Understanding policy research in liminal spaces: Think tank responses to diverging principles of legitimacy

Abstract

Research on scientific, social scientific, and technical knowledge is increasingly focused on changes in institutionalized fields, such as the commercialization of university-based knowledge. Much less is known about how organizations produce and promote knowledge in the 'thick boundaries' between fields. In this article, I draw on 53 semi-structured interviews with Canadian think-tank executives, researchers, research fellows, and communication officers to understand how think-tank knowledge work is linked to the liminal spaces between institutionalized fields. First, although think-tank knowledge work has a broadly utilitarian epistemic culture, there are important differences between organizations that see intellectual simplicity and political consistency as the most important marker of credibility, versus those that emphasize inconsistency. A second major difference is between think tanks that argue for the separation of research and communication strategies and those that conflate them from beginning to end, arguably subordinating research to demands from more powerful fields. Finally, think tanks display different degrees of instrumentalism toward the public sphere, with some seeking publicity as an end in itself and others using it as a means to influence elite or public opinion. Together, we can see these differences as responses to diverging principles of legitimacy.

An introduction to critical studies of think tanks

“…However, recent critical scholarship increasingly avoids the idea of a single coordinated elite and engages with alternative frameworks for relaying both multiple sites of power and endemic struggles over values and ideas (Fischer 1993;Salas-Porras and Murray 2017). Among other inspirations, critical studies of think tanks have borrowed from: neo-Gramscian perspectives on cultural hegemony and counter-hegemonic struggles (Carroll 2013(Carroll , 2014Carroll and Sapinski 2010;Carroll and Shaw 2001;Desai 1994;Pautz 2011;Peetz 2017); Bourdieusian models of field relations (Landry 2020;McLevey 2015;Medvetz 2012aMedvetz , 2012bMedvetz , 2015; Salas-Porras 2018); Hajer's discourse coalition framework (Pautz 2012;Plehwe 2015); discursive institutionalism (Ladi 2011;Ladi et al 2018); and the knowledge regime framework (Campbell andPedersen 2011, 2014;Nachiappan 2013;Ruser 2018). These approaches serve to articulate: (1) the intersecting relationships between power, policy, politics and knowledge; (2) the social and institutional topography of actors and interests involved in coordinative, communicative or antagonistic dynamics; and…”

“…Thomas Medvetz (2010Medvetz ( , 2012aMedvetz ( , 2012bMedvetz ( , 2015 then applied this orientation to think tanks by using Bourdieusian concepts (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2013) to theorize the space of American think tanks as an interstitial field drawing practices and resources from more established fields. By underscoring the 'hyper-dependence' of think tanks to multiple logics of action and social forces (Medvetz 2013, p. 575), this model explains how relative proximities (in terms of structural ties and affinities) to academic, political, economic and media actors and the state modulate the strategic behaviour of think tanks and their modes of intellectual intervention (Gonzalez Hernando 2019;Landry 2020;McLevey 2015;Medvetz 2012b). It also helps illustrate how think tanks enable the formation of discourse coalitions comprising elites from multiple institutional fields (Salas-Porras 2018).…”

“…As outlined above, recent scholarship has emphasized the grounding of think tanks in interstitial social positions that straddle the worlds of politics, policymaking, academic research, media commentary and economic interests (Eyal 2002;Medvetz 2012b). These positions and the relative importance of politics, academics and outreach in a think tank's repertoire have been shown to structure how these organizations legitimize their intellectual products (McLevey 2015) and establish lasting relationships that structure their involvement with policy networks (Landry 2020). The literature on think tanks also underscores these ties by analysing the 'niches' (Abelson 2016) 'constituencies' (Plehwe 2014) or 'webs of influence' (Plehwe 2015) that think tanks occupy in order to form, endure and produce meaningful interventions.…”

Advancing Understanding about the Relationship between Science, University and Society – An Introduction

“…Although these theories, namely the triple helix of university-industry-government relations (Etzkowitz, 2008), Mode 2 knowledge production (Nowotny et al, 2001) and academic capitalism (Rhoades and Slaughter, 2004), have been around for two decades now, they still fi gure as major models of science's transformation and are regularly used in the current research as reference points to the topic (see, e.g. Bychova, 2016;Fochler, 2016;Boggio et al, 2016;Hoff man, 2015;McLevey, 2015;Hicks and Wang, 2013;Parker and Crona, 2012;Randalls, 2010;Lam, 2010).…”

Neoliberal science, Chinese style: Making and managing the ‘obesity epidemic’

“…Across a wide range of (mostly) Euro-American institutional settings and sciences, corporate influence on knowledge-making is now normalized (e.g. Lam, 2010; McLevey, 2015; Wadmann, 2014), though not without variation and pushback (Boggio et al, 2016; Holloway, 2015). The mechanisms of corporate influence, operating at organizational and individual levels, are often subtle and deliberately concealed, as actors in the neoliberal knowledge economy struggle to meet market imperatives while ensuring that their products appear value-free (Lave et al, 2010: 668; Pinto, 2015).…”