Neoliberal Think Tank Networks in Latin America and Europe: Strategic Replication and Cross National Organizing
Sprache des Vortragstitels:
Deutsch
Englischer Vortragstitel:
Neoliberal Think Tank Networks in Latin America and Europe: Strategic Replication and Cross National Organizing
Englischer Tagungstitel:
Third ISA Forum of Socioloy, Global Sociology and the Struggles for a Better World
Englische Kurzfassung:
Think Tank studies frequently concentrate on policy related research and consulting in specific policy fields or issue areas. In national or international context, evidence based think tank expertise is considered highly valuable input in policy making. Think tanks are also considered innovative and closer to the policy process. But there is a dark side. National and transnational think tank campaigns like the one orchestrated by Exxon Mobile against climate science and politics, for example, relied heavily on a large number of partisan think tanks. Beyond the issue of climate change, think tanks supported by big oil in this case are united in their rejection of precautionary approaches to climate change (requiring extended state interventionism), and advocate a market based adaptation approach instead.
The history and growth of neoliberal partisan think tank networks behind this effort is the core subject of the paper.
The paper introduces and compares five Latin American networks of the neoliberal right and the European Stockholm and New Direction Networks. Commonalities can be partly explained by the strong presence of organized neoliberals. About two third of interlocks between think tanks in the networks are Mont Pèlerin Society members. While the founding and networking as such can be considered an example of ?strategic replication? necessary to advance discourses in the global, regional, and national knowledge power structures, cross national organizing ties the separate elements together and allows for the transnational diffusion and translation of neoliberal ideas, concepts, and social technologies in policy making. Transnational partisan think tank networks are an institutional form, which needs to complement transfer and diffusion models focusing on national institutional configurations or the mechanism of global elite planning groups.