Marcos Gonzales Hermando and Enrique Mendizabal sat down for an interview on the challenges facing think tanks in Latin America. During the discussion, Marcos referred to Dag Hammarskjöld Street in Santiago de Chile, where many of the old guard of Latin American think tanks stood. This article was developed with the help of AI on the basis of notes from the conversation and further edits from the authors.
Read Marcos’ interview with Enrique Mendizabal
In Santiago de Chile, there is a quiet street called Dag Hammarskjöld. Around it sit CEPAL, FLACSO, CIEPLAN (until not so long ago), several UN missions (UNDP, FAO, ILO, WHO, others) and, two blocks away, the US Embassy. For several decades, this corner of Vitacura – a leafy, wealthy, well-located neighbourhood – concentrated a good part of Latin America’s official knowledge about itself. If you cared about development, democracy or macroeconomic stability, chances are that at some point you walked into one of those buildings or quoted something that had been written there.
Today, you can walk down that same street and feel a different energy. The physical presence remains, but the political and intellectual centrality it once commanded has subtly dispersed. This is not just about Santiago, of course. It is about a generation of think tanks that were once central to national and regional policy debates and have since had their roles recalibrated. They haven’t died. Many are still legal entities, still receiving grants, still commissioning papers. But their influence has fragmented, and their voices are now part of a much louder chorus. This essay is an attempt to understand why.
The golden years on Dag Hammarskjöld
There was a time when the geography made perfect sense.
On one side, you had the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL, as it is known locally), producing grand narratives of development, inequality and structural transformation with regional – and global-relevance. A few steps away, FLACSO and CIEPLAN gathered economists, sociologists and political scientists who helped design and critique transitions to democracy, social policy reforms, trade agreements and fiscal rules. The UN missions and the US Embassy provided money, visibility and diplomatic cover and platform. You could walk from one building to another and meet the people who shaped Chile’s economic consensus, its social policies and, indirectly, those of the wider region.
It was not just Santiago. Across Latin America, there was a period – roughly until the 2010s – when a particular type of think tank flourished: technocratic, centrist, comfortable with English and donor reporting formats, and well connected to both ministries and multilateral organisations. They sat in or near the “middle”: orthodox on macroeconomics, moderately progressive on social issues, and committed to liberal democracy. In Peru, they have been called caviares; in Chile, they were part of the post-transition architecture.
For a while, this middle was a very good place to be in.
International cooperation was generous. Latin America was a “darling” of donors: a laboratory for democracy promotion, poverty reduction and social policy innovation. A relatively small number of think tanks and NGOs, many of them located in capital-city neighbourhoods like Vitacura, absorbed large volumes of funding. They built strong teams, paid good salaries, circulated people in and out of government, and enjoyed privileged access to decision-makers.
The buildings on Dag Hammarskjöld were not just offices. They were symbols of that moment: when the combination of money, ideas and access seemed to guarantee a permanent role in shaping the future.
It didn’t.
When the money moved on
One part of the story is brutally simple: the money left was very little, and it was replaced.
International cooperation for Latin America began to decline as donors turned to Africa, fragile states, and global issues such as climate change and pandemics. Bilateral agencies cut back. Foundations closed their regional offices or moved them elsewhere. Programmes that funded “core” institutional budgets were replaced with short-term, project-based grants.
This left many think tanks in a precarious position of transition. They had built sophisticated organisations around a funding model that was no longer the norm, revealing a structural dependency that was difficult to unwind. When international funders left or changed priorities, there was no domestic equivalent to take their place.
Local philanthropy was thin or narrowly focused. Private sector actors were often happy to fund technical work, but rarely long-term, critical or politically sensitive agendas. Governments, increasingly polarised and suspicious, were not keen to maintain the old pattern of quiet technocratic contracting with the same experts.
The moment of abundance had not produced a denser ecosystem; it mainly had produced richer incumbents. When the tide went out, we discovered that very little new had been built underneath.
Homeless in the political spectrum
Yet, the financial squeeze is only part of the picture. Perhaps a deeper challenge was that the very political landscape they were built to navigate shifted around them.
For decades, the technocratic centre in Latin America benefited from what looked like a broad consensus: no more hyperinflation, reasonable respect for fiscal rules, cautious social policy expansion, and a certain admiration for “serious” policy analysis. That consensus was never as solid or as inclusive as it seemed, but it created room for think tanks that presented themselves as non-partisan, neutral, evidence-based.
Then came political polarisation.
In country after country, political incentives changed. Parties fragmented. Outsiders emerged. Social media rewarded outrage rather than nuance. Governments of very different ideological colours developed an increasingly hostile attitude to the liberal technocratic elite that had advised their predecessors. Internationally, the rise of Trump and other illiberal leaders eroded the moral authority of those who used to champion democracy and good governance to the rest of the world.
For the old think tanks in the middle, this created a strange kind of homelessness.
If you stay in the centre, it is not clear whose constituency you are in. Politicians interested in quick victories don’t see the value of your careful policy notes. Radical activists don’t trust your past ties to government or the private sector. International donors are fewer and more cautious – or bolder and in search of quicker wins. Young researchers see you as too conventional. Journalists looking for a quote prefer fierier advocates or influencers.
Some organisations could move towards one of the new poles. That can work, but it comes with costs: internal conflicts, loss of credibility with previous allies, dependence on a narrower set of funders or political patrons.
Many have insisted on remaining firmly in the middle, but without rethinking what “the middle” means in a context where the old coordinates have collapsed. They could still describe themselves as neutral, non-partisan and technocratic, but in a world where neutrality itself is suspect, and technocracy is seen as a political project.
Working as if nothing had changed
While economics and politics shifted around them, the internal life of many of these older think tanks was remarkably stable.
Their ways of working could, for a while, remain anchored in earlier decades:
- Research is organised around large multi-year projects, with long reports and academic-style publications.
- Communication strategies built on traditional media, policy briefs and big conferences.
- Governance structures that concentrated power in small, ageing circles of founders and “boys” (they were very often “boys”).
- Influencing strategies that heavily relied on relatively closed personal and professional networks – who you know rather than what you know.
- Career paths that rewarded seniority and self-replication more than renewal.
“Let the evidence speak for itself” worked (more or less) in a world with few channels and a limited number of gatekeepers. When there were three main newspapers, a couple of TV news shows, and a small set of elite networks, you could imagine that a well-timed report, a seminar in the right venue and a visit to a minister would be enough to shift a debate.
Today, knowledge is produced and circulated in a very different environment. Social media and digital platforms allow hundreds of new actors – activists, YouTubers, data collectives, consultancies, party-linked foundations, local groups – to enter the conversation. Artificial intelligence tools lower the cost of generating and analysing content. Journalists and policymakers drown in information. The assumptions that structured the old model (“if I produce high-quality analysis, someone will read it and act”) no longer hold.
Many institutions, such as those in Dag Hammarskjöld, found it difficult to keep up with these transformations. Their websites look like archives rather than platforms. Their social media presence is formal – always catching up. Their events often speak to the same familiar audience. Many still treat communication as an afterthought, something to worry about once the “real” work – the paper – is done.
Meanwhile, the challenge of generational renewal became acute. To a new wave of policy entrepreneurs, the traditional think tank model could seem to offer limited room for innovation. Why join a hierarchy with slow advancement and a leadership that had been there for decades when you could launch your own organisation?
Many chose so. Small, agile outfits that combine consultancy with public engagement, that start with TikTok and podcasts rather than with books, and that are comfortable mixing technical work with activism or partisan affiliation.
The quiet end of a think tank
When we talk about the “end” or “death” of think tanks, we often imagine something dramatic: closure, a scandal, a public announcement. In reality, most die quietly.
They morph into consultancies that deliver technical reports to clients rather than the policy debate. They become training centres. They rent out their brand for one more project, one more evaluation, one more workshop, one more press release.
Their buildings remain – the brass plaques are still polished – but their centrality in political debates recedes year after year.
The street does not suddenly empty. It just becomes a much quieter place.
From the outside, this is not always obvious. They still produce papers. They still host conferences. Occasionally, their directors are quoted in the press. But ask younger policymakers, activists, or journalists where they go for ideas, and the answers will be different: small advocacy groups, online platforms, informal networks, regional initiatives, party-linked research units, private-sector think tanks, even influencers.
CIEPLAN, for instance, drifted away. Its website was no longer updated, its senior researchers retired, and, be it not for periodic Zoom meetings or letters to the editor of legacy newspapers, it has ceased to exist.
The old think tanks fade into the background, like a park that was once the city’s main gathering place and is now simply one more green space people pass on their way somewhere else.
What could they have done differently?
It is tempting to treat this as a natural life cycle: organisations are born, grow, age and pass away. To some extent, that is true. But if this street in Santiago is a warning, it is because much of what we described was not inevitable.
Several things stand out:
- Over-reliance on a particular era of international cooperation.
When the bulk of your funding, legitimacy and agenda come from a small group of external actors, your fortunes are tied to their priorities and fashions. Many think tanks used the boom years to raise salaries and build new buildings, not to diversify funding or invest in deeper domestic constituencies. - A refusal to see policies as politics.
The technocratic elite often insisted that they were “above” politics. They did not build broad social bases, invest in political education or party renewal, or think much about how to defend institutions when the winds turned. When their sponsors – international and domestic – lost interest, there was no one in the streets, or even in the op-ed pages, to defend them. - The challenge of generational transition.
The people who had built these institutions during the good years stayed in control for too long. Succession was improvised or postponed. New generations were hired as assistants, not as potential leaders. Many simply left. - Slow response to a changing media world.
For institutions built on depth and deliberation, the rapid, fragmented nature of this new public square was disorienting. Many were slow to recognise that their traditional methods of communication were no longer sufficient to capture the public’s attention.
None of these challenges is necessarily fatal. Some organisations have managed to adapt – shrinking to a sustainable size, building domestic funding, letting go of old certainties, experimenting with new alliances and formats. But many others have not even begun that process.
The street as a mirror
Dag Hammarskjöld Street is not unique. You can find similar clusters in other capitals: neighbourhoods where international organisations, embassies and think tanks once concentrated the “serious” conversations about policy, and where today the most interesting political and intellectual energy is happening elsewhere.
We do not write this with nostalgia, although there are things from that era worth defending: the belief that policy should be informed by serious analysis, the value of spaces where adversaries can speak to each other, and the commitment to institutions over personalities. However, the question is not how to restore the golden years, but how to avoid being based on another quiet street.
For think tanks that are now in their prime, the lesson is uncomfortable: you are not exempt. Your building, your brand and your past do not guarantee your future. You may be standing today where others stood thirty years ago. The question is whether you are using this moment to build something that can survive when the donors leave, when the political centre collapses, when younger generations decide to speak a different language.
This article is just a first attempt – la calle as a metaphor for a broader process. In the future, we would like to look more closely at the specific factors that push think tanks towards the periphery: funding models, governance, communication, their relationship with universities and parties, and their ability (or inability) to sit with conflict.
For now, it is enough to walk down that street in Santiago, look up at the names on the walls, and ask a simple question:
If we were building a new policy ecosystem today, would we place its heart here?