Friday, January 17, 2025

New Report on Think Tank Funding in America

The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft has a new report on think tank funding in America.  Here is more from Politico:

Among other things, the paper says that the top 50 think tanks took in some $110 million over the past five years from foreign governments and related entities, including nearly $17 million from the United Arab Emirates, the largest single foreign donor. Leading Pentagon contractors, meanwhile, kicked in nearly $35 million over the same period.

The Atlantic Council and the Brookings Institution topped the list of foreign-government beneficiaries, taking in nearly $21 million and over $17 million, respectively. All in all, 54 different governments contributed to the industry, a list largely made up of pro-western democracies but also including fantastically wealthy authoritarian regimes like Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Most disturbingly, the report makes clear that the numbers it cites may only be partial: Unlike traditional PACs or registered foreign agents, think tanks don’t have to disclose where their money comes from. Researching the study, co-authors Ben Freeman and Nick Cleveland-Stout told me, meant poring through the organizations’ annual reports in hopes that information would be voluntarily shared.

 

Along with the report, the Quincy Institute launched a publicly available repository of think tank funding, the Think Tank Funding Tracker

Ben Freeman spoke about the report on C-SPAN.

Here is a piece that Freeman and Cleveland-Stout wrote for The Hill.