institute for International Monetary Affairs (Toyoo Gyohten, presi-
dent); the Canon Institute for Global Studies (Akinari Horii, member
of the board of directors), which deals with research and policy pro-
posals on economic, political, security, and social issues; and the Japan
Center for International Exchange (Akio Okawara, president), ori-
ented to strengthening Japan’s role in international networks of policy
dialog and cooperation. Among other think tanks from Singapore, the
Philippines, and Australia, the group’s Executive Committee quota also
includes Hang Sung-Joo, chairman of the International Policy Studies
Institute of Korea, Seoul, and emeritus professor at Korea University;
Jusuf Wanandi, cofounder and vice-chairman of the Centre for Strategic
and International Studies, Jakarta; Chen Naiqing, vice president of the
Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs; and Tarun Das, funder
trustee of Ananta Aspen Centre, which focuses on leadership develop-
ment and open dialog on India’s development and national security.
Business
Each of the three regional subgroups within the Executive Committee
includes at least one leader of business associations. Such is the case of
the Asia-Pacific chairman, Yasuchika Hasegawa, former chairman of
the Japan Association of Corporate Executives (1946), which includes
around 1400 top executives of some 950 corporations; this organization
4 POWER WITHOUT REPRESENTATION … 95
Vourloumis from Greece, senior adviser for this group). Also impor-
tant is the Goldman Sachs Group, a leading global investment banking,
securities, and investing firm, with two positions (Peter Sutherland from
Ireland, former chairperson of Goldman Sachs International, as well as
chairperson of the London School of Economics, honorary European
chairperson of the TC and former general director of the WTO, among
other positions; and Vladimir Dlouhy from the Czech Republic, interna-
tional advisor of Goldman Sachs, as well as president of the Chamber of
Commerce, former minister of economy, and former minister for indus-
try and trade).
Finally, in the Asia-Pacific Group, we find the following firms: the
Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi (Toyoo Gyohten), Mitsubishi Corporation
(Minoru Makihara), and Takeda Pharmaceutical (Yasuchika Hasegawa,
Asia-Pacific chairperson), all of them from Japan; and Poongsan Corp,
which fabricates nonferrous materials and products for the military
industry (Ryu Jin Roy), from Korea.
Government and Politics
Within the political sector, most affiliations correspond with the execu-
tive branch. The North American and the Asia-Pacific Groups only
report one affiliation each to the legislative branch (J. Harman and J.R.
Hewson). But Europe registers 12 out of 40 affiliations with this sector,
including the European Parliament. The main affiliations of the NAG
are with defense, intelligence, treasury, international trade, and foreign
affairs.7
Within the European Group, the inclusion of several former presi-
dents and prime ministers (E. Aho from Finland; M. Isarescou from
Romania, also governor of its National Bank; and G. Vassiliou from
Cyprus, who was also head of the negotiating team for the accession
of this country to the EU) is remarkable. Members who have had high
positions in national governments are concentrated in economic areas
(treasury and finance, industry, and foreign affairs), and there are several
former governors and presidents of central banks as well as ambassadors,
most of them appointed to the USA. Former members of European
institutions, such as the EC and European Parliament, and former
presidents of the Central Bank of Europe and the European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development have been also incorporated into the
TC’s Executive Committee.
4 POWER WITHOUT REPRESENTATION … 97
Media
Within the media sector, as well as some analysts and correspondents, the
following groups are mentioned: CNN and the Wall Street Journal from
the USA; Joong Ang Media Network, the largest media group in Korea;
Politiken from Copenhagen; EPH from Zagreb, and three firms special-
izing in communication from Serbia (East West Bridge, GCA Global
Communication Associates, and Kovacic and Spaic).
Coherence and Openness
From these observations about the composition of the Executive
Committee, we can infer that the TC is a highly coherent organization in
two basic senses: its highly elitist nature and its ideological preference for
international markets and financial capital. Since members are recruited
by invitation only, it is foreseeable that the TC would show strong ide-
ological homogeneity in favor of globalism, free markets, procedural
democracy, and international multilateralism under US hegemony. Its
relative political autonomy reinforces the permanence of the TC, ensur-
ing its continuous influence beyond the periodic turnover in government
leadership.
With regard to its openness, one outstanding fact is the exclusion of
labor leaders. Also marginalized or simply excluded are the interests of
business firms oriented toward domestic markets; similar comments
98 M. Luna and J.L. Velasco
can be made about the areas of government dealing with social policy
and about civil society organizations. In terms of gender, its member-
ship is also strongly biased: Only 29% of those on the North American
Committee are women, but that proportion looks very high compared
with the Asia-Pacific Committee (13%) and the European Committee
(only 3%). Furthermore, no woman has been chair or deputy chair of the
TC.
The TC’s manifest preference for members who circulate among the
business, political, and think tank sectors further accentuates its endog-
amous nature. Moreover, it blurs the relation between some economic
interests, more general political interests, and expert knowledge, under-
mining the necessary autonomy of participants. As noted previously,
members function as brokers and translators across different spheres, and
do so quite efficaciously; however, this communication only occurs at the
top of each sector and is restricted to the same sorts of firms and institu-
tions.
In sum, the TC falls far short of the ideal defined at the beginning: Its
membership is certainly coherent, but it is also very endogamous—that
is, relations are tied to one specific social level.
Table 4.2 Countries
Country/region Number of panels/ Percentage
and regions analyzed in
sessions
the TC annual meetings
Global 42 40.4
USA 15 14.4
Greater Middle East 10 9.6
Europe 9 8.7
East Asia 6 5.8
Japan 5 4.8
China 4 3.8
Asia 3 2.9
Russia 3 2.9
Belgium 1 1.0
China and India 1 1.0
Hong Kong 1 1.0
Iran 1 1.0
Korea 1 1.0
Trilateral 1 1.0
Germany 1 1.0
Total 104 100
more efficacious, stronger, and more flexible organization, one less cen-
tered on itself and therefore more able to present and publicly defend its
own ideas.
Conclusion
Since it aspires to be a ‘soft power’ global network discussing the world’s
pressing problems, a CAS like the TC should be able to represent a wide
segment of global public opinion. To achieve this representativeness, it
should have a membership that is simultaneously coherent and open. But
our analysis of its composition showed that, although membership is very
coherent (excluding, as expected, representatives of economic protec-
tionism, hard-core conservatism, and other adverse opinion currents), it
is also excessively endogamous, representing only a closed circle of very
exclusive business, political, and think tank sectors.
This means that what the TC’s membership truly represents is a
global elite centered on the USA, the interests of financial transnational
corporations, and a liberal view committed to trade liberalization—or,
expressed in Gill’s historical materialist terms, the TC’s membership
‘reflects the twin processes, transnationalization of economy and state,
since many members are associated with transnational fractions of capital
and corresponding elements of the state’ (Gill 1991, p. 155).
In Ronald S. Burt’s (2005) terms, the TC shows high ‘closure’
and little ‘brokerage’. According to Burt, with a balance like this, the
information circulating within the network tends to be redundant, and
therefore, the network tends to be reluctant to undertake experimenta-
tion and innovation. Our analysis of the annual meetings confirmed this
expectation. We found that the agenda of these meetings did indeed
tend to be monotonous, with little capacity to discuss ideas different
from those held by members of the TC. The meetings tended to be self-
oriented, serving to maintain internal consent by ensuring that all the
members shared the same views, that they acquired prestige within the
network and so forth. This has grave effects for the associative efficacy
of the network, but it also affects its practical and organizational efficacy.
Thanks to its high level of closure, the TC preserves itself as a pow-
erful network. But this power depends more on the affiliations of its
members—based on the fact that all of them occupy leading positions
in their respective organizations. In contrast, the TC’s capacity to legiti-
mate this power among the broader public is quite limited. To enlarge its
104 M. Luna and J.L. Velasco
Notes
1. Six of the latest eight presidents of the World Bank have been ‘trilateral-
ists’. Several US presidents and vice presidents have been members of its
North American Group (e.g., Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton). Since the
Carter Administration, more than half of all the US secretaries of state and
three-quarters of all defense secretaries have also been members of the TC.
This trend continued in the Obama administration, with 11 TC members
being appointed to key high-level positions within the first 10 days of this
administration (Wood 2009).
2. ‘Liberal’ and ‘liberalism’ are used here in the conventional European sense,
denoting a preference for individual rights, limited government, and ‘free’
markets—in contrast to current US usage, where they normally denote a
commitment to social rights and progressive causes.
3. One of its most consistent right-wing critics has been the John Birch
Society (e.g., see Barry 2009).
4. In the case of government, the affiliations refer to positions held in the
past; as previously noted, current government officials cannot be members
of the TC.
5. According to the ‘Introduction to the Trilateral’, the Executive
Committee has 48 members; however, the list of members of this commit-
tee has a total of 65 names.
6. We have grouped together think tanks and universities, even though they
have different functional purposes and structures, because both of them
use knowledge—particularly research, analysis, and generation of informa-
tion—as their main resource and, in the present case, the frontiers between
them tend to become fuzzy.
7. As we have noticed in our analysis of the NAG, members of the US
Republican and Democratic Parties are equally represented (Luna and
Velasco 2013).
4 POWER WITHOUT REPRESENTATION … 105
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106 M. Luna and J.L. Velasco
This chapter deals with a think tank that is considered by many to be one
of the most powerful in the world today, the Bilderberg Conferences.
I argue that the main achievement of its members is to have created a
transnational network of influential people in positions of power. ‘Power’
and ‘influence’—or ‘hard’ and ‘soft power’ to use Nye’s (2004) terms—
are difficult to define unambiguously. Manuel Castells (2011), a lead-
ing theoretician of the network society, defines power as ‘the relational
capacity to impose an actor’s will over another actor’s will on the basis of
the structural capacity of domination embedded in the institutions of soci-
ety’ (2011, p. 775, my emphasis). He considers power relationships as
the foundation of society and contends that in a network society, ‘social
power is primarily exercised by and through networks’ (2011, p. 774).
The exercise of power (or control) over others relies on constituting and
programming networks, as well as connecting and ensuring the coop-
eration of different networks by sharing common goals and combining
resources.
A.M. Zieliński (*)
University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
the Steering Committee, while a few have more than one: Germany, Great
Britain, Italy and France have two; and the United States has eight. The
task of the Steering Committee is to set the agenda for the next confer-
ence, to decide who to invite (including the number of guests from each
country) and to choose who will present papers. Since the beginning the
aim of the Bilderberg organisers has been to invite influential people and
to persuade them to their position in subtle ways (Retinger 1956).
The Bilderberg meetings fit into this book’s wide conception of a
think tank for the following reasons: the participants come from busi-
ness, politics, media and academia, and discuss important current geo-
political and economic issues; and the line drawn between their policy
planning and strategic discussions is often blurred. However, the fact
that the chairmen of basically all major Atlantic think tanks partici-
pate regularly in the conferences merits its investigation from the point
of view of supranational policy-planning. Based on the topics dis-
cussed during these conferences, it seems appropriate to call the con-
ferences a ‘strategy forum’3 of the transnational elite that has formed
a Transnational Informal Governance Network (TIGN) (see also
Christiansen and Neuhold 2012).4
Historical Background
The Bilderberg Conferences were founded in the context of the Cold
War. During World War II, the Allied Forces partnered with Stalin’s
Soviet Union to defeat Germany, Italy and Japan. The death of
Roosevelt and his replacement by Truman as president of the United
States marked the beginning of the end of the close relationship between
Washington and Moscow. The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan
cemented the division of Europe into two spheres of influence, includ-
ing a divided Germany. In April 1949, representatives from 12 countries
signed the North Atlantic Treaty, establishing the first supranational mili-
tary force, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This asym-
metry in power between the United States and the other member
countries implied its leading role in the Alliance. After the outbreak of
the Korean War, US leaders decided that they would continue to aid
Western Europe only if Germany was allowed to arm itself and join
NATO (Trachtenberg and Gehrz 2003), which led to increased tensions
between the United States and its allies in Western Europe, especially
France.
5 THE BILDERBERG CONFERENCES: A TRANSNATIONAL … 111
Inner Circle
Despite the high fluctuation of participants—roughly two-thirds partici-
pated only in one conference—at the heart of the network is a group
of individuals, some of them from very wealthy dynasties, others rep-
resenting large financial institutions, who have participated in virtu-
ally every conference for approximately 10 years, sometimes longer.
According to Ian Richardson (2011, p. 182), ‘longevity of member-
ship … is clearly associated with perceived influence within the elite net-
work’. This warrants a closer look at some characteristics of this ‘inner
circle’ (Useem 1984) of the Bilderberg network. We identified 53 per-
sons who have participated in at least 16 conferences between 1954 and
2015—that is, more than 25% of all conferences—and assigned them to
a sector: Finance, Business, Politics, Royalty, Academia, Media, Think
Tank, Diplomat or Lawyer; the category ‘Other’ consists of individuals
who could not meaningfully be assigned to any sector. Whenever pos-
sible the participants were assigned based on the information provided
on the official list of participants. For example, Nicolas Baverez is listed
as ‘Nicolas Baverez, FRA, Partner Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher LLP’
and was therefore assigned to the ‘Law’ and not the ‘Academia’ sector.
However, sometimes the description in the official list of participants
can be misleading. For example, in 2012 Jon Huntsman Jr was invited
to the conference in Chantilly, VA, as ‘Chairman, Huntsman Cancer
Foundation’ although cancer or related medical problems were not on
the agenda. However, Huntsman was also the US ambassador to China
between 2009 and 2011 and became chairman of the Atlantic Council
think tank in early 2014—both positions are more likely reasons for his
invitation, especially considering that in that same year some important
Chinese elite members were invited as well. Some participants had to be
assigned to more than one category because their primary occupation
had changed over the years.
Table 5.1 presents an overview of the sectors to which these peo-
ple belong, while Table 5.2 shows their country of origin. It is striking
that exactly half of them represent financial (30%) or industrial (20%)
5 THE BILDERBERG CONFERENCES: A TRANSNATIONAL … 113
Table 5.1 Participants
Sector Number of partici-
in the inner circle by
pants
sector
Finance 17
Business 10
Politics 7
Politics/academia 2
Politics/media 1
Media 5
Think tanks 4
Royalty 3
Diplomats 2
Academia 1
Law 1
Table 5.2 Participants
Country Number of partici-
in the inner circle by
pants
country
USA 14.5
Netherlands 7
Great Britain 5
Italy 3
Spain 3
Canada 2.5
Belgium 2
Austria 2
Sweden 2
Turkey 2
Germany 2
France 1
Finland 1
Norway 1
Switzerland 1
Denmark 1
Greece 1
Portugal 1
Ireland 1
Gender and Race
The Bilderberg Conferences have been characterised as an old boys
club. A look at the participation of women in these conferences
116 A.M. ZIELIŃSKI
confirms this. In 1972, for the first time in its history, the Steering
Committee invited six women to a Bilderberg Conference. One of
them was Princess, then Queen, later Princess again Beatrix of the
Netherlands. She became ‘host’ of the conferences, having partici-
pated in all conferences between 1986 and 2015.6 In the meantime,
the number of female participants has grown steadily, from two to three
per conference in the 1970s, seven to eight in the 1990s, to almost 15
per conference in the last 10 years, reaching an all-time high in 2015
with 25 female participants—that is, 20% of all participants. This devel-
opment parallels norms elsewhere with women graduating to more
senior positions in politics and the economy. In general, the Steering
Committee is very much aware of current macroeconomic trends, and
the invited business representatives continuously represent the most
profitable sectors of the economy at any given time.
From the 176 female participants, only four can be considered to
belong to the inner circle, two of them due to their status as members of
important royal families (Princess/Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and
Queen Sophia of Spain), while the other two chair important American
think tanks: Marie-Josée Drouin-Kravis (and wife of Kravis-Kohlberg)
from the Hudson Institute and Jessica Matthews from the Carnegie
Endowment.
If the Bilderberg Conferences are an old boys club, can the same
be true of race—are they also a white boys club? Our analysis shows
that nothing similar to the inclusion of women can be observed con-
cerning non-white participants. While from time to time single non-
white people have been invited to the conferences (e.g. Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice in 2008), there is only one non-white person
who belongs to the inner circle, having participated in 34 conferences
between 1969 and 2013, namely Vernon Jordan Jr from Lazard Frères.
A former activist for racial emancipation, he became very influential in
the Democratic Party from the 1980s and was responsible for inviting
Bill Clinton to the Bilderberg Conference in 1991. The same is true for
Asian participants—except for Nobuo Tanaka, who participated in 2009
when he was director of the International Energy Agency (IEA). No
Japanese has ever been invited to a Bilderberg Conference.
When the conferences started in the 1950s, all participants were white
Christian males. Soon the first Jewish participants appeared; now they
account for around 10% of all participants. Non-white participants are
still a big exception.
5 THE BILDERBERG CONFERENCES: A TRANSNATIONAL … 117
the only banks that specialise in sovereign debt consulting for gov-
ernments.
This means the CEOs of some major international banks that are
competitors in the financial markets meet regularly with each other,
while CEOs of other major international banks are rarely, if ever, invited
to the Bilderberg Conferences. The Royal Bank of Canada, Citigroup,
the Bank of America and BNP Paribas (since its merger in 2000)—to
cite some prominent examples—are hardly ever invited to the Bilderberg
Conferences. This could mean that the transnational power elite is not
monolithic but rather made up of different fractions (within fractions
of transnational finance capital) who compete with each other as well as
with fractions of national capitalism.
Which corporations are at the centre of the inner circle of the cur-
rent Bilderberg network? The presence of Internet and telecommunica-
tion giants Google, Microsoft and Nokia indicates that the Bilderberg
group—which was sometimes accused of living in the past—has arrived
in the twenty-first century. Other important sectors are energy, led
by Royal Dutch Shell and featuring ENI from Italy and DONG from
Denmark, and aluminium, with leading manufacturers Norsk Hydro and
Alcoa. Another transnational corporation is Airbus, Europe’s leading
firm in the defence industry. Also featured are generalists like Siemens
and Koc Holding. Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis is on board, as is
Fiat Chrysler. From the food and beverage industry, the only company in
the inner circle is Coca-Cola. In general, most of the companies whose
CEOs participate in the Bilderberg Conferences are market leaders in
their segment, sometimes globally.
least one conference before assuming this position and at least one while
in office.
A similar connection can be observed with the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a multilateral agreement regulating inter-
national trade that was in effect between 1948 and 1995 before being
replaced by the WTO. Most directors-general of this organization par-
ticipated in several Bilderberg Conferences while in office. Both Peter
Sutherland and Renato Ruggiero attended several conferences before
and during their term. Trade liberalisation has been an important item
on the Bilderberg agenda since its inception in the 1950s.
Another international organisation with a close connection to the
Bilderberg Conferences is the World Bank. The ties were not very tight
until the 1980s but beginning with James Wolfensohn in 1995 and
lasting till 2012, the presidents of the World Bank (Wolfensohn, Paul
Wolfowitz and Robert Zoellick) participated in almost every Bilderberg
Conference. In recent years, instead of the president of the World
Bank, the secretary general of the International Monetary Fund (IMF),
Christine Lagarde, has been a frequent guest.
Another supranational financial institution with very close ties to
the Bilderberg network is the European Central Bank. All three of its
presidents have previously been regular participants in the Bilderberg
Conferences: Wim Duisenberg, Jean-Claude Trichet and the current
president, Mario Draghi.
The last chairman of the Federal Reserve—the American equivalent of
the European Central Bank—to participate frequently in the Bilderberg
Conferences was Paul Volcker, in office between 1979 and 1987. He
was invited to four conferences during his term in office and remained
involved in the discussions over the following decades. His successors,
Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, participated only once each. In gen-
eral, it is difficult if not impossible to say whether changes such as these
reflect changes in the function of these conferences in the geopolitical
arena, or whether they can be attributed at least partly to a rising public
interest in the Bilderberg Conferences since the late 1990s (Wendt 2015,
p. 58ff) and the fact that some people in important official positions pre-
fer not to participate or at least not be listed on the official list. Another
explanation could be that in the meantime other forums exist, where
more specialised discussions can take place, like the Group of Thirty for
central bankers or the Eurogroup for finance ministers of the Eurozone.
5 THE BILDERBERG CONFERENCES: A TRANSNATIONAL … 121
Not only the European Central Bank but also the European
Commission—the executive body of the European Union—has close
links to the Bilderberg network, which can partly be attributed to the
influence of the organisers of these conferences on the European integra-
tion process in the 1950s (Gijswijt 2007, p. 300). Since 1998, at least
one member of the European Commission (sometimes up to four) has
been invited to the Bilderberg Conference every year.
Since its foundation following the Bilderberg Conference in 1973,
the European Group of the Trilateral Commission has had six chairmen,
all of whom have participated in Bilderberg Conferences, while four of
them (Kohnstamm, Monti, Sutherland and Trichet) are part of the inner
circle. The American group has had five chairmen so far—all of them
have attended Bilderberg Conferences.
The members of the Trilateral Commission are also regular attendees
at the Bilderberg Conferences. Over the last 10 years, between 30% and
40% of members of the European Group have participated in at least one
conference. For the North American group, the figure is slightly lower
(around 30%). This is not surprising, considering that prominent mem-
bers of the Bilderberg network were instrumental in the creation of the
Trilateral Commission after 1973 (Knudsen 2016). We can thus assume
that there is a strong overlapping of worldviews and aims between these
organizations.
director between 1969 and 1974 and attended all conferences between
1969 and 1971. After Duchêne, Christoph Bertram became director of
IISS in 1974 and started attending the Bilderberg Conferences in 1978.
He was a regular guest until the end of the 1990s and can be consid-
ered part of the inner circle. The previously mentioned former president
of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Joseph Johnson,
was also vice-president of IISS between 1965 and 1981, and attended all
Bilderberg Conferences in this time period. Of the European think tanks,
this is definitely the one with the closest links to the Bilderberg network.
The director of Bruegel, Jean Pisani-Ferry, was invited in 2009. Jean-
Claude Trichet was the chairperson of this think tank between 2012
and 2015, after his tenure as president of the European Central Bank
(2003–2011). He was a regular Bilderberg participant, especially during
his term in office.
Agenda and Consensus
After this in-depth look at the participants at the core of the Bilderberg
network, we need to examine the agenda of the meetings. One of the
first topics for discussion in the Bilderberg Conferences was how to abol-
ish trade barriers in Western Europe. Once this task was accomplished,
the promotion of free trade in the world became an important matter
on the agenda. In 1955 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, ‘Marjolin argued
that the ultimate goal of liberalization should remain a global, multilat-
eral system of free trade and payments’ (Gijswijt 2007, p. 116) and in
1964 in Williamsburg, ‘The general conclusion … was straightforward–
the West should do all it could to lessen barriers to international trade
in the Kennedy Round in GATT. The European Economic Community,
in particular, had an obligation to avoid becoming a protectionist block’
(Gijwsijt 2007, p. 286). Later, when the GATT negotiations were
blocked, the Bilderberg network was considering sending another nego-
tiator who would put more pressure on the developing countries.
Another important issue is the centralisation of monetary policy
through the creation of monetary unions, like the European Union.
At the 1960 conference in Bürgenstock, Switzerland, shortly after the
implementation of the Rome Treaties, key protagonists like Marjolin or
Spaak predicted that sooner or later a political union would be inevitable
(Gijswijt 2007, p. 238). Banking dynasties at the centre of the Bilderberg
network accelerated the process of European integration by means of
5 THE BILDERBERG CONFERENCES: A TRANSNATIONAL … 125
Discussion
It is necessary to put some of the results from this analysis into a broader
context. Despite the growing economic significance of other regions of
the world, especially Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—the
so-called BRICS countries—virtually nobody from these countries ever
gets invited to the Bilderberg Conferences. Why? First, it is important
to keep in mind that the Bilderberg Conferences are defacto an informal
forum of NATO (Gijwsijt 2007, p. 298). A quote from the introduction
to the conference report from 1985 illustrates this: ‘Lord Roll observed
that this year’s conference was taking place just a few days after the for-
tieth anniversary of VE day. Out of that event had grown the NATO
Alliance, and Bilderberg, while not formally a part of the Alliance, had
been born alongside it’ (Bilderberg Conference Report 1985, p. 11).
Since NATO is first and foremost a military alliance, it makes sense to
look at the relationship between NATO countries and China not only
from the perspective of current economic growth, but also from the per-
spective of military strength. According to a discussion paper from the
Bilderberg Conference in 1999, China was still considered a regional
power and not expected to rise to a global power at any time soon.
Nor is China independent from the transnational capital in the eco-
nomic field. In his analysis of ownership of large Chinese financial insti-
tutions, Harris (2012) demonstrates that although the Chinese state
always owns at least 51% of all large corporate financial institutions
belonging to the Bilderberg network, like Blackrock, Goldman Sachs,
HSBC, JPMorgan or Barclay’s, own substantial shares of these corpo-
rations. Additionally, Kentor argues that based on his analysis of TNC
networks, it seems that ‘Chinese TNC networks have little impact in the
global economy’ (Kentor 2005, p. 282). Still, it is noteworthy that, con-
trary to the 1970s when it was not an option for the European aristo-
crats to invite the Japanese, since 2004 a few Chinese have been invited.
What does this imply for the role of the Bilderberg meetings in con-
temporary geopolitics? On the one hand, it is likely that the importance
of these meetings for world politics today is not the same as it was in
the 1950s, when most major Western countries sent high-level repre-
sentatives, or in the 1970s, when through the Rockefeller–Kissinger–
Brzezinski axis they were very close to the US power centre. A look
at the official lists of participants confirms this: the number of heads
of states and important ministers has diminished slightly over recent
5 THE BILDERBERG CONFERENCES: A TRANSNATIONAL … 127
and promoting lines of policy that ensure the stability and reproduction
of a system shaped by capitalist social relations’ (Peschek 1987, p. 216).
Obviously, the Bilderberg Conferences fulfil this role by linking large
financial institutions with incumbent and possible future ministers, presi-
dents and other politicians. Organic intellectuals (represented by major
think tanks and other influential academics) provide the brainpower for
policies that help to stabilise and expand global capitalism (Robinson
2004).
From the functionalist (or pluralist) perspective, however, the same
phenomenon is perceived as much less problematic (Dahl 1961; Mitrany
1966). The emergence of supranational institutions is a quasi-natural
development stage on the way to a free market global economy. Informal
discussions based on Chatham House rules are considered a vital ingredi-
ent of the democratic process in order to allow frank discussions between
the decision makers. As long as the democratic system allows for other
interest groups to organise themselves and to articulate their interests,
there is nothing problematic with these off-the-record meetings between
the 0.1% and influential politicians and intellectuals. Furthermore, the
possibility of a unity of interests of the business community is questioned
on the premise that the corporations compete against each other in the
economic system.
As a result of the inability of both these approaches to explain the
actual policy-making process adequately, a third approach in elite sociol-
ogy emerged in the 1950s and 1960s: power structure research as devel-
oped by C. Wright Mills (1956) and slightly amended by G. William
Domhoff (1990, 2014). It studies decision-making processes in demo-
cratic capitalism based on detailed empirical research. Assuming that
societal power is rooted in both classes and hierarchical organisations,
it uses overlapping memberships in these organisations as a way to map
the underlying power structure, and takes disproportionate wealth and
income, as well as over-representation in decision-making groups, as key
indicators of power. The results point to the existence of an upper class
rooted in corporate ownership, which exercises power through a lead-
ership group that consists of actively involved corporate owners and
their high-level employees in corporations as well as in foundations,
think-tanks and policy-planning organisations that they fund and direct.
Domhoff’s (1975) analysis of the function of clubs like the Bohemian
Club for social cohesion among members of the upper class (and in the
5 THE BILDERBERG CONFERENCES: A TRANSNATIONAL … 129
end for the policy-making process) remains valid for this study of trans-
national elite gatherings like the Bilderberg Conferences.
While on the national level controversies surrounding these
approaches and the empirical findings that would validate them remain
to this day, the transnationalisation of our society generates new research
questions: Does a transnational power elite exist or is it emerging? How
homogeneous is it? What is the relationship between transnational and
national elites?
Conclusion
Ground-breaking studies on the transnational business community and
transnational capitalist class have been published over the last 15 years
(Carroll 2010; Carroll and Fennema 2002; Kentor and Jang 2004). Our
in-depth analysis of the participants of the Bilderberg Conferences pro-
vides further answers. Indeed, a trans-Atlantic elite (van der Pijl 2012)
emerged after World War II. With some qualifications, we can speak
of a fraction of the transnational capitalist class. However, it is limited
geographically: the centre of this world-system consists only of member
countries of NATO. The rest of the world is perceived as either periph-
ery (Eastern Europe, Middle East, etc.) or rivals (Russia, China). Some
national networks seem to be closer to each other than other networks,
a situation that might have its historical roots in the conflict between
Protestants and Catholics (or liberals and conservatives): when the
Bilderberg Conferences were founded in the 1950s, Retinger was very
conscious about not inviting members of the Spanish elite associated
with the Habsburgs. An overview of the most important corporations
and politicians at the centre of the Bilderberg network prima facie con-
firms a certain liberal-Zionist dominance.
Recent historical research (Großmann 2014) has revealed that more
or less at the same time as the liberal fraction of transnational capital
began meeting at the annual Bilderberg Conferences, the conservative
fraction started meeting in other elite circles, like the Vaduz Institute or
Le Cercle. Le Cercle, an even more secretive transnational informal gov-
ernance network, brings together conservative politicians, businessmen
and members of the intelligence community. In the early years, it was
dominated by the Vatican; however, especially since the 1980s, British
and American conservatives have held most key positions. Between 1996
and 2008, its chairman was Norman Lamont, who held various posts in
130 A.M. ZIELIŃSKI
the British government between 1983 and 1993. Before joining parlia-
ment, he worked for N.M. Rothschild and Sons, and became director of
Rothschild Asset Management.
Research into transnational informal governance networks, like
Bilderberg or Le Cercle or MPS, can provide us with important data
on the individuals and organisations involved which then needs to be
put into its socio-historical context. Once sufficient data is available, a
Bourdieausian, field-theoretical approach should help to identify the
structure of the transnational power elite.
Notes
1. See https://www.bilderbergmeetings.org.
2. See http://scribd.com/bilderbergboys.
3. Other such forums include the Aspen Strategy Forum, the Munich
Strategy Forum and the Ambrosetti Forum.
4. The dominance of finance and business warrants—with some qualifica-
tions—the term ‘transnational capitalist class’ (see Carroll 2010; Robinson
2004; Sklair 2001).
5. According to Ron Chernow (1993, p. 636), Siegmund Warburg had hired
Griffin as a diplomat, which provides some explanation for his constant
presence at the meetings.
6. According to Gijswijt (2007, p. 270), who cites van der Beugel, Princess
Beatrix was indeed the first woman to participate in a Bilderberg
Conference; however, already in 1963 in Cannes (she ‘was usually reticent
during the plenary Bilderberg sessions, but all the more active outside the
official debates’).
References
Aldrich, R. 1997. OSS, CIA and European Unity: The American Committee on
United Europe, 1948–1960. Diplomacy & Statecraft 8 (1): 184–227.
Andersson, L., and L. Calvano. 2015. Perceived Mobility of Impact: Global
Elites and the Bono Effect. Critical Perspectives on International Business 11
(2): 122–136.
Aubourg, V. 2003. Organizing Atlanticism: The Bilderberg Group and the
Atlantic Institute, 1952–1963. Intelligence and National Security 18 (2):
92–105.
Aubourg, V., G. Bossuat, and G. Scott-Smith (eds.). 2008. European
Community, Atlantic Community? Paris: Soleb.
5 THE BILDERBERG CONFERENCES: A TRANSNATIONAL … 131
Bruce Cronin
B. Cronin (*)
University of Greenwich Business School, London, UK
Origins
As meticulously detailed by Linder (2000), the immediate origins of
the Business Roundtable lie in the corporate mobilisation from the late
1960s against the perceived power of unions in general and construction
unions in particular. But as Domhoff (1983) points out, the organiza-
tions that coalesced at this time had deep roots in the Business Council,
the center of business policy networks since 1933. He quotes DuPont
chair Irving Shapiro: “The Roundtable was created to have an advocacy
organization. It wasn’t created by the Business Council, but by the same
people” (1983, p. 135).
Union power in the construction sector was particularly problematic
for industrial firms in the 1960s. While many large US manufacturers
had responded to rising labor costs by relocating production offshore
in the 1960s and 1970s, construction unions were largely impervious
to this, as their production was inherently localized. Rising construc-
tion costs from labor shortages arising from the Vietnam draft directly
impacted on large US industrial firms when constructing new plant
(Linder 2000).
Amidst a variety of industry responses to the escalation in construc-
tion costs, a key figure was US Steel Corporation CEO Roger Blough;
in a bid to weaken union power, he halted construction work on his
plants in June 1967 to deny alternative employment to workers strik-
ing against local contractors. US Steel was joined by large local employ-
ers Westinghouse and Jones and Laughlin. Chamber president and
construction firm owner Winston Blount subsequently called for more
widespread united employer action against construction unions (Linder
2000).
In May 1969, a Construction Users Anti-Inflation Round Table
(CUAIR) was established to build solidarity among large industrial
firms in setting common terms when agreeing on construction con-
tracts and to find methods to reduce the power of construction to press
wage increases. A distinct feature of the group, which would also come
to characterize the Business Roundtable, was that it solely comprised
CEOs or chairs of major industrial companies. Roger Blough agreed to
chair CUAIR on the condition that member CEOs agreed to person-
ally participate in the policy committee (Linder 2000). Founding par-
ticipants comprised CEOs or chairs from GE, Standard Oil of New
Jersey, Union Carbide, Kennecott Copper, GM, and AT&T. Other early
136 B. Cronin
Modus Operandi
A key organizing principle of the Business Roundtable is the direct
engagement of the CEOs of the largest US industrial corporations in its
daily activity. Blough’s experience in the sluggish politics of business rep-
resentative organizations and his direct involvement in US Steel’s conflict
with construction unions proved the need to unite these key decision
makers in what many business figures interpreted as an existentially defin-
ing period. In turn, the mobilization of CEOs generates direct access to
very senior levels of government; the Roundtable’s first lobbying activity
on its formation was a meeting of half of its executive with the White
House budget director, the Federal Reserve chair, and the chair of the
Council of Economic Advisors (Waterhouse 2014).
A second characteristic of the Roundtable is its industrial composi-
tion. Members are overwhelmingly vertically integrated industrial firms
operating in stable regulated markets with few competitors. While the
particular industries represented shifted with changes in economic struc-
ture, pharmaceuticals, telecoms, and IT in place of engineering, until the
late 1990s it remained apart from the finance sector—banks, insurance
firms—and from investment capitalists throughout, who were cast as a
destabilizing influence on business (Waterhouse 2014).
Third, the Roundtable eschews partisan politics in preference for
a long-term effort to build support across Congress and does not
fund PACs or individual candidates, although individual corporates
6 THE RISE AND DECLINE OF THE BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE? 137
do: John Harper (Alcoa) and Irving Shapiro (DuPont) were promi-
nent Democrats; Blough and John Young (Hewlett Packard) were
Republicans (Waterhouse 2014). Instead, the Roundtable organizes
around a set of task forces focused on legislative areas deemed to be
restricting business; in addition to the labor law and construction com-
mittees, there were initially task forces on consumerism, taxes, environ-
ment, and trade; these expanded to other topics as the need arose. Each
task force was chaired by a CEO with administrative support from the
CEO’s firm; the Roundtable itself had few administrative staff (nine in
1974; 11 in 2004), although the expenditure on hired attorneys and
lobbyists remained substantial. This was funded by membership fees of
$2‚500 to $35,000 per annum, a total of $1.9 million in 1974, with 161
members paying $10,000 to $35,000‚ and a total of $3 million by 2004
(Slavin 1975; Domhoff 2006). Recent spending on lobbying is reported
in Fig. 6.1.
Fourth, the Roundtable effectively combines national coalitions of
business organizations with grassroots mobilizations of their members,
138 B. Cronin
Effectiveness
To assess the effectiveness of the Roundtable’s lobbying activity, a set of
major issue areas in which the Roundtable has engaged are considered.
These cover labor, inflation, consumer protection, regulation, taxation,
trade, and healthcare.
Labor
By Linder’s (2000) account, the Roundtable’s precursor, CUAIR, had
sought to create a “united front” among employers to expand the supply
of skilled labor, avoid overtime, stop local building during local strikes,
and support local collective bargaining. The organization gained regular
access to senior members of the administration but was not effective in
impacting government intervention in collective bargaining. The CUAIR
funded research on nonunion contracting, and provided and funded
legal representation for small contractors in labor disputes, rolling back
union picketing rights; it also formed dozens of construction local user
groups to build employer solidarity.
6 THE RISE AND DECLINE OF THE BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE? 139
Inflation
By Waterhouse’s (2014) account, in a position of relative weakness in the
early 1970s, generated by labor shortages and spiraling prices driven by
the Vietnam War, business had pragmatically called for government con-
trols on wages and had supported Nixon’s New Economic Policy from
August 1971 to 1973, introducing wage and price stabilization. The
program was supported by 70% of the public polled, and was publicly
welcomed by, among others, the chairs of GM, Chrysler, Metropolitan
Life Assurance, Republic Steel, and Pan American Airlines. While con-
tested among their membership and qualified as “a necessary evil”‚ the
NAM and Chamber also supported the program. But as controls could
only effectively be short-lived, employers were concerned to strengthen
their bargaining position once controls were lifted. Accordingly, the
Chamber mounted a public relations campaign associating labor power
and government spending as underpinning causes of price inflation.
By contrast, the Roundtable agitated from the start against further
government controls on business. The CUAIC’s first act following its
October 1971 formation was a meeting with senior government officials,
where they made a vigorous call for the immediate cessation of the con-
trols. In Congressional hearings on the possible extension of controls in
1974, the Roundtable and individual members argued that controls were
associated with economic decline as they restricted investment.
6 THE RISE AND DECLINE OF THE BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE? 141
Consumer Protection
With rising affluence through the 1960s, greater exposure of product
failures and sympathetic Democrat administrations, public support grew
for consumer rights beyond caveat emptor, crystallized on 1969 calls for
a Consumer Protection Agency (CPA). Business organizations mobilized
against the perceived state encroachment on their decision-making, with
the Roundtable establishing a Consumer Issues Working Group (CWIG)
in 1973. Acknowledging widespread popular support for consumer
rights legislation, the CWIG did not oppose this directly but rather
sought to rally the minority opposition in Congress to delay and amend
to limit the effectiveness of proposals. A grassroots strategy was deployed
to lobby the minority Congress members, asking small business members
of the NAM to write to Congress as independent voices.
Alongside the Congressional initiative, the Roundtable led efforts to
try to shape public opinion on the issue, commissioning a public opinion
poll that counterpoised the creation of a new, overarching and expensive
federal agency against improving the effectiveness of effective agencies.
With 75% of respondents supporting the loaded answer, the poll result
was promoted widely and effectively against the CPA proposal, while
142 B. Cronin
Regulation
By the late 1970s, the Roundtable had succeeded in weakening union
and consumer protection rights, defeating price controls and commit-
ting successive administrations to reducing government spending. It
had done this with considerable tactical nous in building wide coalitions
exploiting the political divisions of the day in Congress, but framing each
targeted issue as part of a burden on business efficiency that was eco-
nomically detrimental to the public as consumers. On this basis, they
turned their attention toward a more comprehensive reduction in gov-
ernment regulation of business.
A precursor to the push for regulatory reform was the industrial
deregulation of the Carter administration. Regulation of airlines, truck-
ing, and telecommunications had been established in the Progressive
and New Deal eras to protect firms from excessive competition (Coase
1959; Kolko 1963). But by the 1970s a sufficiently complex set of
imperfections, market and price restrictions, capacity and expansion
limitations had developed that the incumbent firms welcomed change,
although they were highly divided in their response to specific propos-
als. Consequently, the national business organizations, including the
Roundtable, which typically represented both winners and losers from
specific deregulation proposals, had discussed the need for regulatory
reform for many years without consensus and thus were not highly moti-
vated to mobilize to resist change (Derthick and Quirk 1985).
While quiet on deregulation, the Roundtable was a vocal opponent
of any new regulation without strong cause. As part of his anti-inflation
policy, Ford accepted the view that government regulation often gener-
ated hidden costs and mandated a cost–benefit analysis for all new gov-
ernment regulations. The Roundtable quickly established a regulation
taskforce under Irving Shapiro (DuPont) to collect a mass of examples
of “harmful or unnecessary” regulations from members and estimates of
6 THE RISE AND DECLINE OF THE BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE? 143
their cost. It then used these examples to lobby for legislation for com-
prehensive regulatory reform (Waterhouse 2014).
However, Waterhouse (2014) argues that the Roundtable made two
tactical mistakes in promoting the legislation. First, it pressed for a clause
removing the presumption that a proposed regulation was valid unless
it could be proved otherwise. Second, it opposed a proposal requiring
regulatory agencies to provide small firms with regulatory exemptions
and flexibility in application. These proposals weakened unity within the
coalition of large and small businesses and strengthened the resolve of
their opponents, leading Carter to drop comprehensive reform in favor
of a small business-focused Regulatory Flexibility Act, without mandated
cost–benefit analysis.
Reagan’s 1981 election provided a fillip to the pursuit of regulatory
reform, with a new executive order requiring cost–benefit analysis of
existing regulations where compliance costs exceeded $100 million and
the creation of a Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief. The task
force asked the Roundtable to identify the ten regulations that could be
changed to greatest benefit and then opened itself up to take complaints
of regulatory burden from businesses. Efforts to resubmit comprehen-
sive regulatory reform through the Democratic-controlled House were
unsuccessful, but presidential regulatory review under Reagan saw regu-
latory capacity diminished by the widespread appointment of advocates
to head regulatory agencies (Waterhouse 2014).
Fiscal Policy
By Waterhouse’s (2014) account, the government deficit was seen by the
Roundtable not only as a driver of inflation (deficit spending detached
from productivity growth) but also as crowding out funds for business
investment. Because the government was borrowing to finance the defi-
cit, firms had to pay higher rates to borrow capital for investment. Thus
the government deficit undermined the ability of firms to invest to mod-
ernize plant, increase productivity, and develop their competitiveness
against growing foreign exports. Further, as Roundtable taxation task
force chair and GE CEO Reginald Jones argued in 1975, not only did
government fiscal policy make it expensive to raise capital externally; tax
policies made it difficult to fund investment from retained earnings.
The Roundtable pursued an acceleration of the depreciation rate
allowed as a tax deduction. Since 1934, firms had been allowed to
144 B. Cronin
deduct the cost of wear and tear on plant and equipment from the
amount on which they were liable to pay tax. Governments had period-
ically shortened or increased the period of wear and tear deemed nec-
essary before replacement in order to encourage or discourage capital
investment. The Roundtable argued that the economic difficulties of the
1970s demanded increased capital investment, and advocated a reduc-
tion in the capital replacement period (depreciation rate). The proposal
was supported by a lobbying mobilization by the Roundtable, NAM,
Chamber, and a range of trade associations, reframing the desire for
tax relief as a contribution to national competitiveness and economic
growth.
But while reduced capital depreciation periods were valuable to the
large capital-intensive industrial firms at the heart of the Roundtable,
smaller firms with lower capital expenditure were more interested in
lower interest rates and reductions in the gross rate of corporation tax.
Tax reduction campaigns had spread since the success of a 1978 referen-
dum on the issue in California. This “supply side” movement advocated
a general reduction in taxation, and business taxation, in particular, to
provide more incentives for entrepreneurial activity and competition as a
driver of productivity.
Reagan’s election embraced the latter generalized tax cut policy,
which he incorporated alongside $140 billion in government spending
cuts in the 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Bill. This, together with reduc-
tions in regulation and stable monetary policy, were sufficient to bring a
broad sway of business leaders, including the Roundtable, to support the
new policy regime. When reduced depreciation rates were included, the
Roundtable assembled the usual coalition and grassroots mobilization to
support the Bill, overwhelming the Democrat-controlled house.
But the Act did not survive the severe recession faced by the
Reagan Administration, providing little scope for the proposed spend-
ing cuts yet with the tax cuts opening up the deficit and increasing
pressure on interest rates. In a bid to reduce the deficit and increase
the availability of capital for investment, in mid-1982 the Roundtable
called for a closing of the deficit by a reversal of the tax cuts, albeit
retaining the lower headline marginal rates. But this broke the coali-
tion with the Chamber and other trade associations of smaller firms
who valued the tax cuts much more and divided the Roundtable itself,
with less capital-intensive firms less committed to the deficit reduction
goal (Ehrbar 1982). Taxes were subsequently substantially increased
6 THE RISE AND DECLINE OF THE BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE? 145
Trade
The Roundtable had opposed NAM and Chamber proposals in the early
1980s for an industrial revitalization program as overly statist and mis-
representing the state of US competitiveness. Instead, via its trade task
force under Lee Morgan (Caterpillar), the Roundtable advocated free-
trade agreements to allow US firms to compete on a larger interna-
tional scale. The Roundtable joined with the Round Table of European
Industrialists in 1987 to advocate a WTO in place of the GATT, and
with the Canadian Business Council on National Issues for a US–Canada
free trade agreement. Roundtable member Edson Spencer (Honeywell)
146 B. Cronin
Healthcare Reform
By Judis’s (1995) account, in the face of rapidly rising health insurance
costs, the Business Roundtable advocated systematic reform against
Reagan proposals to deregulate healthcare. The Roundtable, via Xerox
and the big steel firms, engaged with the 1986 National Leadership
Commission on Health, which recommended universal reform. In 1991,
this group of big employers proposed that businesses that did not pay
insurance be taxed to cover the uninsured, thus reducing the overall cost,
a proposal endorsed by the Chamber in 1993.
When the Clinton Administration moved to enact this proposal, the
Roundtable, National Association of Manufacturers, and Chamber ini-
tially supported it. But a coalition of small business organizations, health
insurers, drug companies, and conservative media mobilized to turn
public opinion and the peak organizations against any mandatory health
insurance. This would allow small businesses to continue to avoid con-
tributions to insurance premiums or taxes, and prevent the capping or
regulation of premiums paid to insurance firms or prices paid for drugs
or healthcare.
Noting that public support for the detail of the healthcare reform
rested on trusting the president, conservative media, centered on The
American Spectator, mounted an unrelenting campaign to undermine the
credibility of Clinton’s past personal and business dealings. In 6 months,
public support for the plan fell from 59 to 46%. Amidst this grow-
ing public uncertainty, the Chamber came under pressure from large
6 THE RISE AND DECLINE OF THE BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE? 147
Evaluation
The case studies suggest that the Roundtable’s modus operandi repeat-
edly secured legislative success. In each case, a specialized task force was
established to develop detailed proposals attuned to the political land-
scape of the day. This then brokered coalitions with a wide range of other
business organizations, with differing interests and policy objectives, to
unite on the specific proposal. Congress and the Administration were
lobbied systematically from a wide range of organizations, reinforced by
grassroots mobilization of individual members and their employees to
build up a groundswell of public opinion in support of the proposal. In
these mobilizations, the proposals were carefully framed within a popular
trope, such as opposition to rising prices, taxation, or big government.
148 B. Cronin
Decline?
The early rapid gains of the Roundtable against organized labor in the
1970s are often counterpoised against the more mixed results of the
1980s, and the complex and at times paralyzed policy environment that
has followed. If the Roundtable’s early success is attributable to its com-
position as the powerful commanding heights of the economy, why has
this power not created continued and unchecked dominance of the pol-
icy agenda since?
Two arguments are commonly advanced to explain this paradox:
fragmentation and it being the victim of its own success. The fragmen-
tation thesis is that structural changes in the economy associated with
globalization and technical change have undermined the industries in
which the Roundtable has been rooted, and thus its economic power and
political influence; it has struggled to respond to the changing environ-
ment. The victims of success thesis is that the sophisticated tactics and
6 THE RISE AND DECLINE OF THE BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE? 149
1988, the Roundtable leadership was drawn from firms from these indus-
tries—Pfizer, Aetna, American Express, and IBM—while major firms
in rising industries such as IT (Microsoft, Yahoo) and retail (Walmart,
Target) continued to join the Roundtable (Waterhouse 2014). While
director interlocks may be an important force for corporate cohesion, the
evidence is mixed and there may be other mechanisms (Mizruchi 1996).
Hegemonic Position
The activity of the Roundtable as a hegemon, building tactical coalitions
framed in terms of broad popular interest, is likely to see it centrally con-
nected to other organizations in the policy environment. Building on
the historical evidence discussed above, this section provides a systematic
analysis of this proposition, employing a social network analysis of US
lobbying activity.
Network analysis has previously identified the central position of the
Roundtable among business organizations. In an informal analysis of the
executive committees of ten business-planning groups, Burch (1983)
found the Business Council to be the most central of these organizations,
152 B. Cronin
Y = α1 + β1 X + α2 D + β2 XD + µ (6.1)
where
Y is the centrality metric
X is the quarter
D is a dummy representing the two groups (Roundtable or not)
Table 6.2 Business
Centrality metric Adj R2 Divergence (β2)
Roundtable relative
centrality, 1999–2015 Outdegree 0.1231** 0.0002652
Eigenvector 0.3766*** 0.0008937**
Closeness 0.3971*** −0.0000521
Betweenness 0.4237*** −73.06875**
This demonstrates that while the Roundtable did not increase the num-
ber of representations to government more than the mean during the
period (outdegree), it was increasingly making representations in a man-
ner similar to the most connected lobbyists (eigenvector centrality)—that
is, it was becoming more central among the most central lobbyists and
becoming more of an intermediary (betweenness centrality).
Conclusion
This review of the major business policy battlegrounds of the last 50
years indicates that reports of the decline of the Roundtable are greatly
exaggerated. The organization remains a powerful think tank with
an effective modus operandi. The lean central organization and direct
engagement of the CEOs of the major US industrial corporations in its
policy and implementation see its strategy and tactics being honed by
those at the forefront of capitalist competition and cooperation. These
CEOs are highly focused on making a difference—identifying scope for
value adding and pursuing it vigorously. The heightened strategic and
tactical sense translates readily into the policy arena, eschewing partisan
ideology for pragmatic, tactically astute, legislative lobbying, with clear
ability to build coalitions and to frame the specific goals within broad,
popular themes in the polity.
While critics may yearn for a policy environment that is more accom-
modating of the broad range of social actors, such as labor and govern-
ment, this does not mean the US polity is lacking hegemonic players. The
Roundtable has proved itself to be a hegemon in the Gramscian sense,
achieving specific goals by building effective coalitions. For a hegemon,
tactical gains and losses occur within a longer-term war of position.
The persistence of the Roundtable and its effective modus operandi
indicates that the forces of elite cohesion are wider than those formed
by the interlocking personnel between organizations. It has been able to
156 B. Cronin
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CHAPTER 7
K. Fischer (*)
Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria
D. Plehwe
WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Berlin, Germany
since the 1990s. These were spurred by the beneficial environment cre-
ated by the Fujimori administration.
Network overlap perhaps helps to explain common norms and shared
perspectives among the five networks. Unifying principles include limited
government, individual freedom, free enterprise and the rule of law; their
common bogeyman is state-led development. Lately, the ‘pink tide’—
that is, left and centre-left governments that came to power in several
Latin American countries around the turn of the millennium—has been
branded as populist and irresponsible.
Individual think tanks perform quite different tasks. Activities are var-
ied, ranging from academic research to policy advice and op-ed writing.
Some of the think tanks have a specific target audience—for example,
youth or students. Altogether, they form a neoliberal think tank universe
that is characterized by quite common forms of division of labour among
these groups. What Bailey stated in 1965 is still accurate: ‘Whereas one
society will be activists, engaging in civic action, pressure tactics and/or
direct action against the enemies, another group will be concerned with
propaganda and education’ (1965, p. 201).
A head-count of individuals who are engaged in the neoliberal think
tank universe in Latin America is a total of 811 individuals (research last
updated in July 2016). Think tank staff and board members are often
affiliated with more than one think tank (on average, every individual has
about four positions—see Fig. 7.2). In sum, they make up for 3384 posi-
tions in Latin American think tanks.
Board members are members of advisory boards or supervisory
boards. They form the biggest part of the affiliates. They also hold most
interlock positions. In absolute numbers, HACER, which is also the
biggest network in terms of organizations, has the most affiliates. FIL
is likewise more ‘staff intensive’ than RELIAL, although it is composed
of fewer think tanks. Atlas is very well equipped with think tank profes-
sionals in leadership positions—maybe as a result of its training programs
(Table 7.1).
When we look at transnational think tank networkers—that is, indi-
viduals who hold at least two think tank positions in different countries
on the continent, we discover a high number of members of the Mont
Pèlerin Society: 51% of these transnational linkers take part in the circle
(see Fig. 7.2). Mont Pèlerin members clearly outnumber others when it
comes to occupying positions in three or more think tanks. We, there-
fore, consider them a key element of transnational neoliberal knowledge
168 K. Fischer and D. Plehwe
Source http://thinktanknetworkresearch.net/wiki_ttni_en/index.php?title=Category:Think_Tank_
Network
Since 2000, the network has been run from the newly created think tank
Civitas in the United Kingdom.
While it is not clear whether and how the collaboration of think tanks
in this network is relevant to day-to-day policy making in Europe, the
network clearly serves as transnational channels in Europe’s fragmented
public sphere. Important arguments are featured and/or attacked if
a counter-narrative is needed. Johan Norberg wrote his monograph
In Defense of Global Capitalism in 2001 when Attac, an organization
of the anti-globalization movement, became a major force in several
European countries and the movement for a financial transaction tax
gained momentum. European Resource Bank meetings have been organ-
ized on an annual basis since 2004. Copying the Heritage Foundation in
the United States, resource banks are network-type activities that bring
together think tank entrepreneurs and donors, policy experts, corporate
leaders and activists of the right-wing/neoliberal movement. Neoliberal
think tanks in Europe, Asia, Latin America and even Africa have repli-
cated the format, and they conduct smaller versions of these network-
ing events to advise new members and serve as contact point to donors
(corporations or ideologically related associations like the European
Taxpayers Association).
While larger countries like the United Kingdom and Germany fea-
ture the highest number of neoliberal think tanks within the SN, Central
European countries like the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland lead
the list of neoliberal think tanks per capita. Only Belgium features an
even larger number of neoliberal think tanks due to the headquarters of
the EU institutions. Since 2010, the SN umbrella organization has not
published new documents on its website. This coincides with the depar-
ture of Helen Disney from the organization. The SN has been main-
tained as a virtual network only (Internet and Facebook presence), but
many think tanks of the network maintain close links and have launched
joint initiatives like the ‘Nanny State Index’ or the ‘Authoritarian
Populism Index’, managed in cooperation between several think tanks by
the European Policy Information Center.11
The quieting of the SN may be due to the founding of the sec-
ond neoliberal network in Europe. In 2010, the Alliance of European
Conservatives and Reformists founded the New Direction Foundation.
Europe’s integration process and a wave of crises (no vote, impeach-
ment of the commission, etc.) had triggered the funding of European
political party foundations, which were supposed to assist the fledgling
174 K. Fischer and D. Plehwe
Source http://thinktanknetworkresearch.net/wiki_ttni_en/index.php?title=Category:Think_Tank_
Network
2011); however, the NDF and SN networks overlap with the traditional
conservative spectrum, the more radical new right-wing Euro-sceptic
movement. If we focus on specific European policies like austerity, we
can observe a strong overlap of positions across the neoliberal and con-
servative universe. While there is limited overlap in terms of party foun-
dation networks, the European Ideas Network (EIN) of the conservative
MEP shows many ties to the SN and the NDF.12
If we look at some structural data regarding the two European net-
works, we can see that about 2,500 individuals are involved in these cir-
cles. There are notable differences between the SN and the NDF (see
Table 7.2).
Board membership outnumbers the staff in the case of the SN,
whereas a greater number of individuals appear to be employees in the
case of NDF members. Since think tanks matter both with regard to elite
coordination and the active policy influence (media, politics, etc.), the
relative numbers of staff and board membership may indicate different
priorities. The numbers also indicate considerable overlap in terms of the
individuals who are active in each network. Figure 7.4 displays the inter-
locking positions within the SN and NDF networks.
A total of 69 of 138 think tanks are tied by interlock positions (50%).
Mont Pèlerin Society members are very prominent among the interlocks
in general (one third in the SN and 60% in the NDF), and among the
individuals who tie more than three think tanks together in particular.
176 K. Fischer and D. Plehwe
time, but the link to business associations seems to have been closer in
the early history of think tanks compared with the later.
Contrary to ‘pensée unique’ assumptions about neoliberalism, think
tanks are characterized by considerable plurality in terms of their theo-
retical orientation (Virginia School/public choice, Austrian Economics,
Chicago School/monetarism, etc.), core activities and key audiences.
In each region, we find complementary activities across a wide range of
research, publishing, campaigning and advisory functions. They perform
different tasks aiming at the preference formation of key actors, and at
influencing the public debate and policy making at large. We thus find
a common pattern of shared norms and principled beliefs on the one
hand, and complementary profiles in terms of activities and functions.
Both networks feature strong degrees of integration on the organiza-
tional level and shared leadership positions of individual think tank activ-
ists at the level of interlocks. In both cases, we also see a combination of
general civil society network members and think tanks that are closer to
political parties. In Latin America, we find overlap of competing mod-
erate, new right/neoliberal and far right parties through links between
think tanks. In Europe, we find overlap between the traditional conserva-
tive centre and the new neoliberal-conservative right wing, but not so
far as the far right. Think tank networks encompass only different parts
of the centre–right wing spectrum. They can support common positions
and storylines, irrespective of party political affiliations.
The main discourses and battlefields do not differ in their general
approach. In both Europe and Latin America, neoliberal forces focus on
austerity and welfare state or developmental state retrenchment, respec-
tively. In both cases, we observe an emphasis on market-oriented deregu-
lation and re-regulation, fiscal constraint and sound money policy, and
on macro-economic rules in favour of the competitiveness of private
enterprise.
Since the political environments are different, concrete subject matter
and timing differs. In Latin America, early individual think tanks played a
decisive role in preparing the ground and neoliberal principles (especially
among key constituencies like entrepreneurs). The golden age, how-
ever, started in the 1980s. It was then that network formation started
and fostered the rollout and consolidation of neoliberal policies—that is,
the second-generation reforms of the Washington Consensus. State and
public sector reform and the ‘right’ anti-poverty policy (against universal
social policies, and pro targeting) were the main issues of the 1980s and
7 NEOLIBERAL THINK TANK NETWORKS IN LATIN AMERICA … 179
1990s, and neoliberal think tanks got directly involved in policy design,
implementation and evaluation. After the millennium, they continued
with this agenda, but at centre stage was the formation of a strong oppo-
sition against the ‘pink tide’ governments.
In Europe, the think tank networks’ issues revolve around discussions
such as European integration. Neoliberal think tank activism increased
strongly in the face of deeper integration, reaching areas like environ-
mental and social policy making over the course of the 1990s. Due to
the strong role of the state in public health, neoliberal think tank net-
works also feature numerous activities in favour of privatization of health
services and the liberalization of advertising and marketing of pharma-
ceuticals. Adversaries are progressive NGOs, notably in the environ-
mental policy field. Only lately, with the founding of the NDF, have
neoliberal think tanks stepped more directly into the realm of party poli-
tics.
In both regions, think tank network formation was driven by the
transnational or supranational agenda. In the case of Europe, threatening
perspectives of political union spurred transnational neoliberal networks
into action. In the case of Latin America, it was the neoliberal shift in
the wake of the international debt crisis of the 1980s, which hit heav-
ily in most of the countries of Central and South America. The answer
from Washington (and in some cases new elites in Latin America) was
structural adjustment following the Washington Consensus. Neoliberal
think tanks constituted a large orchestra with many instruments needed
to stage-manage the comprehensive shift from state-led to market-led
development, and to fend off the opposition.
In both Latin America and Europe, the share of think tank intellectu-
als who hold positions in more than one think tank that also belongs to
the Mont Pèlerin Society is very high: it is up to two third of the total
interlock positions. Think tank linkers can be considered a particularly
important part of the population of think tank intellectuals consisting of
staff and board members. In contrast to classical power elites composed
of military, political and economic leaders (Mills 1956), the neoliberal
knowledge power elite is transnational, both in composition and in ori-
entation. Apart from and beyond the innovative capacity of neoliberal
conceptual knowledge production in general, we consider the strong
position of Mont Pèlerin members as an important factor to explain
transnational circulation and diffusion of neoliberal ideas, and the devel-
opment and replication of strategies and institutions.
180 K. Fischer and D. Plehwe
Notes
1. Available online at http://thinktanknetworkresearch.net/wiki_ttni_en/
index.php?title=Main_Page, accessed 20 September 2016.
2. First-generation reforms focused on macro-economic stabilization, pri-
vatization and spending cuts. Second-generation reforms encompassed
reforms of civil service and public services and the regulatory state (Naím
1994).
3. See Global Directory and Partners in Latin America and the Caribbean
at https://www.atlasnetwork.org/partners/global-directory, accessed 20
September 2016.
7 NEOLIBERAL THINK TANK NETWORKS IN LATIN AMERICA … 183
References
Álvarez Rivadulla, M.J., J. Markoff, and V. Montecinos. 2010. The Trans
American Market Advocacy Think Tank Movement. In Think Tanks and
Public Policies in Latin America, ed. A. Garcé and G. Uña. Buenos Aires:
Fundación Siena and CIPPEC.
Bailey, N.A. 1965. Organization and Operation of Neoliberalism in Latin
America. In Latin America: Politics, Economics and Hemispheric Security, ed.
N.A. Bailey. New York: Frederick A. Praeger for The Center for Strategic
Studies.
Bonds, E. 2011. The Knowledge-Shaping Process: Elite Mobilization and
Environmental Policy. Critical Sociology 37: 429–446.
184 K. Fischer and D. Plehwe
(continued)
192 W.K. Carroll and E. Coburn
Table 8.1 (continued)
each has and the social character of the neighbourhoods in which each
is located. Each organization selected for the study satisfies three crite-
ria, which define the concept of TAPG as a distinct agency of knowledge
production and mobilization: (1) the group’s core function is production
and mobilization of knowledge; (2) a significant part of that cognitive
praxis takes up transnational issues and speaks to transnational counter
publics; and (3) the group engages a wide range of issues—that is, it is
not highly specialized.1
The thumbnail descriptions in Table 8.1 suggest considerable diver-
sity in the KPM projects and their constituencies. Particularly evident are
tracings of regionalism in the location of TAPGs, their constituencies and
the scope of projects. All groups’ core constituencies are regionally (and
sometimes nationally) delimited, even if some aspire to a ‘global’ pur-
view, as do TNI, IFG and RosaLux. That the latter are based in Europe
and North America suggests continuing traces, within the world system’s
North Atlantic heartland, of cosmopolitan universalism framing counter-
hegemony.2 On the other hand, some Southern-based TAPGs focus on
transnational issues and publics that are also regional. For instance, CCS
efforts centre on southern Africa; Focus and PRIA concentrate on South
and East Asia; DAWN takes the Global South as the relevant region for
its cognitive praxis.
A distinction organizing our presentation is between TAPGs that
understand global justice within a critical-liberal frame and TAPGs to the
left of liberalism, explicitly critiquing capitalism. The former emphasize
substantive human rights issues without articulating a critique of capital-
ist relations; the latter draw attention to the deeply structured injustices
of neoliberal, globalized capitalism. Our comparative case analysis begins
with the critical-liberal groups: Item/Social Watch and PRIA.
ITeM/Social Watch
At the Third World Institute (ITeM)/Social Watch (two organizations
that share the same secretariat space and coordinating personnel), the
social vision informing cognitive praxis includes four elements:
India lives in different centuries and everything that you say about India,
the opposite would also be true. So you have the twenty-first century in
India and the seventeenth century, probably on two sides of the same
street. And there is no dialogue at all. So that is where the bridge needs to
be built, because otherwise the potential for social violence is so great.
I think the main strategy is listening about what the needs are of groups
on the ground, of frontline groups—victims of violence or whoever the
impacted communities are and listening to what they need and really try-
ing to gear what we know to support them. To strengthen them, to build
power with other constituencies to speak truth to power, to find platforms
to speak to power—to make informed appeals for change …
Here in Durban we probably are about the closest watchdogs of the left—
from the left—that you’d find in the city, and we will regularly put out
mega-critiques and micro-critiques. So we have got to jump scale, do eve-
rything—we do political economy and political ecology with some of the
best people in the world giving us assistance.
transformative things. We are all into these ideas of “you have to build
a mosaic”, not the Party, the Union, the whatever. And we’ve very clear
… that expanding “the public” is one of the very important things.’ The
point is not to replace the mosaic, but rather to assist in self-clarification
and development, helping revitalize the democratic public sphere.
As a multidivisional international organization, RosaLux’s practices
are especially diverse, tailored to the various publics and movements with
which it dialogues.15 However, as Rainer Rilling told us, the Foundation
has two tracks of cognitive praxis. Scientific work is carried out at the
Institute,16 which publishes analytical papers on strategy and policy for
the left intelligentsia within and outside Die Linke. It also organizes
conferences for broader publics followed up with synthesizing work.
The Academy17 offers general political education through participa-
tory courses and workshops for youth and adult learners on such top-
ics as economic literacy, gender inequalities, sustainable development
and political communication. It engages with movements directly and
through such media as its website, public events featuring music and dis-
cussion, and hard-copy pamphlets distributed at such events as Blockupy
Frankfurt. Project coordinator Lutz Brangsch explained that the acade-
my’s ‘Let’s Speak About Alternatives’ initiative mobilized the knowledge
of ‘people in very concrete alternative projects at the grass-roots level,
like city gardening or like organizing solidarity alternative production, or
bringing goods from the South to the North in a solidarity fair way and
so on’, to discuss which initiatives are effective, why people engage in
these projects, and how they can be generalized or scaled up. The result-
ing book, The ABC of Alternatives, was widely distributed as a popular
education tool.
The Centre for International Dialogue and Cooperation’s18 constitu-
ency is more popular than scientific, and is especially diverse, given its
presence in dozens of countries. Through its foreign offices, the cen-
tre supports left organizations and currents in Latin America, Africa,
Asia, Europe and North America. Support includes funding as well as
seminars and conferences organized with partners that include univer-
sities and civil society organizations, radio stations and magazines, and
in some cases left governments. Karin Gabbert, director of RosaLux’s
Latin American programs, described a RosaLux-supported study of
Indigenous justice whose results were worked into a course that the
government of Ecuador has now given all its judges. RosaLux’s work
in the South is done in partnership with movements and civil society
204 W.K. Carroll and E. Coburn
Those kinds of sharing real experiences are really important, and one that
I try to push more because … we’ve got a convergence of systemic crises
and we are really wanting to say not just how bad the situation is—people
know it is bad – they want to know what we can do about it. So those
kinds of alternatives, those real life examples, ones that we can learn from
and improve upon, are really important.
has full-time salaries, but alleviated (as we observe below) through col-
laborations that enable broader grass-roots reach than its small staff
might suggest. Direction from this team of 15 informs the plan for
each national office, although regular cross-office contact is maintained
through email and conference calls.
Thematically, Focus divides its labour among three overlapping
areas: Trade and Investments (the original Focus concern); Climate/
Environmental Justice; and Land, Water and Forests (with an empha-
sis on Defending the Commons). Like other TAPGs, Focus is deeply
engaged in collaborative work, in some case with kindred groups. As
ShalmaliGuttal, who leads Focus’s Land, Water and Forests team, told
us:
With TNI for example, we have a very, very close relationship, because
they are our sibling organization in Europe and we are their sibling organi-
zation in Asia. So we are involved in a number of campaigns together. We
are involved in anti-land grabbing campaigns and retaining public water,
the Water Justice movement; the fight against TNCs on the issue of trade
and investment. So we are in a lot of coalitions with them and others … I
think for us that is the only way we can work. We have to work together,
and not carve up territory.
Focus’s work has featured in-depth, critical policy analysis, for which the
group is well known. But Focus staffs are activists, and there is a tight
interweaving of knowledge production and mobilization within move-
ment networks. As one staffer remarked:
The key thing is that we try to make links between national and local
movements with regional and international platforms. This is to inform
the national and local movements with new information analysis—global
debate has give them early warning of what would be the tendency com-
ing to the region, coming to the countries and so on—what would be the
impact and things like that. At the same time, we facilitate and animate
networks and movements at the national level—selectively, not every-
thing—and then feed the information upward. Like what is actually hap-
pening on the ground—what the implications of such policies are. And in
these processes, of course we engage in specific campaigns …
These focus DAWN’s core analyses and its global advocacy efforts.
Strategically, DAWN strives to ‘translate’ feminist political-economic and
political-ecological analysis into ‘advocacy demands’, and to help move-
ments use those demands to push governments for change, as Nicole
Bidegain told us. But it places equal or greater emphasis upon bottom–
up knowledge production. From the start, DAWN defined its core con-
stituency transnationally, as women of the Global South, yet has always
emphasized a holistic perspective challenging all forms of oppression.
Since its public launch at the 1985 World Conference on Women at
Nairobi, DAWN advocates within intergovernmental processes, includ-
ing Rio+20, but equally emphasizes ‘networking’ with movements and
‘training’ the next generation of Southern feminists. The goal is two-
fold: (1). to influence feminist movements by sharing structural and criti-
cal interlinkage analyses, (2). to ‘work with other friends from the left
or from the progressive social movements trying to bring the feminist
perspective there’ (DAWN’s Nicole Bidegain). As Bidegain continued,
8 COUNTER-HEGEMONIC PROJECTS AND COGNITIVE PRAXIS … 209
Conclusions
TAPGs present an illuminating contrast to hegemonic think tanks.
Although both produce knowledge for politics and policies, TAPGs’
alternative goals—to expose, oppose and propose in the service of global
justice—require them to adopt startlingly different means, which stretch
and subvert the very notion of a policy-planning group. Here we have
presented an unavoidably selective analysis, relying in part on their own
reflexive accounts on their practices rather than an activist-ethnographic
investigation more attuned to the concrete interplay of relations of rul-
ing and relations of struggle (Kinsman 2006). We recognize that TAPGs
only partially realize their goals. Nonetheless, we maintain that TAPGs
matter, as they strive to create—and sometimes succeed in creating—new
sources of critical knowledge and mobilizing that knowledge within pro-
jects aimed at social justice, human thriving and ecological well-being.
TAPGs remind us that enlarging such spaces is a practical matter. It
means exposing, opposing and proposing, but always in close coopera-
tion with actual on-the-ground struggles towards a different and better
world.
214 W.K. Carroll and E. Coburn
Notes
1. See Carroll (2016) for further methodological details. Our analysis is
restricted to eight TAPGs where five or more in-depth interviews were
conducted with relatively limited participant observation—that is, the
groups’ own representations of their practices. A study of actual prac-
tice could reveal disjunctures between the TAPGs accounts and on-the-
ground practices.
2. Put critically, ‘cosmopolitan universalism’ may appear as a form of ideo-
logical neo-imperialism to some (e.g. Grosfuguel 2005). In this respect,
Northern-based TAPGs face the challenge of reconstructing knowledge
‘in ways that permit us to be non-Orientalist’ (Wallerstein 2006, p. 48),
without simply inverting the colonial epistemic hierarchy—valorizing
non-Western ways of knowing over post-Enlightenment thought. As
one of us has commented elsewhere, ‘Northern-based groups need to
avoid tendencies toward abstract universalism (as in most human rights
discourse), which in substance shores up Eurocentric hegemonies.
Conversely, Southern-based groups need to bring the energy of anti-
imperialist and Indigenous perspectives, often exemplary of “militant par-
ticularism”, into a global vision’ (Carroll 2014, p. 278).
3. See http://www.socialwatch.org/about, accessed 27 August 2013.
4. The group’s roots in alternative journalism run deep. Founder and execu-
tive director Roberto Bissio is a professional journalist whose work was
repressed in the 1970s by Uruguay’s dictatorship. ITeM’s initial project
was to publish the Third World Guide—long a basic source socioeco-
nomic conditions and human rights violations within each country of the
Global South.
5. Ibid.
6. See http://www.socialwatch.org/annualReport, accessed 27 August
2013.
7. See http://www.socialwatch.org/node/14365, accessed 27 August
2013.
8. Detailed at http://www.socialwatch.org/node/63, accessed 27 August
2013.
9. The portal is located at http://www.practiceinparticipation.org, accessed
19 August 2013.
10. See http://www.ifg.org/about.htm, accessed 27 August 2013.
11. See ‘History of the IFG’ at http://www.ifg.org/about/history.htm,
accessed 27 August 2013.
12. See http://www.ifg.org/programs.htm, accessed 27 August 2013.
8 COUNTER-HEGEMONIC PROJECTS AND COGNITIVE PRAXIS … 215
13. CCS also provides training for Community Scholars and other activists in
videography. Some of these activist videos are available on the website at
http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/default.asp?3,76, accessed 27 August 2013.
14. Details are at http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/files/brics-from-below%20call%20
version%2017%20March.pdf, accessed 19 August 2013.
15. RosaLux engages only minimally with governments and IGOs, the major
exception occurring within Germany at the state and municipal levels
(such as Brandenburg) where Die Linke holds some state power. In those
cases, the foundation, through the institute especially, provides advice in
dialogue with the government.
16. See http://rosalux.de/english/foundation/research-projects.html, accessed
10 August 2013.
17. See http://www.rosalux.de/english/foundation/political-education.
html, accessed 10 August 2013.
18. See http://rosalux.de/english/worldwide.html, accessed 10 August 2013.
19. See http://www.tni.org/page/history, accessed 3 October 2011.
20. TNI’s Burma Project draws on other TNI projects (drugs, agrarian jus-
tice, investment/trade) in working with ethnic minority groups seeking
a voice in national policy making and engaging with international actors
operating in their territories.
21. See http://www.tni.org/partners, accessed 19 August 2013.
22. See http://focusweb.org/content/who-we-are, accessed 27 August 2013.
23. See http://www.dawnnet.org/index.php, accessed 9 August 2013.
24. Available at http://www.dawnnet.org/resources-books.php?page=2,
accessed 27 August 2013.
25. For a discussion of how TAPGs pursue ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ strategies
of engagement with dominant institutions, see Carroll (2015, pp. 714–
717).
References
Blunden, A. 2014. Introduction: “Collaborative Project” as a Concept for
Interdisciplinary Human Science Research. In Collaborative Projects, ed. A.
Blunden. Leiden: Brill.
Bond, P., K. Sharife, and R. Castel-Branco. 2012. The CDM Cannot Deliver
the Money to Africa: Why the Carbon Trading Gamble Won’t Save the
Planet from Climate Change, and How African Civil Society is Resisting,
EJOLT Report No. 2. http://www.ejolt.org/wordpress/wp-content/
uploads/2013/01/121221_EJOLT_2_Low.pdf. Accessed 26 Feb 2015.
Carroll, W.K. 2013. Networks of Cognitive Praxis: Transnational Class
Formation from Below? Globalizations 10 (5): 651–670.
216 W.K. Carroll and E. Coburn
Interviews
Bidegain, Nicole (DAWN).
Bond, Patrick (CCS).
Brangsch, Lutz (RosaLux).
Buxton, Nick (TNI).
Dasgupta, Sumona (PRIA).
Durano, Marina (DAWN).
Gabbert, Karin (RosaLux).
Guttal, Shalmali (Focus).
Mander, Jerry (IFG).
Menotti, Victor (IFG).
Ngubane, China (CCS).
Rilling, Rainer (RosaLux).
Sen, Gita (DAWN).
Vervest, Pietje (TNI).
CHAPTER 9
Sue Bradford
Despite the rapid rise in number of think tanks globally, particularly from
the early 1970s onwards, New Zealand was a comparative latecomer to
the think tank phenomenon. New Zealand’s first think tank of any sig-
nificance was the New Zealand Business Round Table (NZBRT), which
started life as a group of chief executive officers (CEOs) who adopted
the name ‘Roundtable’ around 1980, before setting up a permanent
office in 1986 (Kerr 1990). The NZBRT went on to wield influence at
the highest levels of government, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s
(Beder 2006; Harris and Twiname 1998; Jesson 1999; Murray 2006;
Roper 2005). A number of other think tanks developed following the
rise of the NZBRT, including the New Zealand Institute, the Ecologic
Foundation, the Institute of Policy Studies, the Centre for Strategic
Studies, the McGuiness Institute and the Maxim Institute.
S. Bradford (*)
Economic and Social Research Aotearoa, Auckland, New Zealand
Of these, the Maxim Institute, with its focus on family and social issues
from a conservative perspective, and the New Zealand Institute, which
arose out of the Labour Government-supported Knowledge Wave initia-
tive in the early 2000s, achieved substantial media and public prominence,
alongside the NZBRT. In 2012, the NZBRT and the New Zealand
Institute merged to become The New Zealand Initiative, described by the
National Business Review as ‘libertarian’ (Smellie 2012); its website says
‘we are certainly an Initiative that usually prefers Adam Smith’s invisible
hand to government’s visible fist’ (New Zealand Initiative 2016). From
an international perspective, the number of think tanks in New Zealand
has remained low. According to James McGann’s regularly updated index
(McGann 2016) there were 6,845 think tanks globally and just five of
those fitting the report’s criteria were located in New Zealand.
Since the 1930s, New Zealand’s unicameral system traditionally has
been dominated by two parties, National (conservative) and Labour
(social democratic left). In 1984, Labour came to power and unex-
pectedly set in motion a series of right-wing reforms that shifted New
Zealand to a very open, free-market economy. Hundreds of thousands
of jobs were lost, and rural and provincial communities suffered enor-
mously. ‘New Zealand suddenly became the test bed for a daring experi-
ment in free market economics’ (Gould 2008, p. 18). This was the
period during which the NZBRT rose to prominence. Its influence
continued after November 1990, when the National Party returned to
power, slashing welfare benefits and radically reshaping employment law
to the detriment of workers, the unemployed, beneficiaries and unions.
The hegemony of neoliberalism continued into the 2000s with a series of
Labour-led governments proceeding with an agenda still committed to
free trade and the primacy of the market, softened only by a more liberal
social character and muted attempts to restore more power to unions.
It was my own experience as someone highly engaged in political life
during these two decades that drove me to explore what was to become
my doctoral question. From around 1990 onwards, I had been part of
conversations, both as an activist and as an elected politician, about the
lack of a major left-wing think tank to counter those of the right. This
was only one aspect of the long-term weakness of the New Zealand
left, but for a number of us, it was clearly a critical gap in our ability to
develop effective counter-hegemonic voices and institutions.
I had spent a lifetime as a community-based activist, mainly in unem-
ployed workers’ and welfare claimants’ groups, and had just completed
9 FROM RESEARCH TO REALITY: DEVELOPING A RADICAL LEFT … 221
10 years in the New Zealand parliament as a Green Party MP. From the
vantage point of the legislature in the period 1999–2009, I had become
increasingly concerned about the loss of organizational capacity and a
decline in the culture of resistance among the radical activist left. I had
also seen how a lack of analysis, research and new policy ideas from any
left equivalent of the existing think tanks hindered the development of
thoughtful and inspiring new policy by parliamentary parties like Labour
and the Greens. At the same time, the ability of many progressive com-
munity-based organizations that previously had undertaken political
advocacy work was increasingly hampered by a mix of the impact of new
charities legislation and the chilling effect of controls wielded by gov-
ernment through its funding and contracting practices (Elliot and Haigh
2012; Grey and Sedgwick 2013; O’Brien et al. 2009).
While there had been a small amount of discussion about the low
level of think tank activity overall in New Zealand (Cheyne et al. 2005;
Crothers 2008; Langford and Brownsey 1991), there was virtually no
published comment—academic or otherwise—about the absence of
left think tanks, which was hardly surprising given that none existed.
However, a few voices were raised over this period, among them that
of economist Brian Easton, who constantly attempted to draw atten-
tion to ‘the poor public discourse that bedevils New Zealand’ (Easton
2003) and called for institutions with the intellectual substance sufficient
to enable the social democratic left to present a serious challenge to the
neoliberal capitalist hegemony that had dominated the country’s politi-
cal life since the 1980s (Easton 2012). Activist and academic Jane Kelsey
called for think tanks as part of ‘strategies for resistance’ when she pub-
lished her A Manual for Counter-Technopols. She advised:
It is one of the greatest ironies of recent political history that the Right
has learned the lessons of effective left-wing propaganda more thoroughly
than the left itself. Groups like the Business Roundtable and the Maxim
Institute have always understood the enormous power of ideas, and how
an argument well-researched, well-presented, and then powerfully and
consistently advocated, will almost always shift public opinion in the
desired direction.
The absence of any substantive think tank on the left of New Zealand
politics drove the five specific queries underpinning my research. (1)
Why had no major left think tank ever developed in New Zealand? (2)
Was there support from left academics and activists for such an entity
or entities? (3) If there was, what was the nature of any think tank they
would like to see established? (4) What did the state of the activist left in
New Zealand in the period 2010–2013 indicate about the possibility or
otherwise of establishing a left think tank in future? (5) With such an ini-
tiative in mind, what might be learned from some of the think tank-like
left organizations that had already existed in New Zealand, and from left-
wing think tanks overseas?
From the earliest stages of the project, it was clear that two key defini-
tions were critical: left and think tank. Neither was easy to construct. Any
attempt to define left carried with it the burden of hundreds of years of
historical, political and philosophical theorizing, advocacy, interpretation
and dissent. Ultimately, I settled on a definition aimed at covering the full
spectrum of ‘left’ from social democratic Labour and ‘neither left nor right’
Green through to the radicalism of socialist, communist and anarchist tra-
ditions, and taking into account New Zealand’s situation as a postcolonial
settler society while retaining an essential internationalist perspective:
Think tank: A community based not for profit organization which under-
takes detailed research and policy development in order to influence and
enhance public policy formation across a broad range of issues, through
publications, media work, lobbying, conferences, workshops and other
forms of advocacy and education.
Social Change, the main work of which, since its foundation in 1999, has
been to deliver participatory adult education and conscientization work-
shops aimed at strengthening the capacity of community-based organiza-
tions, unions, networks and campaigns (Kotare Trust 2016).
Research Findings
Well we were opposing those bastard business think tanks, the [NZ]BRT,
right back in 1990 or something, so we were aware of think tanks, but
we mainly saw them as the enemy … You sort of associate think tank and
9 FROM RESEARCH TO REALITY: DEVELOPING A RADICAL LEFT … 227
horrible right-wing bastards in the same breath, so they do get a bit mixed
in that way.
Was the State of the Activist Left in New Zealand During the Period
2010–2013 Likely to Provide Fertile Ground for the Establishment
of One or More Left Think Tanks?
My attempts to answer this question meant that the project became, in
part, an unusual opportunity for the left to take a partially collective look
at ourselves and the condition we were in at a particular point in his-
tory. As I began the interviews, what struck me initially was the sense
conveyed by so many participants that the left had lost—that we had, in
effect, been permanently defeated in the struggle against much stronger
economic and political forces upholding and pursuing the neoliberal cap-
italist agenda. Unions were seen as weak and unwilling to undertake the
analysis and work necessary to develop new and more effective forms of
organization; the community sector had by 2012 become almost com-
pletely colonized by the state and by private sector modes of operating.
The major parties of the parliamentary left, Labour and the Greens, were
perceived as edging ever further to the center and right of the political
spectrum. There was a widespread awareness of the long-term negative
impact of intra-left factionalism on the ability of the left to flourish as a
more effective counterforce to ruling agendas.
Accompanying this was a sense of diminished left confidence and
organizational fragility. Many participants also perceived a rise in mind-
less activism, actions undertaken without sufficient collective analysis
228 S. Bradford
Multiple Possibilities
Support for the notion of some kind of major left think tank transcended
all differences between participants, including their positioning on the
left spectrum. One respondent raised the idea of a ‘pan-left’ think tank,
which did present an immediate appeal. However, my analysis of the data
and my own long experience of life on the left led me to conclude that
it would be foolish in the extreme to expect an initiative that tried to
include the entire left within its brief to have any chance of success. The
differences between the social democratic and radical left are too sig-
nificant, revealing themselves during the research process in participant
responses to questioning around the definition of ‘left’, the state of the
left, and the political agenda of any potential think tank. There was also a
substantive difference between much Green thinking, and that of others
on both the social democratic and radical left, in the ‘neither right nor
left’ tendency prominent in some Green Party and environmental activist
circles (Browning 2011; Tanczos 2011).
Given the very real issues of funding constraints, left organizational
fragility, a legacy of fragmentation, competing demands on key individu-
als in a small population and other barriers that would face any estab-
lishment project, I concluded that it would not be possible to overcome
these through a project with political fundamentals that were internally
confused and contradictory. Trying to blend the radical and social demo-
cratic left together, or force a conjuncture between those who contend
there is or should not be any such thing as ‘left’ or ‘right’ would simply
not work. There could be many possible permutations, but ultimately I
felt there could be a place for at least three major left think tanks: social
232 S. Bradford
democratic, green and left radical, plus other possibilities from the
worlds of the Māori and Pasifika left. To build a more effective coun-
terforce to the neoliberal capitalist agenda, we need a more thoughtful
left, and this applies to all parts of us, not just to some. However, my
own interest was in being part of the development of a radical left think
tank encompassing all who shared its common principles, grounded in
the world of left activism as well as that of the academy.
over a protracted period. In all cases, the groups only achieved what they
did through the protracted foresight and commitment of a small num-
ber of people who were willing and able to move beyond the day-to-day
effort of activist and/or academic praxis. Aziz Choudry and Dip Kapoor
(2010, p. 2) say that:
This went to the heart of the matter. It seemed clear that any project to
establish a major left-wing think tank would ignore this lesson at its peril.
Kaupapa
We are a national left think tank in Aotearoa whose work includes:
450 people were part of the supporters’ network, and a series of inter-
linked working groups involving several dozen people met regularly to
ensure the coherent and steady development of ESRA as it progressed
toward its launch.
elitism played out in discussions about how to find processes that would
ensure research rigor, and a functional balance of power between aca-
demics and activists involved in the project. The commitment to qual-
ity research that was called for so strongly by those I interviewed was
enshrined in ESRA’s kaupapa. At the same time, the organization did
not wish to simply become a site for the publication of academic research
and a haven for left academics escaping the stringencies of the neoliberal
academy. Its goals were far wider than that. This meant that much of the
first few months of 2016 was taken up with an almost constant rework-
ing of internal processes to ensure that a fine balance between academic
stringency and activist purpose was embedded deeply within the think
tank’s structures. A key part of this was endeavoring to ensure a culture
of mutual respect between all involved in the project and a constant will-
ingness to challenge each other across old activist–academic divides.
A third major difficulty arose early on as a result of the second key
finding of my doctoral project: that the lack of a think tank was not the
only lacuna on the New Zealand left between 2010 and 2013. The sec-
ond and much more significant gap revealed through my research was
the absence of a mass-based political party that fully or adequately gave
expression to the aspirations of the radical left. Without an organization
willing and able to bring people together around a common program
and take action to challenge and move beyond neoliberal capitalism and
its structures, any counter-hegemonic project would fail. This conclu-
sion inescapably formed an integral part of the many presentations of my
research findings in academic, activist and public settings, and resulted in
frequent confusion between the two potential tasks: the establishment of
a radical left think tank and the formation of a radical left party. Those
involved in the ESRA project were always clear that the think tank could
not be a party and must retain its autonomy should any political organi-
zation evolve into reality. The functions and purpose of each were clearly
very different. However, in the left milieu in which ESRA was develop-
ing, there was a constant need over these early years to clarify and explain
the differences between—and the importance of—both projects. The
fomenting of discussion around the need for new radical left political
organization became in practice the first provocative and enduring col-
lective research activity of the yet-to-be-born ESRA.
On the other side of the equation, some of the difficulties predicted in
my research proved to be unfounded. First, the idea that New Zealand
may be too small a country to support the development of a left think
238 S. Bradford
tank proved quite fallacious. From the moment my thesis became pub-
lic, interest and support rolled in. One of the biggest problems faced
by the initiative in its early period was that too many people offered to
help rather than too few. Enthusiasm for active involvement came from
hundreds of university and community-based researchers and from a
wide range of activists, and was still growing fast at the time of writing.
As it turned out, the problem was not one of lack of critical mass, but
rather the lack of any group equipped to harness the latent enthusiasm
and energy felt by so many for such an endeavor. Alongside this, any
expectation that there would be a shortage of experience and knowledge
brought to any implementation project has been well and truly dashed
by the wide range of skilled people already deeply committed to ensuring
that the project will be brought to fruition.
A second possible barrier raised by a number of participants was that
traditional left factionalism had the potential to stymie implementation
right from the start. This has not proved to be the case at all. The deci-
sion to proceed with a think tank grounded in only one part of the left
rather than attempting some form of pan-left project has been part of
overcoming potential sectarian problems; another was the ability of the
originating group to collectively form a clear kaupapa at a comparatively
early stage of development. The initiative did not set out to colonize
existing left organizations, but rather to put a stake in the ground, which
invited those who did support the project to become a part of it with-
out any expectation of forcing some kind of false unity across ideological
and organizational divides. The role of a number of existing organiza-
tions in supporting the development of ESRA, such as Auckland Action
Against Poverty, Kotare Trust and the Hobgoblin network, also helped
to keep the new project embedded in the activist world while providing
a base from which it could develop strong relationships with supporters
within the academy without allowing the latter to exert more than their
fair share of influence over the organization’s future.
Concluding Reflections
Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams (2015, p. 165) talk about the need for
the left to support and develop its own intellectual organizations, includ-
ing think tanks, as ‘indispensable components of any political ecology’.
Those involved with bringing a new radical left think tank into exist-
ence in New Zealand are acutely aware of this imperative. ESRA talks
9 FROM RESEARCH TO REALITY: DEVELOPING A RADICAL LEFT … 239
Notes
1. Aotearoa is the Māori name for New Zealand.
2. The Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840 between representatives of the
English Crown and many Māori chiefs, is a foundational constitutional
document. Tiriti is the Māori word for ‘Treaty’.
3. Mana—authority, power, status.
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CHAPTER 10
David Peetz
D. Peetz (*)
Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia
Distancing and Scale
its funding sources (Hamilton 2012), has been prominent in its denial
about the adverse effects of tobacco smoking and climate change
(Farrelly 2016), and is part of ‘a patterned network of political and finan-
cial actors’ that promote polarization of attitudes on climate change,
with corporate funding ‘influenc[ing] the actual thematic content of
these polarization efforts’ (Farrell 2016).
Establishing think tanks is not the only means by which third-party
endorsements can be obtained, especially on ad hoc issues. Governments
may commission inquiries for major matters—hence the well-known
aphorism from the satirical series Yes Minister: ‘never set up an enquiry
unless you know in advance what its findings will be’ (Lynn and Jay
1989, p. 453). In some countries, a Royal Commission, headed by a
judge, will ‘attract public confidence as being impartial, non-political
and independent’ (Ransley 2015). Corporations or representative bodies
can commission a consultancy (governments can do this too, for lesser
matters). Perhaps most central to Australian industrial relations debates
was a consultant initially known as ‘Econtech’ (later part of KPMG, then
‘Independent Economics’) that provided modelling support for claims
of massive productivity gains from anti-union laws in the construction
industry. It soon emerged that this modelling was fatally flawed—based
in part on spreadsheet errors—but this did not prevent its being used
repeatedly in ‘update’ reports, and in rhetoric even a decade after the ini-
tial, debunked publication (Allan et al. 2010; Karp 2016).
For permanent persuasion, though, a think tank is necessary. And if a
proposal is particularly controversial, a think tank is more valuable than
a consultant because it is less easily dismissed as having given the find-
ing for which it was paid. Figure 10.1 illustrates how, if a policy idea has
potential value to a corporation, the more controversial the idea, the
more important is its distancing for the corporation. Relatively uncon-
troversial ideas can be incubated within the corporation’s research sec-
tion and disseminated by the corporation. Slightly more controversial
ideas may need to come from the relevant representative body. More
controversial ideas again may need the third-party endorsement of a con-
sultancy. The most controversial ideas—those requiring the most radical
changes to policy—should come from think tanks. Thus, some of what
might seem to be extremist proposals, for radical deregulation or restruc-
turing of markets or regulation, will come from think tanks if they are
to be given serious consideration. In Australia in 1985, for example, the
HR Nichols Society (discussed by Murray in Chap. 3) was established
252 D. Peetz
as a focal point for lawyers, business people and politicians seeking radi-
cal right-wing change to the industrial relations system (Coghill 1987).
As mentioned earlier, some of these may overlap (especially consultancies
and think tanks), so the boundaries between them may blur. On occa-
sions, different entities may cooperate to advance the most controversial
policy ideas, even if there are minor differences in details.
Most of the organizations that fit within the above are descriptions
from the ‘right’ of politics. But two chapters in this book focus on think
tanks from the ‘left’. In Chap. 8, Bill Carroll and Elaine Coburn focus
on transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) on several continents.
In Chap. 9, Sue Bradford focuses in more depth on the establishment of
one localized alternative policy groups (APG) based in Auckland, New
Zealand. APGs vary between being representative and non-represent-
ative bodies, but those studied in these two chapters are not typically
broadly membership-based like trade unions. For these groups, distanc-
ing is rarely important, but resource pooling is critical. So while corpo-
rate think tanks of the right and alternative policy groups of the left may
have similar objectives—to influence public policy—the reasons why they
are established may differ markedly: in the corporate sector, to achieve
distancing; and on the left, to enable pooling of resources and achieve
economies of scale.
Trade Unions, being the largest representative organizations of
the left, can sometimes benefit from distancing, so may help finance
the establishment of left-leaning think tanks. But these are far fewer in
10 WHY ESTABLISH NON-REPRESENTATIVE ORGANIZATIONS … 253
number and scale than right-wing think tanks, as several chapters have
shown. In Australia, various non-representative bodies emerged from
the left and then declined, including the Evatt Foundation, financed by
unions. More recently, the Australia Institute, also financed partly by
unions, has issued reports on a range of issues challenging existing poli-
cies. Perhaps one factor in the small number of left-wing think tanks is
that distancing might not be quite as important for unions as corpora-
tions, since they purport to represent the interests of workers rather than
private capital. Much effort, however, goes into demonizing unions, and
they are not necessarily well regarded (Peetz 2002), so distancing is use-
ful for them as well. However, the primary reason for the smaller number
of left-wing think tanks is likely the relative paucity of resources available
to unions and other leftist bodies, compared to the resources available to
corporate interests.
Because distancing is usually important, think tanks (like employer
associationsand trade unions) develop their own internal logic.
Financially, they may be dependent on the bodies that created them,
and ideologically they may have a very strong affinity with their creators,
but it can never be assumed that they will always and unambiguously
do what their creators would have wanted. For one thing, their creators
may have differing interests anyway (firms in different industries, or of
vastly different sizes, may often have conflicting interests). A represent-
ative body cannot genuinely represent all the interests of all its mem-
bers unless it does very little. A non-representative body need not even
try to do so. Even without this conflict, each organization develops its
own raison d’être, ideology, internal politics and mode of operation. So
some representative and non-representative bodies can radically change
their positioning in a short period of time in a way that does not reflect
changes within their constituencies. Some key business associations in
the US oil industry appear to be more determined obstructors of climate
change action than some of their constituent firms—although whether
is due to their developing an independent logic or to oil firms using dis-
tancing to avoid the public relations damage from obstructionism is yet
to be determined (InfluenceMap 2015).
The emergence of an independent logic within think tanks is the
unavoidable adverse consequence of distancing. In Australia, the IPA,
always aligned with the Liberal (conservative) Party, shifted in the
1970s from a centre-right think tank to one advocating a hard-right
agenda on industrial relations and other issues (Seccombe 2016). The
254 D. Peetz
Think tanks of the right take two principal forms. The majority are
what we call ‘open’ or ‘externally oriented’ think tanks. These under-
take their actions in the public gaze and produce reports that interpret
the world in a particular way and typically conclude with policy pre-
scriptions. A minority are ‘closed’ or ‘internally oriented’ think tanks.
Instead of attempting to persuade those outside the organization of a
particular worldview or policy, they aim to persuade participants. This
is normally done through closed meetings of one form or another. The
Bilderberg Conferences, discussed by Aleksander Miłosz Zieliński in
Chap. 5, provide one of the most important examples of such an institu-
tion. Participants vary from year to year, but a core group selects those
who attend, with a mind to incorporating them within the core group’s
worldview—and, perhaps, gaining some ideas from them. Likewise, the
Trilateral Commission, whose coherence and closeness is examined by
Matilde Luna and José Luis Velasco in Chap. 4, this is a largely internally
focused, closed think tank. That said, both open and closed think tanks
place great reliance on networks. Closed, inward-oriented think tanks
are, in effect, almost exclusively networks—perhaps best described, as
Zieliński does, as networks of governance. As can be seen in several other
chapters, open think tanks rely on effective networks for their funding,
and their meetings use networks, not just reports, to disseminate their
ideology.
So not all think tanks need produce research reports. While many do,
the important thing is to be able to influence policy-makers through the
promotion of ideas with the appearance of independence. For closed,
internally oriented think tanks, distancing is not as important, as the vis-
uals of a policy advocacy are only important where there is transparency.
The nature of closed think tanks, with their secrecy or at least confiden-
tiality, makes distancing an unimportant consideration. The credibility of
an expert report produced by an independent organization is replaced
10 WHY ESTABLISH NON-REPRESENTATIVE ORGANIZATIONS … 255
not too politically risky, or that the political costs can be managed and
are potentially outweighed by the political benefits. Distancing is part of
that assurance, reducing the political danger from being seen to be too
responsive to a vested interest.
Over the past three decades, neoliberal ideology has come to domi-
nate policy-makers’ thinking. In Australia, this was documented exten-
sively in Michael Pusey’s (2003) book, Economic Rationalism in
Australia (that being the common term then given to market liberal ide-
ology). Similar patterns exist elsewhere (Palley 2005).
Think tanks are not the only organization responsible for the market
liberal hegemony amongst public policy-makers. They may, however, be
more influential at the level of ideas than corporations, whose outputs focus
more often on specific policy initiatives. The economics profession itself
must take some—perhaps a majority of—responsibility for the dominance
of a particular ideology. Its role was a particular focus in the documentary
movie Inside Job and in Quiggin’s (2010) book Zombie Economics (see also
Palley (2005)). The mass media have played an important role in framing
debate, influencing public opinion and constraining options facing policy-
makers, but they lack the intellectual rigour necessary to create an ideologi-
cal hegemony amongst policy-makers. A full analysis would also incorporate
the role and internal politics of coordinating public sector organizations
themselves, but it is difficult to imagine that the hegemony could have been
this extensive without a facilitating role played by think tanks.
The focus on policy-makers, rather than the much more difficult pro-
ject of shaping mass consciousness, has presented inevitable contradic-
tions. Over the past three decades, public policy actions have diverged
substantially from the preferences of the majority of voters. Of course,
not all policies have been driven purely by market liberal ideology. Much
reflects the influence of money or political resources, which might be
consistent or at odds with the outcome liberal market ideology has pro-
duced (Murray and Frijters 2015). Regardless, many policies regularly
espoused and enacted by policy-makers, such as privatization, reducing
trade barriers, deregulation of a number of industries and cutting pub-
lic services, while consistent with market liberal philosophy, have been
implemented in the face of opposition from the voting public (Steel
2012). This increasing dissonance has spectacularly culminated in such
phenomena as Brexit and the rise and success of Donald Trump. While
these were not just a reaction to neoliberalism—other facets of globali-
zation, such as high immigration flows, were also important—the gap
10 WHY ESTABLISH NON-REPRESENTATIVE ORGANIZATIONS … 257
their own logic, even though in the end it is policy-makers who are the
end-target of these efforts.
Conclusions
This concluding chapter has looked at the organizational ecology of
ideas in modern capitalism and focused in particular on the ‘why’ of
think tanks. In doing so, we have especially seen the importance of dis-
tancing and the role of economies of scale. For the right, distancing
gives corporate ideas a legitimacy they otherwise would not possess. It
provides a ‘third-party endorsement’ that is confected—from report-
age, invisibly confected. This helps make market liberal policies more
acceptable to policy-makers and has likely contributed to the domi-
nance of market liberal philosophy amongst policy-makers across devel-
oped countries. Distancing is not without its problems: think tanks,
along with representative organizations, tend to develop their own
internal logic, with which some corporations may be a little uncomfort-
able—at least at first although many find that the ‘guidance’ or repeti-
tion of ideas and influence from these bodies are ultimately difficult to
resist.
Think tanks are not alone in this organizational ecology of ideas.
Our interest in this book has been in the institutions that create ideas to
10 WHY ESTABLISH NON-REPRESENTATIVE ORGANIZATIONS … 259
influence policy and action. These institutions include open and closed
think tanks (of both the left and right), as well as employer (business)
associations. Outside the scope of most of this book have been some
institutions that also create ideas to influence policy and action, includ-
ing trade and the state, because they have been extensively studied else-
where and the creation of ideas is only a small part of their repertory of
action. We have given some limited attention to consultants (who mostly
simply provide technical expertise acting on behalf of clients—though,
as we saw, they may also play a role in spreading ideas) and university
research centres (rarely established to achieve a political aim, and usu-
ally sitting somewhere in a range between academically independent and
consultants), while representative bodies of employers have had a single
chapter. These all form part of that organizational ecology, but as capital-
ism needed to confront the Keynesian challenge calling for a more equi-
table redistribution of resources and produce the market liberal response
in the 1970s, it was think tanks that occupied a key niche in that ecology,
playing a major role in securing policy-makers’ acceptance of market lib-
eral ideas.
Our permanent persuaders differ by categorization—for example,
are they representative or non-representative; are they of the left or the
right; are they internally or externally oriented; and at what spatial level
do they operate? Various chapters in this book have examined how they
are established and resourced, how they create ideas, what ideas they
create, why they do it—in whose interests they act, and if and why they
need to achieve ‘distancing’—what effects they have and what limitations
they face in a range of contexts, situations and countries.
Finally, we should add a few words on the links between these bod-
ies and power. Representative bodies seek to achieve and exercise asso-
ciational power on behalf of their constituents (Wright 2015). Political
‘permanent persuaders’, including think tanks and representative bodies,
seek to achieve and exercise ideological power on behalf of their funders.
Both forms of power can be used to create structural (economic) and
institutional power—for example, through the passage of laws, the crea-
tion or consolidation of markets, and so on. While the above refer to
forms of power, Lukes’ (2005) three faces of power refer to different
ways in which power is exercised. Think tanks, and some representative
bodies, might be thought of as attempting to exercise Lukes’ third face
of power—that is, attempting to change people’s preferences in a way
260 D. Peetz
that prevents them from even recognizing their own objective inter-
ests. If so, they are not very good at it. As mentioned above, voters
are not all that keen on liberal market policies; to use the parlance of
Washington, they have not ‘drunk the Kool-Aid’. It is probably better
to think of think tanks as part of the mechanism for exercising the sec-
ond face of power (Bachrach and Baratz 1970), by shaping the norms
or rules of the game in such a way that certain options are simply off the
agenda for decision-making. Think tanks have been part of (but are by
no means entirely responsible for) a programme that has removed from
the agenda for decision-making policies that are not considered con-
sistent with the market liberal framework. It is not so much that voters
think that public ownership, for example, is a bad idea; it is simply that
no policy-maker would contemplate a policy that involved greater public
ownership.
Think tanks are not going away. Those on the right will persist as
long as capital needs, and is willing, to put resources into bodies that
will reproduce ideas serving the interests of capital in ‘educating’ the
state about the benefits of certain policies. Counter-hegemonic think
tanks—or at least researchers and networks in TAPGs that mirror, in
reverse image, the think tanks of the right—will persist as long as some
bodies on the left are willing to put resources into bodies that will pro-
duce ideas that challenge the interests of capital. The former group will
always be better resourced than the latter, the pay will be higher there,
the models more sophisticated, the media more sympathetic and policy-
makers more attentive. Such is capitalism. How workers respond is less
easy to predict.
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A B
Abbott, Tony, 66, 68 Beder, Sharon, 57
Academic think tanks, 29–31, 34, 36, Bilderberg, 15, 108, 115, 118
39, 42, 45 Business
Advocacy-lobby, 55 business associations, 29–31, 33, 35,
Agnellìs, 114 45, 49, 94, 246
Alternative policy groups, 19, 189, business elites, 150
212, 252 business Roundtable, United States,
Alternative policy ideas, 14, 26, 31, 133
252 business Roundtable, United States
Alternative policy practices, 212 – effectiveness, 138
Aotearoa, 18, 222, 225, 232–234, 240 business Roundtable, United States
Associational power, 259 – modus operandi, 136
Atlas Economic Research Foundation, Business Council of Australia, 57, 71,
40, 43, 61, 162, 172 72, 247
Australian Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable, 16, 133–137,
Industry (ACCI), 248 139, 146, 147, 155, 222, 247
Australian Council of Trade Unions
(ACTU), 248
Australia Institute, 65, 66, 70, 253 C
Australian Institute of International Canada Without Poverty, 53
Affairs, 57, 62 Canadian Centre for Policy
Ayau, Manuel, 162, 165 Alternatives, 239
G K
Giersch, Herbert, 171 Keynesianism
Global Financialization, 100, 108, 115 Keynesian Compromise, 58
Globalization, 88, 89, 148, 181, 191, Knowledge
192, 198, 208, 210, 256 knowledge mobilization, 18, 27,
Global North, 2, 17, 26, 189, 210 188, 193, 208, 211
Global South, 2, 17, 189, 192, 193, knowledge production, 6, 9, 11, 12,
204, 206, 208, 209, 214 16, 18, 27, 35, 36, 187, 188,
Goldman Sachs, 96, 114, 115, 118, 193, 195, 196, 202, 207, 208,
122, 126 211, 232
Governance networks, 82 knowledge regime, 47
Gramsci, Antonio policy knowledge, 48
permanent persuaders, 246 Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 2, 49
Green House Think Tan, 231
L
H Latin America, 3, 26, 46, 100, 101,
Hegemony 160–167, 173, 178–182, 203,
transnational hegemonic, 189 204
counter-hegemony, 193, 223, 239 Latinoamérica Libre, 164, 165
Hispanic American Center for Lazard, 118, 125
Economic Research, 163 Left think tank New Zealand, 18,
HR Nicholls Society, 61, 63, 66–68 219, 221–223, 225, 226, 232,
238–240
Legitimacy, 11, 15, 36, 42, 48, 74, 81,
I 83, 86, 87, 104, 248, 250, 258
Ideological power, 259 Lindsay, Greg, 66, 68, 70, 73
Independence Lobbying
independent think tanks, 9, 26, 27, congressional lobbying, United
29–32, 34–36, 41, 42, 45, 46, States, 134, 138
254
Industrial relations, 63, 246, 248, 249,
251–254, 257, 263 M
Industry associations. See Business Macri, Mauricio, 165
associations Marea rosa, 3
Institute for Policy Research, 2 Market liberal hegemony, 256
268 Index
N
National Association of Manufacturers, P
16 Permanent persuaders, 14, 18, 48, 53,
Neoclassical orthodoxy, 249 54, 133, 245, 246, 249, 257, 259
Neoliberalism, 74, 188, 192, 193, Policy-makers, 12, 19, 29, 191, 205,
198, 199, 202, 204, 206, 210, 247, 250, 254–260
213, 220, 256. See also Market Policy-making organizations. See
liberal hegemon Policy-makers
neoliberal, 42, 163, 170 Political activist ethnography, 224
Networks Political parties, 30, 35, 84, 101, 237
centrality, 153, 154 Political plurality, 99, 101, 102
centrality divergence, 154 Power
global governance networks, 194 associational power, 259
Red Liberal de América Latina, 164 faces of power, 259
social network analysis, 151 field of power, 10, 11, 20, 21, 27
Stockholm network, 172 institutional power, 259
Think tank network(s), 4, 13 relations of power, 13, 18, 26, 27
New Direction Foundation, 173, 175 structure of power, 13, 18, 27, 47,
New Economic Foundation, 140 91
New Zealand Business Round Table, Productivity Commission, 248
219
New Zealand Initiative, 220
Non-governmental organizations, 7, Q
84, 85 Quasi-independent advisory bodies,
Non-representative organizations, 248
245, 247 Quiggin, John, 256
Index 269
S V
Single Market, common market, 171 Vargas Llosa, Mario, 164
Social movements, 102, 189, 192, Victim of success thesis, 150
194, 195, 202–208 Von Hayek, Friedrich, 2, 17, 60
State agencies, 4, 7, 29–31, 33, 45, Von Mises, Ludwig, 40, 60
47, 161
Sydney Institute, 56, 57, 64, 69, 70
W
Wage-fixing, 248
T Wallenbergs, 114
Targets, 17, 19, 139, 167 Warburgs, 125
Thematic diversity, 99
Think tank funds/funding, 54, 70,
71, 74 Y
Third party endorsement, 245, 250, Yes, Minister, 251
251, 258