think tank

Popular name for research foundations, generally private, that gather experts to study policy questions and make recommendations. There are think tanks representing positions across the political spectrum, and they are sometimes funded according to the viewpoints they represent.

Privately funded think tanks, producing research papers and policy proposals for sympathetic political parties, have long flourished in the United States. The conservative, Washington-based Heritage Foundation (1973), and American Enterprise Institute (AEI) are the most significant bodies outside such university-based think tanks as the Hoover Institute and Brookings Institution. In the UK, the two oldest think tanks are the left-of-centre Fabian Society (1884) and the right-wing, free-market Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA, 1948).