Paul Light: Think Tanks Don't Think About Policy Implementation

In a recent interview with Federal News Radio, Paul Light, a professor at New York University (NYU) and founding principal investigator of the Global Center for Public Service, has some tough words for think tanks:

What policymakers to on Capitol Hill, and in academia, and think tanks is that they generate these complicated policies and assume that you can just chuck the policy over to the bureaucracy and it will be implemented.  That is just not true.

Some of these policymakers have a certain arrogance as they are drafting legislation.  They don't know much about implementation.  They don't think for a second about implementation.

If you run your finger down the phone books of think tanks around Washington you will rarely find anybody on the team on the scholars list who specializes in implementation.  It's just a non-starter.  It's so boring for most people.  They don't think about it because it's not what turns their boards on and it's not what raises money.

Dr. Light is not speaking out of thin air.  He was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Founding Director of the think tank's Center for Public Service.  He was also Vice President and Director of the think tank's Governmental Studies Program.

Brookings Scholar Blasts Brookings Scholar

Think tank colleagues are usually a cordial and harmonious bunch.  They typically praise each others work (at least in public) or at least don't bash it.

But that was not the case this week when prolific think tanker Justin Wolfers, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, lashed out at Michael O'Hanlon, a well-known security and defense scholar at Brookings, for writing about a subject he admittedly is not an expert in: vaccines and autism.

Following are the Tweets that Wolfers wrote:

Dear @Brookings Time for quality control: Why publish a foreign policy scholar's musings on the autism-vaccine link? http://t.co/4tAlD2Rrvh

— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) September 29, 2015

Serious scholarship built @Brookings' reputation. A foreign policy guy rambling about vaccines destroys it. Why do this? cc @strobetalbott

— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) September 29, 2015

Here's a hint. Anytime you feel the need to offer the qualifier "I am not an expert," you should probably not offer your "expertise."

— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) September 29, 2015

Here is the paper in question that O'Hanlon wrote on autism/vaccines.  In it, he notes that he is the parent of a child on the autism spectrum, but also says he is not a scientist in the field of biology or medicine.

So, should a think tank scholar to able to publish pieces on subjects that they are not experts in?

It seems that Wolfers does not worry an ounce about upsetting Brookings or his colleagues, probably because he is affiliated with numerous other think tanks - including five of the top 10 economic think tanks.

But, just for a littler entertainment, Think Tank Watch would love to see Wolfers and O'Hanlon settle the score at the Brookings Fight Club.