# What percentage of think tanks are conservative? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 26, 2006, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-think-tanks-are-conservative/341748 "2006-01-26T20:42:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2006, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-think-tanks-are-conservative/341748/1 "2006-01-26T20:42:00Z")
It seems that most of them are pretty much right leaning or at least essentially conservative in their viewpoints and some of them are hard core right wing. In fact, I guess I can’t think of any that I’d consider liberal, per se. 'Course I don’t know a lot of them, but when I see that such and such a spokesman from xyz think tank says blah blah blah, it almost always seems to be a pretty conservative viewpoint. So…? ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2006, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-think-tanks-are-conservative/341748/2 "2006-01-26T21:00:08Z")
Most of these think tanks were formed in the 70s and 80s as a conscious alternative to liberal academia. There’s no need to form a think tank to give a salary to someone who writes books on the oppression of lesbian seagulls in pre-war Bolivia, those people could get university teaching positions. ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2006, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-think-tanks-are-conservative/341748/3 "2006-01-26T21:21:59Z")
Rand is pretty liberal. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2006, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-think-tanks-are-conservative/341748/4 "2006-01-26T21:46:14Z")
I’m assuming that the OP was looking for attempts at a **factual** answer about the ideological distribution of think tanks, and not GD-style (at best) unsupported speculation about whether conservative think tanks were inspired by academia’s alleged preference for supporting research on oppression of lesbian Bolivian seagulls. (Are we allowed to use rolleyes in GQ?) I don’t know of stats about the total numbers of think tanks of various persuasions, but I have seen some that claim to show that the **most-cited** think tanks in media references trend heavily conservative. Which, if true, would help explain the OP’s subjective experience of encountering only conservative ones. Note, however, that this [report](http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1425) is almost a decade old, and is a product of Fairness and Accuracy In Media (FAIR), a liberal organization. It says, in part: > [@](#): > > For the third year in a row, conservative or right-leaning think tanks in 1997 provided more than half of major media’s think tank citations, according to FAIR’s third annual survey of major newspaper and broadcast media citations in the Nexis computer database. Think tanks of the right provided 53 percent of citations, while progressive or left-leaning think tanks received just 16 percent of total citations. > > Half of the ten most-cited think tanks are conservative or right-leaning, including three of the top four. The centrist Brookings Institution held the top spot as the most widely cited think tank for the second year in a row. Three right-wing institutions–the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute and Cato Institute–maintained their respective positions as the second, third and fourth most cited. The top four think tanks were each cited more than a thousand times, and provided 46 percent of all think tank citations. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2006, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-think-tanks-are-conservative/341748/5 "2006-01-26T23:53:13Z")
I don’t have hard numbers to back this up, **CC** , but I believe the reason it looks like so many think tanks are conservative is that for the most part, only the conservative organizations call them “think tanks.” ---
**Author:** ![CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2006, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-think-tanks-are-conservative/341748/6 "2006-01-26T23:55:57Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > I’m assuming that the OP was looking for attempts at a **factual** answer… Just so. Thank you. I’m wondering if anyone has any other references that are any more up to date. I see the Hoover Institute referenced quite often, as well, which is quite clearly a very conservative orgainization (and not frequently labeled as such). I’l keep watching. In the meantime, thank you for your response. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2006, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-think-tanks-are-conservative/341748/7 "2006-01-27T14:14:55Z")
I just checked Wikipedia, and it lists the American Enterprise Institute, the Project for the New American Century, and the Heritage Foundation as conservative think tanks. It lists the Institute for Policy Studies, the Progressive Policy Institute, and the Center for American Progress as liberal think tanks. It considers the Brookings Institution to be fairly centrist and the Cato Institute to be libertarian. That’s not anything like a complete list or even a list of the most well known, of course. It’s just a few that whoever wrote the Wikipedia entry thought of offhand. ---
**Author:** ![CBCD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9fc348/32.png) [@CBCD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CBCD)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2006, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-think-tanks-are-conservative/341748/8 "2006-01-27T15:08:37Z")
I believe if a think tank is liberal, it is usually referred to as a **cabal**. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2006, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-think-tanks-are-conservative/341748/9 "2006-01-27T15:51:07Z")
I am finding it difficult to extract firm numbers on any of this. Part of the problem is I do not see that “Think Tank” is a really well defined term. Does a group of academics who meet once a year constitute a “Think Tank”? Can a 1-2 person organization call itself a think tank? Does a think tank need to be not-for-profit? Does a think tank have to espouse (at least on paper if not in fact) a non-biased approach to its subjects or can they be overt in support for a particular agenda? I am not really asking for answers to those but just pointing out there is a lot of gray area in this. While no hard and fast numbers seem available looking into it I come away with a distinct sense that conservative think tanks outnumber liberal and centrist think tanks. If not outnumber they certainly seem to be much better funded so their ability to get their message out if greater than their liberal/centrist counterparts. Certainly conservatives specifically start/fund “think tanks” for the explicit reason to have something out there to support their agenda. Again liberals probably do the same thing but conservative groups seem to be far ahead of the curve versus liberals on this one. Being GQ I’ll end with some cites below for this. I know the cites reference liberal organizations/people so may be considered biased but I have not found any conservative writing suggesting the reverse. Take it FWIW. > [@](#): > > A former [Jack] Abramoff associate says Bandow [Cato Institute] and at least one other think-tank expert were typically paid $2,000 per column to address specific topics of interest to Abramoff’s clients. Bandow’s standing as a columnist and think-tank analyst provided a seemingly independent validation of the arguments the Abramoff team were using to try to sway Congressional action. > > SOURCE: [Business Week: Op-Eds for Sale December 15, 2005](http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/dec2005/nf20051216_1037_db016.htm) > [@](#): > > Since the 1980s, the political landscape has become thick with conservative and libertarian think tanks. For a time, it seemed that every other week or so, yet another press release announced the establishment of a new think tank or public policy institute. During this period, more than 100 such organizations were founded, staffed and funded. Some appeared to be fly-by-night operations run by one person or by a skeleton staff whose sole purpose was to issue canned press releases on the public policy issue of the day. Other organizations appeared to engage in original research and received a substantial amount of funding support from conservative philanthropies and foundations. > > SOURCE: [Media Transparency: The longest yarn: A history of pay to play at right wing think tanks, January 5, 2005](http://www.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=101) > [@](#): > > Each year, conservative foundations channel millions of dollars into a broad range of conservative political organizations. Their recipients range from multimillion-dollar national think tanks to state policy centers, universities, conservative journals, magazines and student publications, right-wing television networks and radio programs, and community projects. The issue work funded by these conservative givers ranges from military and fiscal policy to education funding to health and welfare program analysis to environmental deregulation to libertarian workplace policy, and more. > > _\_ > > Indeed, the foundations are supporting the work at every station on the conveyer belt. They fund national conservative “think tanks” to package and repackage conservative issue positions; state think tanks to lend a local flair to these issues… > > _\_ > > What makes the right-wing funding stream so significant is the absence of a parallel stream funding progressive organizations. While progressives fund a variety of causes, progressive and mainstream organizations simply do not have similar foundation support. > > SOURCE: [People for the American Way: Buying a Movement, 1996](http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=2052) ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2006, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-think-tanks-are-conservative/341748/10 "2006-01-27T17:04:33Z")
**CC** , perhaps you mean _political_ think tanks. There are many think tanks that deal outside politics or are politically neutral, ranging from the big daddy RAND Corporation to the little educational think tank I used to work for. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2006, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-think-tanks-are-conservative/341748/11 "2006-01-27T17:09:02Z")
72.4% of think tanks are conservative. [Cite](http://buck.com/dan/thinktanks.html) ---
**Author:** ![CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2006, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-think-tanks-are-conservative/341748/12 "2006-01-27T17:15:57Z")
Well now, I’m not sure I really ever made any distinction. I originally hazily formed the question when I realized that I had seen and heard references to “think tanks” in the press and noticed that what was reported often had a conservative tone. And it struck me that maybe there’s some sort of correspondence, but that’s as far as I thought it out when I posted. All of us being smarter than any of us, I posed the question. Is there a significant difference in the philosophical or political leaning of an educational think tank vs a political one? I may see little difference between them as a result of having had lunch with a very prominant big time educational researcher a couple years ago who is associated with a large think tank, and as the meal progressed, I discovered that the guy was a few steps to the right of Louis XIV, so I now have the whole thing fairly conflated in my own mind. I think I’m hijacking my own thread here. ---
**Author:** ![CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2006, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-think-tanks-are-conservative/341748/13 "2006-01-27T17:18:15Z")
> [@control-z](#): > > 72.4% of think tanks are conservative. > > [Cite](http://buck.com/dan/thinktanks.html) “according to some statistics I recently made up”: Dave Barry ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2006, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-think-tanks-are-conservative/341748/14 "2006-01-27T17:20:44Z")
> [@CC](#): > > “according to some statistics I recently made up”: Dave Barry 😉 I guess my point is some statistics just aren’t available/practical, so you’ll either get a made-up answer or a rough guess. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2006, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-think-tanks-are-conservative/341748/15 "2006-01-27T19:01:23Z")
> [@CC](#): > > Is there a significant difference in the philosophical or political leaning of an educational think tank vs a political one? (Sigh.) How about _no political leaning_. That’s my whole point.