Thursday, May 3, 2012

A Day In The Life of an EU Think Tanker



In the video above, Hugo Brady, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Reform (CER; the 17th best non-US think tank in the world), discusses the world of think tanks and what it is like to work at a European Union (EU) think tank.

My favorite quote of his:
A think tanker has to be able to think like an academic, act like a diplomat, and write like a journalist.
The EU has 1,485 think tanks.  Europe, in its entirety, has 1,795 think tanks.  That compares to 1,815 think tanks in the US, the most of any country in the world.


Following is a list of the top 10 think tanks in Western Europe:
  1. Chatham House (UK)
  2. Amnesty International (UK)
  3. Transparency International (Germany)
  4. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sweden)
  5. International Crisis Group (Belgium)
  6. Center for European Policy Studies (Belgium)
  7. International Institute for Strategic Studies (UK)
  8. Bruegel (Belgium)
  9. Adam Smith Institute (UK)
  10. World Economic Forum (Switzerland)

Following is a list of the top 10 think tanks in Central and Eastern Europe:
  1. Carnegie Moscow Center (Russia)
  2. Polish Institute of International Affairs (Poland)
  3. Center for Social and Economic Research (Poland)
  4. Moscow State Institute of International Relations (Russia)
  5. Institute of World Economy and International Relations (Russia)
  6. Center for Policy Studies (Hungary)
  7. Center for Eastern Studies (Poland)
  8. Prague Security Studies Institute (Czech Republic)
  9. Center for Economic and Financial Research (Russia)
  10. Centre for Liberal Strategies (Bulgaria)