Organizing Agendas : Understanding think tanks’ agenda setting as partial organization

• Think tanks offer an organizational innovation that can seamlessly merge research, publicity and advocacy. The pronounced increase in their sheer numbers, coupled with their intensified advocacy and more articulate ideological positions, has contributed to growing academic interest. Conceptualizations, descriptions and categorizations of national and transnational think tanks have been put forth, with good results. Scholar definitions and conceptual understandings of what think tanks do have, however, not been sufficiently developed. In particular, the question of how the ability of think tanks to get others to use their ideas is left un-answered. Employing the concept of ‘partial organizing’ the aim of this paper is to analyse how think tanks work in order to be able to set policy agendas contrary to the interest of other actors. The paper is conceptual in its scope, but it draws on interviews at four think tanks in Washington DC, USA, for explaining and exemplifying the argument. It concludes that think tanks set policy agendas by partially organizing its environment.  

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Sociologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Sociology (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Think tanks

partial organization

agenda setting

membership

power

Sociology

sociologi

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)