E.J. Fagan is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Illinois Chicago and an affiliate at the Institute of Government and Public Affairs. His latest book covers the history and surprising, polarizing power of American think tanks.
Why are think tanks interesting to study?
Political scientists don’t research them. Meanwhile, think tanks are considered one of the most important organizations in Washington D.C. For some reason, it’s more common to study the National Corn Growers Association than the Heritage Foundation. Once I figured out how to develop a model of power for organizations like these, I knew I would pursue think tanks for my dissertation.
Why do you think political scientists aren’t studying think tanks?
In a democracy, we view power in an electoral sense. Political scientists spend a lot of time observing and researching powerful organizations with the ability to change what happens on election day. Think tanks don’t do that. These organizations are more powerful in persuading legislators than the average voter, so their impact is less known, but still very important.
Tell me more about the impact of think tanks in Washington, D.C.
Scholars who work at think tanks are not just academics who write reports. Of the four think tanks I studied for the book, many have employees who have become a part of a political party. These people become close policy advisors, not just some kind of expert that might occasionally be consulted on policy making. So in that sense, they determine what kind of policy gets made.
So, think tanks target legislators, but who else are they trying to talk to?
One think tank president told me that he wants to impact the beliefs of the average person who reads an op-ed in the New York Times. While this is not the general public, it’s a very large number of people, and it’s a relatively influential set of people.
How do think tanks get their agenda to be enacted?
Think tank scholars throw their expertise into conversations, and their ideas can be very quickly modified to the current situation and then enacted. They pair problems to a solution they’ve been working on for a long time, even if the two aren’t directly related. My favorite example is when 911 pushed us to crack down on terrorism. Ideas to curtail terrorism were thrown out and money laundering came up. Terrorists use money laundering, but they do it at a very small scale. The money laundering bill was a much larger intervention, but it was included in the Patriot Act after 911 because it was sitting on the shelf ready to go.
What is the core argument of The Thinkers?
Think tanks increase the polarization of American politics. We started to see polarization take effect in normal people about 10 years ago. Now, people are much more comfortable and likely to openly feud with each other over politics.
In the 1970s, a legislator’s state was the biggest influence on how they would vote in Congress. For example, if Minnesota had one senator from the Republican Party and one from the Democratic Party, they would still vote very similarly. By the early 1990s, political scientists saw a modern form of polarization in elites that wasn’t polarizing the public. The data is very clear that think tanks played a big role, especially as we see an elimination of shared expertise among Democrats and Republicans. Legislators used to listen to the same experts, and they ultimately came to very similar conclusions on what America’s problems were and how to solve them. But once you displaced those shared experts, we very rapidly had a conservative policy agenda, a progressive policy agenda, and very little overlap between the two. Now, our modern government sees the parties come together only when they have to, such as a crisis. My book explores the data behind how this happened.
How can someone purchase your book, The Thinkers?
You can purchase The Thinkers on the Oxford University Press website.
Learn more about our scholar E.J. Fagan at his website.
