May 22
Foreign funders need proof of their grantees' influence because they do not know enough about their political contexts. If think tank funders were less like risk-adverse tourist and more like local politically engaged citizens they would not demand impact evaluations and complicated indicators of influence. But to avoid this, funding needs to be local.
Force Field Analysis can be used to plan, monitor and evaluate the decisions made by think tanks involved in influencing interventions. It provides the user with intervention options, rich information about the context, and a good sense of progress. An excellent tool for ex-ante evaluations.
Attempts to measure influence miss out on two fundamental questions related to current efforts and ideas focused on monitoring and evaluating think tanks: who is responsible for a think tank's influence? and what are they actually responsible for? Attempting to answer them led to two further issues: a question: when should think tanks claim influence? and, a conclusion: any claims of influence are political acts; they are claims of power over others.
The designation of the new president of the Heritage Foundation raises the question of whether if think tanks are becoming lobbyists.
In this interview, Sandra Polonia Rios, Director of theCentro de Estudos de Integração e Desenvolvimento, in Brazil, discusses how different funding models can affect think tanks' influence
Can journalism count as research? Charlie Beckett says yes on the LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog - so long as it is the right kind of journalism.
Almetrics are a new form of measuring research impact by adding on a wider set of metrics to traditional bibliographic rankings based on academic journal citation analysis. While they are a very useful initiative in measuring impact beyond traditional scholarly output, they still have to show progress in certain areas.
What is the relationship between European think tanks and the European Union, and how can European think tanks be defined and classified? A report by the Bureau of European Policy Advisers offers an overview of these issues.
Oct 29
In this opportunity I interviewed Monica Galilea, formerly responsible for communication at the Centro de Analisis y Difusion de la Economía Paraguaya (CADEP), a think tank in Paraguay. Monica tells us about the process that led to the institutionalisation of communication processes within CADEP, why they decided to create a communication area and what were its attributions.
Oct 26
Think tanks offer advice on their specialty subject to the National People's Congress, and they also propose innovative ideas for local governments to implement policies and to apply said policies to other parts of the country if possible. Think tanks in China feel that their increasing involvement signifies that the Communist Party is now taking into account a wider array of opinions and sources as part of their decision making process.
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