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.

Meet Harvard's New Think Tank Search

Harvard University has a new Google custom search for 590 think tanks and research centers, allowing users to more easily check policy proposals of hundreds of think tanks in mere seconds.

Here is how Harvard defines a "think tank" for the search:

For the purposes of this search, think tanks are defined as institutions affiliated with universities, governments, advocacy groups, foundations, non-governmental organizations, and businesses that generate public policy research, analysis, and activity. Inclusion is based upon the relevancy of subject area to HKS coursework and scholarship, the availability of the think tank’s research in full-text on the website, and the think tank’s reputation and influence upon policy making. The list represents a mixture of partisan and non-partisan think tanks.

A list of the US think tanks in the search can be found here.  A list of the non-US think tanks can be found here.

The site Find Policy also allows users to search think tank policy, albeit in a slightly different way.