The term ‘think-tank’ stems from the RAND Corporation, which operated as a closed and secure environment for US strategic thinking after World War II. The term entered popular usage in the 1960s to describe a group of specialists who undertake intensive study of important policy issues.

In 2003, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) cited by Stone defines think-tanks as “organizations engaged on a regular basis in research and advocacy on any matter related to public policy. They are the bridge between knowledge and power in modern democracies”.

They practice is what Diane Stone (2013) called Think Tank Thinking.

Think tanks are proliferating. Although they are outside of government, many of these policy research institutes are perceived to influence political thinking and public policy (Stone, 1997). As think tank numbers explode, they have become an integral part of political life. Political leaders, corporations and non-governmental organisations draw upon their expert advice to advance their causes in the battle of ideas.

Think tanks go by many names: think tank, research centre, public policy research institute, idea factory, investigation centre, laboratory of ideas, policy research institute, and more. In other languages, the list is even longer: centro de pensamiento, groupe de réflexion, Denkfabrik, serbatoi di pensiero to name but a few (IFRI).

IFRI observes that think tanks find themselves at crossroads of four spheres: political (including diplomatic and military dimensions), economic (corresponding to the action of companies with an international dimension and that of business circles), media (organising around the flow of information and contributing to shaping opinions, mentalities and representations) and academic (the origin of the production of knowledge and partly structuring the dissemination of knowledge).

On a global scale, think tanks form a small industry, which is a sector of activity on its own. They are open organisations, built around a permanent base of researchers or experts, whose mission, on the one hand, is to develop analyses, summaries and ideas on an objective basis with a view to inform the conduct of private or public strategies in the general interest; on the other hand, to actively debate issues within their field of competence (IFRI).

According to the 2019 Think Tank State of the Sector (TTSS), which analyses think tanks around the world, the majority of think tanks for which there is data available are non-profit organisations (67 per cent), followed by university institutes or centres (16 per cent), government organisations (10 per cent), for-profit organisations (5 per cent) and a small group of others (2 per cent). This also varies by region. For instance, in China the percentage of government think tanks is 74 per cent while in the US and Canada 97 per cent are non-profit.

According to Stone’s classification of Think Tanks, which relates to the think tank’s origin, and cited by Build a Think Tank (https://buildathinktank.org/think-tanks/) the following are the types of Think Tanks:

• Independent civil society think tanks established as non-profit organisations.
• Policy research institutes located in, or affiliated with, a university.
• Governmentally created or state-sponsored think tanks.
• Corporate-created or business-affiliated think tanks.
• Political party (or candidate) think tanks.

These, however, are just examples of Think Tanks. There can be variations within each category. Within independent civil society organisations, for example, some behave like research consultancies, undertaking research on demand and even bidding on calls for proposals.

While academics often pride themselves on their detachment from immediate policy problems . . . think tanks pursue a strategy of semi-detachment: maintaining a certain distance from day-to-day policy-making, but keeping close enough to attract the attention of policy-makers to their longer-term perspectives and alternative analyses, according John Fenwick, 2006.

In their Stone, Diane and Maxwell, Simon. Eds. (2005) “Global Knowledge Networks and International Development: Bridges Across Boundaries” published Routledge highlighted the value building bridges across boundaries. Indeed, if we embrace the new and different systems or cultures of knowledge production of crossdisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and extradisciplinarity, we shall not only broaden the mindsets of thought leaders but also the collective mindsets of Think Tanks by bridging the boundaries between the fields of knowledge and practice.

Think Tanks, like thought leaders, have squeezed public intellectuals from public spaces, thereby reducing the value of critical thinking, Critical anlysis and critical alternative analysis which critical public intellectuals bring in the public space.

Market place of ideas

The marketplace of ideas theory is a concept suggesting that the best ideas will emerge and gain acceptance when there is open and free competition of thought and expression in a public forum. It’s based on the analogy of a free market in economics, where competition leads to the best products being selected. This theory is often applied to discussions about freedom of speech and the press, particularly in the context of democratic societies. 

The expression “marketplace of ideas” is used in reference to John Stuart Mill’s political theory in On Liberty. The metaphor describes a situation in which people speak and exchange ideas freely. It reflects something of Mill’s liberalism – his desire to minimise governments’ and society’s interference in the life of the individual (Gordon, 1997). It also reflects ideological beliefs that market behaviour represents paradigmatically the kind of freedom to which we aspire, so speech and action must be free (Gordon, 1997).

However, the metaphor does not come from Mill’s own text On Liberty. Quite to the contrary, it does not reflect accurately Mill’s free speech expressed in On Liberty (Gordon, 1997).

In 2008, Blocher recorded that academic and popular understandings embraced the notion that free speech, like the free market, creates a competitive environment in which the best ideas ultimately prevail. However, as with the free market for goods and services, there are discontents who point to the market failures that make the marketplace metaphor aspirational at best, and inequitable at worst.

The marketplace of ideas model remains faithfully wedded to a neoclassical view that depends on a perfectly costless and efficient exchange of ideas, but also remains vulnerable. Blocher, by addressing the “economic” objections to the marketplace metaphor, attempted to better describe, explain God and rehabilitate the marketplace of ideas.

Lombardi in 2018 observed that the traditional model of a “marketplace of ideas” was intended to justify freedom of speech in terms of its optimal outcome in the production of truth. But today our behavior on the internet, the main locus of the “marketplace of ideas,” is continuously monitored and processed through the analysis of big data. He thought the marketplace of ideas is an illusion.

Nunziato surveys the severe problems in today’s online marketplace of ideas and the efforts that regulators – and the online platforms themselves – have recently adopted in an attempt to address such problems. While the change in the marketplace of ideas has increased diversity in creative thinking, it tends to build obstacles for the public intellectuals trying to filter out the bad from the good in the market place of ideas (Drezner, 2017). Morgan Weiland (2022) was convinced the marketplace of ideas wa dead and that there was instead a rise of a post-truth free-flow of information.

Ideas industry 

Drezner’s  The ‘Ideas Industry is a must-read book for anyone even remotely interested in influencing where higher education will go in the next few decades. If you are interested in ideas and the spread of ideas, then you will love this book. If you are a merchant of ideas, then read The Ideas Industry as both a critique of your world and as a roadmap (Kim, 2017).

The central thesis of The Ideas Industryis that the modern marketplace of ideas is tilted heavily in favour of thought leaders over public intellectuals. Thought leaders know a few things and they waste no opportunities to proclaim these beliefs (Kim, 2017). In fact, Drezner puts forth the argument that the traditional public intellectual has been supplanted by a new model: the “thought leader”. What is happening, according to Drezner, is that the marketplace of ideas has turned into the ideas industry.

The twenty-first century public sphere is bigger, louder and more lucrative than ever before. A surge of high-level panels, conference circuits, and speaker confabs allows intellectuals to mix with other members of the political, economic and cultural elite in a way that would have been inconceivable a half century ago, according to Drezner..

There is a great deal of good that can come from the twenty-first-century ‘ideas industry’. It is surely noteworthy that a strong demand has emerged for new ideas and vibrant ways of thinking about the world. But like any revolution, there are winners and there are losers. These trends also handicap more traditional purveyors of ideas housed in universities or think tanks. Some, if not most, of these institutions have not adapted as quickly to the new ecosystem of ideas, even though some individuals housed within these institutions have.

Although their roles are similar, thought leaders and public intellectuals remain two distinct entities. Public intellectuals’ training gives them the authority to discuss a wide range of issues; thought leaders’ enthusiasm gives them an audience who will listen to their ideas. Public distrust in authority figures has led to a significant rise in “thought leaders”.

Kim believes that higher education needs more public intellectuals (particularly those coming out of the technology and learning community, but that those of us within that world would be better off shooting for thought leader status.

Drezner demonstrates that today’s most prominent thought leaders are often advancing the agendas of the already fortunate. The ability to translate scholarship into policy is largely dependent on access to capital. The ideas of think tanks and consultancies with the deepest pockets are likely to gather the most attention (Kim, 2017) indecision-making circles, thereby making the contribution of higher education to meaningful and effective change towards freedom, justice and democracy minimal or a letdown.

The Ideas Industry: How Pessimists, Partisans and Plutocrats are Transforming the Marketplace of Ideas (Drezner, 2017) argued that three trends were transforming the public sphere: the erosion of trust in authority and expertise, the rise in political polarisaation and the emergence of plutocrats with a vested interest in funding certain ideas. This led to a marketplace of ideas in which the barriers to entry were much lower but the barriers to exit were much higher. In short: it has become easier to introduce new ideas into the public sphere, but bad ideas just don’t die (Drezner, 2024 citing Drezner 2017).

For and my country.

• A Tell report / By Oweyegha-Afunaduula / Environmental Historian and Conservationist Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA), Seeta, Mukono, Uganda.

About the Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA)

The CCTAA was innovated by Hyuha Mukwanason, Oweyegha-Afunaduula and Mahir Balunywa in 2019 to the rising decline in the capacity of graduates in Uganda and beyond to engage in critical thinking and reason coherently besides excellence in academics and academic production. The three scholars were convinced that after academic achievement the world outside the ivory tower needed graduates that can think critically and reason coherently towards making society and the environment better for human gratification. They reasoned between themselves and reached the conclusion that disciplinary education did not only narrow the thinking and reasoning of those exposed to it but restricted the opportunity to excel in critical thinking and reasoning, which are the ultimate aim of education. They were dismayed by the truism that the products of disciplinary education find it difficult to tick outside the boundaries of their disciplines; that when they provide solutions to problems that do not recognise the artificial boundaries between knowledges, their solutions become the new problems. They decided that the answer was a new and different medium of learning and innovating, which they characterised as “The Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis” (CCTAA).