Just as the title says, is the Brookings Institution considered to be politically neutral, or does it lean? If so, which way?
Thanks.
Well, this article is seven years old, but it addresses the issue in some depth in The Think Tank Spectrum: For the Media, Some Thinkers Are More Equal Than Others.
There are a number of people (on the Right) who would label Brookings “liberal,” (and some who would label F.A.I.R., the source of the linked report, “liberal,” but I think they are fairly centrist, as the citations in the linked article indicate).
(Part of the problem, of course, is that the true Left (or liberal) position in the U.S. (as judged by most international norms) is miniscule. The U.S. is a centrist/right-leaning nation, for the most part, so a charge of “liberal” or “leftist” in the U.S. usually indicates someone just barely left of center–or, sometimes, not sufficiently right of center.)
I generally agree with the above. Brookings has a fair number of liberals in its ranks, but not to the exclusion of conservatives. For example, Richard Haas went from being the big muckedy-muck on foreign policy at the Brookings Institution to being Director of Policy Planning at the State Department in the current Administration.
Speaking for conservatives (if I may be so bold), we regard the Brookings Institute as slightly left of center. Very slightly. Their political slant is real, but they’re nowhere near as ideologically driven as conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation or the Hoover Institute.
So, when the Brookings folks put out a study or position paper, most conservatives can’t and don’t (automatically) dismiss it as left wing propaganda.