By Barend ter Haar.
The Global Go To Think Tank Index Report[1] has become a global affair. More than hundred think tanks participated this year in the launch of the Report, that ranks the world’s leading think tanks in 50 categories.
Think tanks are increasingly forced to finance their operations by “short term, project specific grants”. The report warns that this increases the danger that think tanks, by concentrating on the short term like most politicians do, will become part of the problem rather than part of the solution of today´s problems.
Although it is said that ideas know no boundaries and although most countries are confronted with largely the same problems, most think tanks still mainly target their home audiences. This might change when institutes are forced to compete on a regional or even global market, but so far, very few think tanks are internationalizing. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is an exception with offices in Beijing, Beirut, Brussels, Moscow, Washington DC and (soon) India.
A different approach is taken by the OSCE Network of Think Tanks and Academic Institutions. This network was set up in 2013 by 16 think tanks (including Clingendael) and now encompasses 54 think tanks from 36 countries. It has so far produced three reports, inter alia on Threat Perceptions in the OSCE Area and on The Future of OSCE Field Operations. The Network contributes actively to the transboundary exchange of ideas, but funding remains a problem.
According to the Global-go-to-index, Dutch think tanks have been doing well in 2015. Fifteen Dutch think tanks are included in one or more of the lists, against twelve last year, and these were mentioned 34 times, against 20 times last year.
Clingendael remains the only Dutch think tank in the global top 100 (nr 46 in the global list, nr 24 when US think tanks are not taken into account). Clingendael was mentioned seven times, inter alia among the think tanks with the best external relations and the best use of media.
The Hague Institute for Global Justice and The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies did particularly well. Two years ago, neither of them was mentioned in the index. Now THIGJ was mentioned in no less than eight categories, inter alia for its support of the work of the Commission for Global Security, Justice, and Governance Report on Confronting the Crisis of Global Governance and HCSS was mentioned in five categories, including that of Top Energy and Resource Policy Think Tanks.
Three Dutch institutes are new on the index: the Institute of Social Studies, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) and the Quid Novi Foundation.
However, the criteria for including an institute in the index remain mysterious. Why, for example, is the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB) included, but are the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) and the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) missing?
[1] See also my previous columns on the subject:
