Think tanks and influence on US foreign policy: The people and the ideas

Abstract

Think tanks have proliferated in number in the United States in the last century, and with that growth has come an increase in the potential influence that they have on foreign policy and national security strategy. The modern era of think tanks, encapsulating their evolution in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, has witnessed a community of non-partisan and non-profit public policy research organizations, become a source of increasing influence, often of a partisan nature. This study looks at the means by which think tanks seek to achieve influence in the foreign policy and national security domain. The primary focus is on the methods of influence. Specifically, it looks at the movement of people and their ideas, between think tanks and government, and the significant influence potential that is delivered in that way. It also provides a brief background understanding of the origins of think tanks, their typology and orientation, and their phenomenal growth in number in the last hundred years, and most notable in the period from the late 1960s to the mid-1990s.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 26, 2016
Accession Number
AD1039265

Entities

People

  • Peter M Little

Organizations

  • School of Advanced Military Studies

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Human Systems
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Congress
  • Department Of State
  • Employment
  • Foreign Policy
  • Foreign Relations
  • Governments
  • Intergovernmental Organizations
  • International Organizations
  • International Relations
  • National Politics
  • National Security
  • Political Science
  • Political Systems
  • Public Administration
  • Public Policy
  • Sociopolitics
  • United States

Fields of Study

  • Political science

Readers

  • Asian Economic Studies
  • Marine Hydrodynamics
  • Strategic Security Studies