When acceding the headquarters’ hall of the Heritage Foundation, one of the most prestigious think tanks of the world, one can see the institution’s shield with its motto: “Ideas have consequences”. The founders of this institution, like the promoters of other think tanks, considered that human progress and the resolution of many social problems would depend on the systematic generation of new ideas.

A hundred years after the establishment of the first institutes of economic and social investigations (Russell Sage Foundation, National Bureau of Economic Research, Brookings Institution) it seems that the effort of some philanthropists, economists and politicians has been transmitted to most of the developed countries. Although no official data are available, it is estimated that there are 1.500 think tanks around the world and 1.200 of them are located in the United States.

The first think tanks emerged with the purpose of introducing new knowledge to the social science in the administration of public matters. The people responsible believed that the use of scientific-analitical methods of the economy and the sociology would solve unerringly the problems generated by the complex Civil Service, the urban development, the raise of the population and the economic development.

Their expectations were not fully fulfilled, but they did introduce the idea that think tanks are a useful tool of civil society participation in the public sphere and that think tanks help handling the knowledge needed for the decision making of political, economical and social issues. There is no doubt that some of these institutions can be considered pressure tools for some political and economic elites, which use them to achieve more influence. However, their presence is for the good of the society, provided that they respect the rules of the information free market.

The term think tank, which has been translated into Spanish as “laboratorio de ideas”, has its origin in the Second World War. In the American military jargon, think tanks were the departments of the ministries and the governmental agencies which investigated military matters and public policies for implementing after the Second World War. These expertise groups came from different fields, such as armaments, science, economy, public administration, international relations, etc. These groups worked secretly and their functions were unknown by the ordinary staff.

After the war, some of these organizations kept working, and slowly the expression think tank was standardized so much that nowadays many economic and public policies investigation institutes use this term. More precisely, the term was generalized from the 60’s on, when it started being used to designate one of the most powerful think tanks of the world, the RAND Corporation. This organization, born in the area of the American Ministry of Defence (today it also studies economic and social matters) has over 500 researchers.

But not all think tanks have the same dimension. There are some of limited size and budget, which explains why they have proliferated so much and why it is sometimes difficult to distinguish a real think tank from one that it is not. In the last years, as the term think tank became more popular, many political and economic institutions have been called think tanks. Although there is still no full agreement among the scientific communities about the nature of the think tanks, there are however some clear characteristics: first of all, think tanks focus their activities in economic and public policy activities, with the objective of improving them.

They try to keep an organic and ideological independence, compatible with the adscription to a determined trend or social group. There is however a clear exception to this rule: the so called partisan think tanks, institutions which give ideas and programs to political parties and work as training academies for future political leaders. The Fabian Society in the United Kingdom, linked to the Labour Party; the Konrad Adenauer foundation, working for the Christian-Democratic Party or, in our country, the Faes foundation, which gives political ideas to the Popular Party are the best known examples. But even these think tanks work with an independent spirit.

The independence of a think tank is the characteristic that distinguishes a think tank from a lobby, area that has grown tremendously with public relations activities. Think tanks serve the general interest, not ideological affinities or structural dependence of certain groups.

A last characteristic of any think tank is that they are investigation centres that bridge the academic community and the Civil Service. They develop an operative investigation between the long-term and deep work of the universities and the day by day procedures of the Civil Service. Some authors have pointed out how think tanks are research brokers that put in contact the results of the investigations with the necessities of the public policies. In other words, the think tanks have become the mediators of the political ideas’ marketplace.

Influence of the think tanks

The think tanks’ promoters affirm that their proposals had a great influence from the Second World War on in the evolution of political and economic ideas of the developed countries. According to these promoters, John F. Kennedy developed his program The New Frontier because experts from the Brookings Institution had actively intervened in Kennedy’s plan. Most of the principles of the Reaganomics were inspired in the initiatives of institutions such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.

One of the main mentors of the monetarist trend was the Institute of Economic Affairs, established in the United Kingdom in 1955 to spread the philosophy of the free market among scientifics and businessmen. Supposedly, this think tank, together with the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute, guided the policies of Margaret Thatcher and the British conservatives in relevant issues such as privatizations, the liberalization of the markets, the rise of the competition or the labour reform.

For instance, the Adam Smith Institute developed during the 80’s the Omega Project, which tried to implement the privatization of public companies not only in the United Kingdom but also in other countries. A brief exam of the current economic policies of many countries proves the success obtained by the defenders of the privatization model.

The think tanks have turned, together with diverse NGOs, into the great encouraging forces of the public debate. Their presence in many countries, apart from the United States and the United Kingdom, where they are already very deep-rooted, proves their success. Their task of investigating and promoting political ideas can be a good chance to democratize the public space and prevent that the public space is dominated by social elites and the mass media.