Think tanks operate in an increasingly blurred landscape between research, advocacy, and politics. While some think tanks focus more on research, others function more like lobbying organizations or NGOs. There is diversity in the producers of social scientific knowledge, including different levels of reliability. Think tanks are not bound by the same peer review standards as academia and can choose propaganda over impartial analysis, like with climate change denial. Social science does not have definitive criteria to separate facts from values, and think tanks have flexibility in whether or not to adhere to scientific standards of integrity. Think tanks can point out wrong claims in politics but also pick their topics more freely than political institutions.

1. Think tanks, politics and science
Teppo Eskelinen

2. The soil on which think tanks emerge
• Ever less clear demarcation between
academia, independent research units, NGOs,
lobby organisations, etc.
• Pressures to popularise social science
• Change in politics: from “big ideologies” to
governance
• In Finland: practically, part of the attempt to
involve citizens in politics

3. A think tank identity?
• Clearly, some think tanks are closer to
research, some to NGOs/charities, some to
lobbies.
• Is there a need to find a ”think tank” identity,
or rather to acknowledge the pluralism of
producers of social scientific knowledge and
the related problems of reliability?

4. The demarcation (1)
• Think tanks can exist only for propaganda reasons
(for example climate change denialism)
• The difficulty to demarcate between propaganda
and social scientific schools of thought (For
example, marxism vs liberalism)
• Think tanks typically have no criterion of “peer
review” for assessing methodological choices
• Rather, open choice whether or not to use such;
or attempts to create something resembling peer
review

5. The demarcation (2)
• The choice between social scientific schools of
thought is always “political”, there is no “value-
free” social science… there is little reason to draw
a sharp distinction between “fact” and “value” in
social science.
• Social science does not appear as having a sharp
demarcation criterion, but rather having
“scientific values”; of course , the institutional
form of a think tank leaves you free not to honor
these values…
• Integrity?

6. The demarcation (3)
• Scientific research does not resolve political
disputes, but it can show immediately wrong
or suspect claims.
• Think tanks can do the same, but pick their
topics more flexibly

7. Difference to politics
• A key demarcation is also the difference to
politics
• Think tanks: doing politics with a longer-term
vision, social scientific concepts, systematic
analysis.
• Often politics has problems communicating a
long-term vision, only day-to-day politics

8. What we do?
• 1 “Social visions”: conceptual innovation,
wider normative ideas
• 2 Analysis based on somewhat lighter
methodology than typical social science; for
example analysis based on expert interviews
• 3 Under-explored topics with social relevance