Thoughts about think-tanks

Thoughts about think-tanks When Prime Minister Trudeau presented to the public Mr. Ronald Ritchie's study, An Institute for Research on Public Policy, he stated that "the report recommends the setting up of this Institute and the government did decide to accept the recommendations of the report." If he intended to imply that Mr. Ritchie's study had given serious consideration to the need for such an institute and that the government had been moved to establish it by his weighty research and persuasive argument, Mr. Trudeau was misleading his audience. Even Mr. Ritchie recognized that Mr. Trudeau and his Government had already fully "committed themselves to an institution for public policy research being created in Canada" before he entered the picture; and his assigned task was not so much to consider the need for such an institute as to put forward specific proposals on the form it should take. This explains a great deal about his report and, above all, its failure to make an adequate case for the Institute. The truth is that the case for the Institute has not yet been made. Mr. Ritchie's attempt to provide a case consists entirely in repeated assertions that the Institute is indeed necessary . His discussion of indigenous patterns of policy research is superficial and overlooks the real virtues of such native research instruments as, for example, Royal Commissions . The most glaring weakness of the report, however, is its failure to take an adequately critical look at the record of "thinktanks " elsewhere. While it is obvious on every page of Mr. Ritchie's study (and in previous statements by the Prime Minister) that the inspiration for the new Canadian Institute comes from the three famous American "think-tanks" - the Brookings Institution , the Rand Corporation, and the Hudson Institute - neither he nor the government which commissioned his study has made a serious effort either to consider the wellknown weaknesses and dangers of these institutions or to make a realistic assessment Journal of Canadian Studies of their merits and contributions. Consider the last question first, as it is the most obvious weakness of the report. The whole matter (which ought to have formed the solid core of any adequate study) is disposed of in two short paragraphs. The lack of attention given to the main issue is disturbing; but no more so than the intellectual confusion which these two paragraphs reveal. They are summed up in their first and last sentences: "To measure the contribution which the public policy research Institutes surveyed have made and are making in their respective countries is not possible in any verifiable, quantified fashion. . . . (However ,) it is hard to resist the conclusion that public policy research institutes, operating on one or other of certain tested patterns, have proved their worth to the policy formation processes of modern, democratic states." In other words, one can only assess the value of such institutes on the basis of intuitive, highly subjective judgements. Now there is nothing wrong with subjective judgements : indeed they may be the only kind of judgements we can make. But to find such highly subjective, unverifiable value judgements at the very heart of a report which attempts to justify a body whose purported aim is to provide "truly objective" analysis ("objective" being a word used most lavishly throughout the report) is, to say the least, ironic. On this ground alone, one may be permitted to have doubts about the credibility or value of the proposed institute. On the weaknesses and potential dangers of think-tanks, the report is equally unsatisfactory , in spite of the. fact that these are well-known and that concern about them ought to have been dispelled before any action was taken. Some are merely practical weaknesses, but others are more sinister and each may be identified to some degree with one of the famous American trio. The first problem which ought to have been looked at is the relationship between think1 tanks and the civil service. In the U.S., the Brookings Institution is the clearest example of a comfortable and influential resting place for quasi-political technocrats. In Canada, one can think of at least half a dozen members of the...