Do Business-Backed Think Tanks Represent Class Interests? The Co-evolution of Policy Learning and Economic Elites in the Canadian Knowledge Regime

2021 ◽  
pp. 009539972110653
Author(s):  
Julien Landry
Keyword(s):  
Field Theory ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Think Tanks ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Knowledge Regime ◽  
Economic Elites

Business-backed think tanks are often presented as representing the interests of economic elites. This article provides a more nuanced argument by using field theory to present the co-evolutionary dynamics between economic elites and other social forces. Three Canadian think tanks are examined to illustrate how different social forces can converge around business-backed think tanks, and how governance contexts and institutions shape these relationships. The paper also reflects on the kinds of learning these think tanks can enable depending on the kinds of actors that converge around them and on the forms of power that these actors represent.

Understanding how corporations both drive & use neoliberalism to block progress in public health

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
D Miller
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Think Tanks ◽  
Think Tank ◽  
Industrial Sectors ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Significant Public Health ◽  
Economic Elites

Abstract This paper examines the role of corporations in the creation and utilisation of think tanks, lobby ventures and front groups, both nationally and internationally. It examines how these were implicated in the introduction of neoliberalism in the 1970s/80s. It briefly tells the story of the development of the Mont Pelerin Society and how its acolytes 'littered the world' with free market think tanks which then did battle in the struggle to introduce neoliberalism. It examines how this led to the 'disembedding' (Polanyi 1944) of political and economic elites from society via the rise and maturation of a wide range of intermediary institutions and organisations including three main kinds of groups: National and transnational policy planning groups; Think tanks and think tank networks; lobbying and public relations consultancies. This part of the paper concludes by examining the role of those industrial sectors that have had the most significant Public Health footprint in the neoliberal revolution, in each of the three kinds of groups mentioned above. The paper then turns to the concrete advantages that these ongoing changes gave specific corporate actors with negative public health effects

Think tanks in politically embedded knowledge regimes: does the “revolving door” matter in China?

2018 ◽  
Vol 86 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-315
Author(s):  
Xufeng Zhu
Keyword(s):  
Think Tanks ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Revolving Door ◽  
Recruitment Strategy ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Developmental Experiences ◽  
Network Building ◽  
Embedded Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Regime ◽  
Negligible Contribution

This article conceptualizes a “politically embedded knowledge regime” in which political power is deeply embedded in administrative and personal networks between bureaucratic decision-makers and their professional consultants. To demonstrate the features of the politically embedded knowledge regime, I evaluate the effects of the revolving door on Chinese think tanks. I empirically find that the revolving door has a negligible contribution to the influence and revenue of think tanks in China. Moreover, the revolving door has significantly negatively effects on the personal social network building of think-tankers. Heterogeneous analysis and propensity score matching are conducted to present the robustness of regression results. Points for practitioners The “revolving door” has always been regarded as an essential factor for the prosperity of American think tanks. It has now become the prevailing recruitment strategy for global think tanks. In particular, the Chinese government and academia are embracing the revolving door mechanism for the development of Chinese think tanks. Nevertheless, no systematic empirical research has been conducted to evaluate the exact effects of the revolving door on Chinese think tanks. My empirical findings reveal that the developmental experiences of American think tanks may not be as effective when applied to other countries with different knowledge regimes.

scholarly journals Theorizing Surveillance in the UK Crime Control Field

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 10-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael McCahill
Keyword(s):  
Field Theory ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Control Field ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
The Uk

Drawing upon the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant, this paper argues that the demise of the Keynesian Welfare State (KWS) and the rise of neo-liberal economic policies in the UK has placed new surveillance technologies at the centre of a reconfigured “crime control field” (Garland, 2001) designed to control the problem populations created by neo-liberal economic policies (Wacquant, 2009a). The paper also suggests that field theory could be usefully deployed in future research to explore how wider global trends or social forces, such as neo-liberalism or bio-power, are refracted through the crime control field in different national jurisdictions. We conclude by showing how this approach provides a bridge between society-wide analysis and micro-sociology by exploring how the operation of new surveillance technologies is mediated by the “habitus” of surveillance agents working in the crime control field and contested by surveillance subjects.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document