Recently, I had the chance to speak with Britt Vande Walle, a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer whose doctoral work focused on political party think tanks in Europe.
The relationship between think tanks and political parties has been a long-term interest of mine. In 2009, I co-edited a book on Think tanks and political parties in Latin America, which cemented my view that think tanks are political actors.
Our conversation began with her research on party think tanks in Belgium and the Netherlands, but it quickly moved into broader and, to me, equally important terrain: trust, political time horizons, party capacity, and the blurred boundaries between think tanks and interest groups.
It was one of those conversations that helps clarify something that has been sitting in plain sight for years and is becoming harder to avoid as political polarisation crowds our screens.
We often talk about think tanks as if they exist outside politics, or at least at a respectable distance from it. But some of the most important institutions in the wider think tank universe are not trying to influence politics from the outside at all. They are working from within. And that makes them both more complicated and, arguably, more important than we tend to admit.
We dismiss them (as non-independent or partisan) at our peril.
Britt’s work reinforces a point I have been returning to more often lately: if we care about the quality of democracy (or policymaking more generally), then we cannot rely only on studying the think tanks that advise governments, influence media narratives, or shape public debate from a semi-independent perch. We also need to understand the organisations that help political parties and political leaders think.
And in many cases, help them think when everything around them is pushing them not to.
The central role of trust
What first drew Britt to this subject was not a purely academic curiosity. During her time as a parliamentary assistant, she noticed something rather telling: members of parliament often had access to centralised, formal, supposedly objective research and information services within parliament, but they did not rely on them nearly as much as one might expect.
Instead, they turned to their own party think tanks.
Why? Because they trusted them.
For more research and analysis, visit:
Politicians are not only looking for information. They are looking for people and institutions with whom they can have frank conversations, test ideas, ask politically sensitive questions, and explore options without the performative caution that often accompanies public or cross-party settings. We confirmed this in our study of scientific advisory systems.
A party think tank can provide that kind of protected intellectual space in a way that a parliamentary information service—however professional—often cannot.
Read more about party think tanks and why they deserve more attention.
This insight goes to the heart of why party think tanks matter. Their value is not just in the reports they produce. It is also in their relationship with political actors.
Britt Vande Walle takes a fairly strict view of what counts as a party think tank. In her framing, these are organisations with an explicit and exclusive affiliation with a political party. For her, if an organisation is engaging with several parties, it no longer fits the same category. That is a narrower definition than some of us might use, but it is analytically useful because it centres on the one characteristic that makes these organisations institutionally distinctive: they are trusted because they belong to a particular political family.+
That trust gives them access.
And access, in politics, is everything.
The Belgian case: close to politics, far from reflection
Britt’s doctoral work examined party think tanks in Belgium and the Netherlands in depth. The contrast between the two cases is particularly revealing because it illustrates a broader dilemma for party think tanks (and think tanks) everywhere.
In Belgium, party think tanks are largely funded directly by political parties. That funding structure keeps them close to the party machine, and in one sense, this makes them highly relevant. They are part of the daily political rhythm. They know what is happening. They can respond quickly. They are plugged into the party leadership’s internal concerns.
But, as Britt explained, this proximity comes at a cost.
Belgian party think tanks appear to be shifting away from long-term policy work and towards immediate partisan support. Rather than serving primarily as spaces for deeper reflection, they are increasingly drawn into day-to-day political management: preparing lines, helping with short-term positioning, responding to tactical needs, and providing support that is useful in the moment but not necessarily strategic in the longer term.
This is not just about institutional design. It reflects the wider political environment. In contexts marked by fragmentation, instability, and polarisation, parties become more short-term in their outlook. They focus on surviving the next crisis, the next negotiation, the next electoral turn. Their think tanks then adapt to that demand.
The result is a subtle but important institutional transformation. The think tank becomes less a site for thinking and more a site for immediate political service.
That may make it more influential in the short term. But it also risks hollowing out the very function that justifies its existence.
Britt put her finger on the irony. Parties end up being seen by voters as lacking a coherent story, a deeper ideological backbone, or a clear long-term vision. Yet the very organisations that might help them build that story are being absorbed into the short-term political grind.
The party becomes more reactive.
The think tank becomes more instrumental.
And both become less able to provide a convincing account of what they stand for.
That is not only a problem for the think tank. It is a problem for democratic politics more broadly.
The Dutch case: more independence, less immediate influence
The Netherlands offers a striking contrast.
There, party think tanks receive direct government funding, which gives them greater autonomy from the parties they are affiliated with. They are more insulated from the daily pressures of party politics. They tend to be staffed by highly qualified researchers, often with doctoral training or strong academic credentials. Their work is more recognisably “think tank” in the conventional sense: structured, research-oriented, longer-term, and not entirely subordinated to the immediate needs of party leaders.
On paper, this looks like the stronger model.
In some respects, it is. Greater independence allows these organisations to retain a clearer research function. They can think beyond the news cycle. They can address issues that are strategically important but not immediately urgent. They can do the sort of ideological and policy work that parties, left to their own devices, often neglect.
But this model has its own tension.
As Britt noted, and as we found in our study of scientific advisory systems, greater academic distance can come with reduced political influence.
The farther a think tank sits from the everyday pressures of political life, the easier it is for its work to be ignored. Parties may appreciate its output in theory, but in practice, when they are dealing with coalitions, leadership struggles, parliamentary battles, and media pressure, longer-term studies may sit unread while more immediate concerns dominate attention.
Distance makes it hard to build trust.
This creates the opposite version of the Belgian problem.
In Belgium, proximity builds trust but also risks diluting the think tank function.
In the Netherlands, distance risks diluting political relevance.
Some younger Dutch party think tanks appear to be experimenting. Some are trying to move closer to day-to-day political life in order to regain influence. But in doing so, they risk reproducing the same drift seen elsewhere: becoming more politically useful in the short term while slowly abandoning the deeper, more reflective role that makes them distinctive.
This captures a dilemma at the heart of party think tanks (and think tanks) everywhere: The closer they are to politics, the less space they may have to think; the farther they are from politics, the less likely their thinking is to matter.
That is not a problem to be solved once and for all. It is a tension to be managed.
And it is probably the defining institutional tension of party think tanks as a category.
Why this matters beyond Belgium and the Netherlands
It would be easy to treat this as a niche institutional puzzle relevant only to countries with formal party foundations or well-developed party systems.
That would be a mistake.
The question Britt’s work raises is a much larger one: how do political parties preserve spaces for reflection in political environments designed to eliminate reflection?
That question matters in Belgium. It matters in the Netherlands. It matters in Latin America. In Africa. In Asia. It matters anywhere parties and governments are under pressure to become permanent campaign machines, satisfying an increasing number of competing interests and agendas.
In many countries, political parties are weaker than they once were. They are often more personalised, less ideological, more transactional, and less capable of sustaining internal policy work. Public debate is faster and more volatile. Internal party structures are thinner. The pressure to communicate has outpaced the capacity to think.
In that environment, party think tanks can play a crucial role.
At their best, they can fulfil the same functions as all other think tanks. They can:
- Help parties develop policy positions that go beyond slogans;
- Form new cadres and future leaders;
- Connect evidence to ideology in ways that make political choices more coherent and easier to defend;
- Serve as repositories of institutional memory; and
- Create a space where political actors can ask not only what is electorally useful? but also what do we actually believe?, what is workable?, and what should we be preparing for?
That is not a minor contribution.
From party think tanks to interest groups
Our conversation then moved in a direction I found especially interesting.
Britt’s current postdoctoral work broadens the lens beyond party think tanks and looks more generally at interest groups. This is where the discussion becomes even more provocative, because it challenges one of the comforting assumptions of the think tank sector: that think tanks, interest groups, and lobbies are fundamentally different creatures.
She argues that a think tank is also a type of interest group.
I suspect that formulation will make many people in the think tank world uncomfortable. But it is worth taking seriously.
Why? Because if we strip away the self-image that many think tanks have of themselves, we are left with organisations that seek to shape ideas, influence decision-makers, and affect policy outcomes. They advocate, they convene, they network, they frame problems, they communicate solutions, and they try to reach those in power. Many think tanks hold private meetings with policymakers, they host and convene all-party parliamentary groups, they offer “free” training opportunities to decision-makers, etc.
In that broad sense, they clearly share a functional resemblance with interest groups.
That does not mean there are no differences.
As Britt pointed out, a useful distinction remains: an interest group tends to lobby more directly, explicitly, and opaquely, while a think tank does most of their work in public. Many think tanks still see themselves—and are seen by others—as contributing analysis, framing, and ideas rather than explicitly representing an organised interest in the classic lobbying sense.
But the overlap is real.
And public perception plays a major role here.
“Lobbying” remains, in much of Europe and elsewhere, a term with negative connotations. “Think tank” carries a more respectable, more intellectual, less obviously self-interested image. That difference in perception creates incentives.
And where there are incentives, imitation follows.
The problem of masquerading
One of the most concerning implications of this overlap is something that came up quite naturally in our conversation: the tendency of political activists, ideological networks, or organised interests to present themselves as think tanks to acquire the legitimacy they have not earned.
In other words, to masquerade as think tanks. Pseudo think tanks are a growing concern in the sector. They have always existed. In the U.S. they are called astroturf organisations. John Oliver dedicated an entire segment to them.
It raises real questions about the integrity of the wider research and policy ecosystem.
If almost any politically motivated actor can adopt the language, aesthetics, and institutional form of a think tank, then the category itself becomes harder to defend. More importantly, it becomes harder for journalists, policymakers, funders, and the public to tell the difference between organisations that are genuinely committed to research-informed argument and those that are simply using the think tank label as a strategic disguise.
This concern is particularly relevant in the current European context, where far-right actors and networks have been especially adept at building ecosystems of institutions that do not always present themselves transparently for what they are.
Britt mentioned that she is already supervising research on this phenomenon in France, where a student is examining far-right networks operating under think tank-like guises. That line of inquiry is extremely important. It not only helps us understand the far right. It helps us understand how institutional legitimacy is constructed, borrowed, and weaponised.
Why this conversation matters for On Think Tanks
We need to pay much more attention to the institutions that sit between ideas and parties, and between research and organised political interests. Our efforts to explore “thorny issues” in evidence-informed policy align with this call.
Too often, discussions about think tanks still gravitate towards a familiar set of themes: independence, funding models, policy influence, communications, and the use of evidence. All of those matter. But if we stop there, we miss the institutions that shape politics from closer in.
Party think tanks matter because parties matter.
And if political systems are fraying, then the organisations that might help parties recover some coherence, continuity, and intellectual seriousness deserve much more attention than they currently receive.
That does not mean celebrating them uncritically. Party think tanks can be captured, instrumentalised, hollowed out, or reduced to political servicing. Some will fail at the very task they are meant to perform. Others may become little more than ideological cover for actors who want the appearance of seriousness without its discipline.
But some may do something far more valuable:
- They may help parties slow down.
- They may help them think beyond the immediate tactical battle.
- They may help reconnect evidence, ideology, and strategy.
- They may train a generation of political actors who can do more than perform outrage.
And in a time of volatile party systems, degraded public debate, and increasingly thin democratic institutions, that is no small contribution.