Like my earlier feature on American leather, my latest NYT feature looks at how a new company used innovative technology and sophisticated marketing to grow and flourish in a struggling industry. By improving the look and feel of upholstery in hospitals and high-traffic public places, Hi-Tex Inc.'s Crypton fabric technology both furthers and helps satisfy today's aesthetic imperative. My story looks at some of the operational challenges behind the good looks.
If I were writing the story as an economics column, rather than a small business feature, I would have taken a different tack. This is a classic tale of vertical integration, raising interesting Coase-Williamson questions. Why, for instance, does a company need to own the factory and machines in order to pick the people who'll run them? Does it matter that these people are employees? Or, as I suspect, simply that they take pride in their work?
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 19, 2005 • Comments
Dan Drezner has more, including an on-target comment about TV booking from Bruce Bartlett. Arnold Kling weighs in here, with numerous reader comments. Tim Sandefur, like other readers, defends think tanks on the grounds that they're no worse, and perhaps better, than "intellectuals in government institutions, or in overwhelmingly government-supported universities."
I'm not asking think tanks to be universities. I'm asking them to do what they say they're trying to do. Think tanks--or at least the kind we're talking about--say they're about changing minds and affecting policy. To that end, think tank research should be able to pass scholarly scrutiny, if only because the arguments won't otherwise convince anyone but the already convinced. For the same reason, think tanks should seek not simply to repeat the same arguments but to advance the debate by responding to new critiques and new circumstances.
The problem is that think tanks face enormous incentives to do the easy job of making their supporters (moral or financial) feel good, rather than the hard job of persuading the unpersuaded or figuring out how to move policy, rather than simply to complain about it.
Take a recent example, Cato's news release purporting to offer "$62 billion in spending cuts that would offset Katrina relief in the short-term and create savings to reduce the federal deficit over the long-term." The release was great p.r., even garnering an Instalanche. It made a terrific soundbite: Tom DeLay is wrong. It's easy to find $62 billion of waste in the budget.
Unfortunately, anyone who looks at the release, even someone like me who agrees with the cuts, can tell the release is not serious. For starters, all the important details are missing. How exactly do you propose cutting farm subsidies in half? Ditto NASA? What specific programs are you going to zero out? Or how are you going to restructure allocations? How are you going to manage the politics? Do you have some reverse logroll in mind? How do you propose to cut the Army Corps of Engineers budget at a time when people are complaining about too little money for shoring up levees? These are not easy cuts, made even more justifiable by the Katrina crisis. They are a standard libertarian wish list in a new context. The release does nothing convince the typical reader that these programs are wasteful. It's just a publicity stunt--and an effective one--that makes ideological supporters feel good but does nothing to change short-term policy or long-term attitudes.
I'm not against think tanks. To the contrary, I believe they can fill a role no other institution fills. I appreciate the hard work and talent of the people who staff think tanks. My quarrel is less with them than with their short-sighted supporters. When faced with Dan Drezner's original question of why these organizations don't take on the difficult issues of the day, I come back to the same answer: because they need money to fund that research and donors, especially individuals, don't want to pay for it.
I am particularly skeptical of the one-stop-ideological shop, funded by individuals who care mostly about hearing their beliefs repeated in public. These organizations have almost no incentive to take on new or difficult questions or to work on the hard, unglamorous, long-term process of moving specialist opinion. (Unlike many think tank critics, I do not think corporate and foundation donors are usually a big problem, for the simple reason that their specialized program officers tend to be far more sophisticated about the state of debate and don't want their side to lose by making unpersuasive arguments.) I have more confidence in the effectiveness of organizations that focus on a specific discipline or policy area, because they tend to attract staffers with independent reputations in their field and to reward them for tackling the hot questions of the day, even if they don't know the answers in advance. Or maybe I just don't know enough about specialized organizations to see their problems.
As for the critique that there are many kinds of think tanks, not just the portmanteau ideological variety discussed in Dan's original post, all I can say is that Vogue is undeniably part of the mainstream media, but nobody thinks we're talking about fashion magazines when we examine news coverage.
Finally, on a positive note, I think the Manhattan Institute does a good job of funding smart, intellectually curious people and turning them loose to do in-depth research on topics they care about. But then, as its name suggests, this think tank isn't in Washington.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 19, 2005 • Comments
If you came here from the MR post about think tanks, please be aware that there are now five (not three) items below on the subject.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 16, 2005 • Comments
Heritage Foundation economist Tim Kane writes:
I have been a big fan of yours for some time (even stayed up late to see your appearance on Dennis Miller a few months ago). I'm sure you are already getting lots of response to your think tank riff, but I have to pile on. You made some good points, but you overstretched and oversimplified. Don't get me wrong: you don't owe anyone an apology -- and in fact I think this is a fascinating, worthwhile discussion.
As a think tank scholar from the Heritage Foundation - probably the singular example of the institution you are describing - it is difficult to compose a response without the feeling that it will come across as reflexively defensive. Your critique boils down to whether think tanks could be better by doing "better" research. I wonder. First, I suspect that think tanks in general like to have a mix of scholars and screamers (in different ratios). From personal experience, I can attest that Heirtage prides itself on getting the facts right, not on spinning. I'd like to point to some of my own research, but gosh that feels awfully self-serving. And while you're right that good people leave ... is it fair to assume that they're replaced by lesser people? Would you prefer a world where all the analysts at Heritage stayed forever? Turnover is dynamic, Virgina, and no one should have to remind you of that!
The real issue is that think tank analysts - unlike most university scholars - put a premium on policy formation. So does the media, and so does Congress, but they have very different incentives. And who watches the watchmen? It is challenging enough to shame Congress away from its instinct for comfy incumbency, but harder still to puncture the myths of the MSM. And it would be nice if academic institutions took on that role, but they don't. Period. (even if you were patient enough to wait for a generation for good research to become conventional wisdom). Watching the watchmen is the role of think tanks.
For example, the MSM continues to peddle the myth that enlistees in the Army are underprivileged. There are no facts to back this claim, but it goes out unchallenged simply because it was asserted and never disproven. Where are the academic studies on this one (or isn't that a tenurable topic, perhaps)? You see, there are holes in the academic community as well, and gaps on what it studies due to its own institutional limitations. But I can tell you that we are about to publish a major study on troop demographics, and guess what? The MSM is dead wrong. Not only is the Army not disproportionately underprivileged, it is in fact disproportionately overprivileged.
Will I go on TV and radio to promote the finding? Absolutely. Especially if our excellent media team comes to work next month. But understand that I could never get media attention as a young academic, all by myself. I wrote op-eds as an assistant professor, and I didn't have the capacity to get them to the right editors anywhere. A few weeks after I joined Heritage, thanks to the media relations team, I was published in the New York Times. The Foundation is a force multiplier, true, but the NYT published the op-ed only because it was based on solid and compelling research.
One way to think about think tanks is from the perspective of a young scholar who faces the choice: (1) academic career or (2) policy career. For me at least, I didn't have confidence that I would be happy at Big Megaversity economics dept., let alone Southwestern State Smalltown College -- writing dry papers for dusty journals (and there are many). I loved teaching, and I loved policy talking points ... two things that don't matter for tenure. And I didn't have confidence that those institutions reward activism, and may even punish it. Drezner should know this, given his musing about blogging and tenure. So that's the choice.
It seems quite an error to suggest the think tanks are hollow of genuine scholarship, when they seem to be rather inspiring as one of the few institutions where free inquiry is still rewarded. And you shouldn't presume the academics own the moral high ground on thoughtful research. I mean, isn't it funny that Krugman skewered policy scholars (entrepreneurs, he called them) in a book a few years ago, and now is one of the most intellectually dishonest ideologues in the arena?
I will have further thoughts later, but now I must go do some real work.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 16, 2005 • Comments
In this column about New Orleans, the author tells the story of Methodist Hospital. The private sector is full of heroes, and tries to offer timely, practical relief. The government screws things up: "Incredibly, when the out-of-state corporate owners of the hospital responded to the flooding by sending emergency relief supplies, they were confiscated at the airport by FEMA and sent elsewhere."
A greedy corporation is more caring and efficient than the government? Has Bob Herbert become some kind of libertarian fundamentalist?
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 16, 2005 • Comments
In response to my posting and Dan Drezner's link and original posting, Fabio Rojas (a sometime contributor to Marginal Revolution) emails us both with a outside scholar's view of the landscape:
I think Virginia Postrel only gets one side of the story correct when she writes about think tanks. Of course, Postrel is correct in saying that many think tanks are media driven entities. They do specialize in producing ideologically driven "research" designed for op-eds, TV, and donors. However, you and Postrel focus on the most visible types of think tanks. The world of "think tanks" is extremely diverse, ranging from the Rand Corporation to the Cato Institute. Like any industry, think tanks — defined as intellectual organizations trying to develop policy proposals for politicians and bureaucrats — are a complex group. Here's my take on things:
1. Highly partisan & media-oriented think tanks — These are large, high profile organizations that have strong partisan and ideological identifications. Their goal is to support intellectuals whowill promote a particular agenda or ideology. They depend on private donor and occasional pubic grants, but aim to selectively distill academic and government research into items that can be easily disseminated into the mass media. If they are large enough, they might support some original research, like Brookings. These organizations produce very little that is taken seriously by practitioners and academics.
2. Industry or Public Sector ThinkTanks — These are organizations that adopt a rational, scientific stance towards pubic policy or industry issues. Their job is to serve their sector by conducting serious studies on behalf of a benefactor using accepted research techniques, or occasionally supporting basic science. Some of these organizations actually avoid publicity, as it might compromise their ability to conduct research on sensitive topics. The Rand Corporation is a good example. Some are industry specific — think of the American Bar Foundation. Since these organizations don't depend on publicity, but on reputable research, they are much more likely to have individuals with close ties to academia and reputable government agencies or private laboratories.
3> Broker Think Tank — This is a fairly obscure sector most people don't know about. Individuals, universities, corporations, interest groups, and other think tanks produce so much knowledge and ideas that it is impossible for political elites and partisan think tank people to sort through it all. There are think tanks that specialize in sorting through complex policy debates and give a succinct summary to politicians and their aids. Some of the smaller "neocon" think tanks fit this mold — they commission reports and books where policy intellectuals compress years of debate into an easy to read format for other conservatives. These folks rarely make it to the op-ed page or Fox News, but they write articles in policy journals and opinion journals. You might say broker think tanks support "policy" intellectuals who provide the academic ammunition for more visible fights in the media, and for more refined discussion in movement forums.
To answer Dan's question — what's the value added? Media oriented think tanks specialize in publicity for ideas — as long as they easily fit into a particular political agenda. Sector think tanks specialize in producing knowledge for consumption among professionals. The brokers are the intellectual middle men & women of the policy world. With respect to Virginia Postrel's post, yes, the partisan think tanks are so dominated by media that they barely produce any thing that might be considered a contribution to knowledge, but remember there is a vast network of other think tanks that do many other things.
Maybe my brain has been warped by too many years in the think tank world, but I think this is an important discussion to have--and one that's unlikely to occur publicly except on blogs. Tyler Cowen has posted some thoughts. More to come here, as well.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 16, 2005 • Comments
In California, all the bills to restrict eminent domain, even mildly, have quietly died. Dan Walters, the state's leading political columnist, reports:
Predictably, local government and redevelopment officials reacted with alarm that eminent domain could be severely restricted. The California Redevelopment Association and other advocates geared up to kill the measures and in the closing days of the legislative session, Democratic leaders ginned up a strategy to cool off the anti-eminent domain fervor. They unveiled legislation that would place a two-year moratorium on the seizure of private homes (but not commercial property), and authorize a study of the practice, thus giving their members a chance, or so it seemed, to side with the anti-eminent domain sentiment without doing any real damage to redevelopment agencies.
Quietly, however, the moratorium bills were themselves put on the shelf as the session ended - with Democrats blaming Republicans. "With every vote, they tried to derail this prudent response," said Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, who carried one of the moratorium bills.
Kehoe's finger-pointing, however, was more than a little disingenuous since the stalled bills required only simple majority votes and thus needed no Republicans to go along. Clearly, this was a Democratic action, not a Republican one, perhaps just a feint to pretend to do something about eminent domain without actually doing anything to upset the apple cart.
Ironically, the only eminent domain-related bill to reach Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk was a measure that allows the Rumsey Band of Wintun Indians, which operates the Cache Creek Casino in Yolo County, to join a joint powers consortium with local governments and the University of California to manage the 17,300-acre Conaway Ranch. While the county would purchase the land - or acquire it through eminent domain - the Rumsey Band has agreed to help finance the transaction.
Whether the tribe's interest in the Conaway Ranch is just an expression of civic involvement, or it has some other, more commercial interest is yet to be discovered. But allowing a casino-owning tribe to even indirectly participate in an eminent domain action sets a potentially worrisome precedent.
Somehow I'm not surprised.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 16, 2005 • Comments
From Will Wilkinson:
In the nine months I've been at Cato I've written a piece on evolutionary psychology & capitalism; a long paper that is, I believe, the only work on social security to discuss at length Rawlsian standards of public reason; a review of Douglass North's latest book, focusing on his philosophy of mind; and now I'm working on a long methodological critique of work that attempts to bend happiness research toward paternalist conclusions. Now, I don't know which donors in particular are demanding my somewhat recondite products, but my supervisors seem to think that they're worthwhile, even if over the head of most donors and not exactly talk-radio fodder. Yes, I have written some op-eds, in which I attempted to advance some serious points. To my chagrin, no one has asked me to be on TV. But I spend most of my time reading the latest research on happiness and behavioral economics, and writing what I hope will be an original and intellectually rigorous paper. I spent much of my time at Mercatus synthesizing the views of Nobel Prize winners into reports on institutions and economic development for USAID subcontractors.
Will was hired at Cato by Brink Lindsey, whose work I greatly admire, as part of an initiative to build long-term (i.e., non-news cycle) intellectual research there. One of the good things about think tanks is that they do have nooks and crannies for this sort of work. I wish there were more incentive for them to brag about it.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 15, 2005 • Comments
Obviously, some interesting work goes on in think tanks. And obviously some donors support that work. But there's a reason that the largest, most financially successful, most often quoted organizations--including the ones Dan Drezner focused on--are notable for their small ratio of original thinking, or even scholarship-based popularization, to recycled soundbites. That's what funders and the media reward. That's what makes a think tank a winner.
What's really sad is that the system obscures the interesting work that does go on in think tanks, including the high-profile ones. Good work suffers from the think tank stigma, which then leads good people to leave think tanks or not to go to them in the first place, which leads to a higher proportion of bad work, and so on.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 15, 2005 • Comments
Dan Drezner wonders why think tanks do such lousy, superficial work when they could be addressing important questions, in part by translating academic research.
Well, Dan, let me tell you the way of the world. For the most part, think tank donors (especially individuals, as opposed to foundations or corporations) are completely uninterested in original research and unable to evaluate its quality. On the whole, individuals give to think tanks for the same reason they give to religious organizations--to demonstrate commitment to a belief system and to support the people they believe will spread the word. They want to hear the same messages over and over and over again, and they financially reward those who give them what they want. While generally nice, generous people, donors are on the whole indifferent to originality, bored by wonky policy proposals, and annoyed by any think tank employee who challenges their political cathechisms. Boards of trustees tend to reward executives not for doing or supporting important work but for raising money.
Since you can't do the work without money anyway, think tankers who want to do good, significant work eventually either flee or give in to the system's preference for superficiality. Making the system even worse are media bookers who want predictable, preferably partisan views. Dan worries about op-eds. Op-eds are philosophy tomes compared to TV, and as Nicole Kidman aptly observed in To Die For, you're nobody in America if you're not on TV. That goes double for public policy circles.
Think tanks, unlike universities, are supposed to influence public policy, not to produce knowledge for its own sake. Donors and boards want hard evidence that their money is working, that it's influencing the public debate. The easiest, flashiest way to measure that influence--especially since 501(c)3 think tanks aren't allowed to lobby--is to count media appearances. (Most media counts don't even differentiate by the quality of the appearance, except perhaps in raw audience numbers.) Even successful books reach few readers, compared to a TV appearance. And the best way to sell political books is, of course, to get on TV, preferably with an easily digested, highly partisan message.
I should also mention that, outside of a few foreign policy shops, there is a huge intellectual stigma attached to association with a think tank. Too many people, including reviewers, don't read what you actually write. They read what they imagine the work from that think tank will say. And that's in the happy event that your work actually gets reviewed, rather than tossed unread on the trash heap as more think tank crap. I say that as a tosser as well as a tossee.
In short, think tanks are well into their decadent phase. They're giving their donors what they want--simple sound bites--but they aren't producing many new ideas.
Go to the main blog page for more on this subject.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 14, 2005 • Comments