Blogs and Think Tanks

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12/07/2004

Blogs and Think Tanks

I let an unformed idea sneak out the other day in a post on a loosely related subject, and it attracted a lot of interest where people recognized the implications of what I was asking. The question was this: Can blogs -- and related network technology -- serve some of the purposes that one would want progressive think tanks to serve? (Ed Kilgore at NewDonkey.com put the case for new progressive think-tank capacity very succinctly last week. I particularly appreciate the distinction he politely draws between "real live think-tanks" that generate ideas and "talking-points distribution organizations.")

It's become clear to me from comments on other sites, particularly Matthew Yglesias, that I should have been clearer about what I meant. The term "think tank" obviously covers a multitude of sins. (As does "blog.") What I'm thinking of is the think tank as a generator and tester of new ideas and perspectives, in just the way that Kilgore suggests: "the product development side of the political business." For example, if there is a political need to present an alternative approach to Social Security private accounts, could a self-organized network of bloggers, commentors and other participants work out some of the technical and political problems collaboratively over a fairly rapid period? That is, agree on a basic framework that would be equitable and minimize risk to individuals, figure out a way to deal with transition costs, find a creative way to sell the plan, etc. (I recognize that there is a sizable faction that would argue that the only appropriate response to Social Security privatization proposals is to yell and scream that the conservatives want to destroy Social Security and let seniors eat dog food while giving trillions away to Wall Street, but I think at the very least there should be a Plan B on the shelf.)

I use this example because it's largely already occurring, with Kevin Drum, Kieran Healy, Brad deLong and others making significant contributions, even if they are not explicitly working together. On a broader question, such as the liberal response to terrorism, I just noticed the TerrorWiki, which uses a somewhat different approach to aggregate and refine ideas. The idea of collaborative monitoring of legislation that I mentioned in the original post is a more mundane version of the same thing.

A lot of questions remain, however: How will ideas and information developed through this method of never-concluded deliberation be wrapped up, in the way that recommendations or specific proposals from a think tank are often wrapped up? How will the analysis be delivered to members of Congress or other policymakers who are not necessarily blog-readers, which is one typical activity of such think tanks? How would one ensure that the mundane work such as number-crunching or literature searches gets done? How would one give the product of such an analysis the imprimatur of credibility that comes with a report from, say, The Urban Institute? Are any of these things necessary?

What actually would be the competitive advantages of such an approach: Speed? Spontaneity? Depth of collaboration?

I'm particularly interested in the potential of collaboration not only across blogs, but through wikis, or perhaps some other variation of social software yet to be developed. The Wikipedia definition of a wiki begins "Wikis generally follow a philosophy of making it easy to fix mistakes, instead of making it hard to make them." Although that generally applies to projects that are aiming to accumulate facts rather than ideas, so that the term "mistake" is well-defined, it is very much the spirit that I am looking for here. I'm envisioning a culture in which crazy, flawed, provocative ideas can be thrown out freely, and if there is some merit, however small, a process of correction and refinement will follow. The other day, for example, Kevin Drum proposed eliminating the corporate income tax -- a provocative idea I've been interested in also (in exchange for full taxation of dividends and capital gains) but that raises a lot of problems and questions. He got a lot of good response in his comments, but perhaps that process could be refined in order to come up with a more complete proposal.

Here's what people commenting on this idea thought I was referring to, but I'm not:

* More think-tank staffers starting blogs. Not a bad thing, and Max Sawicky, Steve Clemons, John Irons and others are good examples. But not everyone is capable of producing a good blog (indeed, the esteemed Becker-Posner team seems to be having some trouble), and people at policy think-tanks are already in a fairly privileged position to get their ideas into the public debate. More interesting are people outside that world who are capable of contributing to the development of ideas, from perspectives in business, within government (this would be a great opportunity for, for example, a government analyst who has to operate anonymously to provide some knowledgeable insight about policy), or academia. In fact, in the discussion of the need for progressive think tanks that I've been involved in for several years now -- without much to show for it -- one often hears an assertion like, "There must be a lot of academics who have really good policy ideas and want to get them into the public debate." That's not as true as one would hope; many academics in the social sciences are too caught up in the narrow internal questions in their own fields or the demands that go with advancement in the academy, but there are exceptions. Increasingly, a way to get out there as an exception is through a blog, such as Crooked Timber.

* Think tanks starting blogs. Again, if someone wants to start BrookingsBlog, that's not a bad thing, but not what I'm thinking of. In general, these are likely to be as interesting as John Kerry's blog. Especially for an organization that is a 501(c)3 non-profit, too much care is required with what goes out under the official imprimatur of the organization to allow the spontaneity and flawed ideas of a blog. (c)3's have to be very careful about lobbying and cannot do or say anything that implies electioneering. Just the review process alone would slow things down, something I've seen for myself. On the other hand, anyone running a think tank should not stand in the way of someone who wants to write a blog independently.

To me the gratifying thing about writing a blog has not been in reaching the broad public, which I don't expect to do, but in the community it forms, both internally (i.e., among commentors here) but across other sites and other commentors. Even if these communities are narrow by any standard of mass media, they are something that can be used much more creatively for the production of knowledge. I intend to devote some attention to this question over the next year or so, and encourage other thoughts or suggestions of people to talk to and things to read.

Posted by Mark Schmitt on 12/07/2004 at 11:10 AM in Decembrist archives, politics and Ideas | Permalink

Comments

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One version of this would be to form a virtual, volunteer think-tank, unencumbered by 501(c)3 status. Someone would have to help triage demand for information, although there could be a lot of self-management. But an actual organizational chart in place could make things more efficient.

Regarding privatization of Social Security, I have so far been surprised to see the Dems and punditry fail to point out the obvious: Through tax-subsidized IRAs, we already have a federally sponsored privatized retirement system. The first question, therefore, is one of shifting the proportions of investment and self-control. (For a number of reasons, I oppose further privatization.)

Posted by: Jeffrey Vanke | 12/07/2004 at 11:19 AM

Ironically enough, a blogger hit upon a variation of this idea two years ago.

Posted by: Sven | 12/07/2004 at 02:39 PM

Instead of trying to depend on the bloggers to squeeze the policy proposal out of the collaborative blogosphere, why not begin with the assumption that this would be the institutionalized think tanks' job. Analysts inside a think tank could be monitoring the activity on one or a set of collaborative policy blogs and synthesizing the ideas. Heck, they should probably be doing that now anyway, but I'm guessing they mostly aren't.

The c3 status issue is a problem, but primarily if the think tanks are the overt supporters/hosts of such a blog. I'm not so sure it would be as big an issue if the tanks were participants - so long as the think tank staff were properly trained in where they can and cannot go with their commentary (or, as you seem to suggest, do the blogging as an independent project).

There are plenty of unofficially organized, "below the radar," grassroots coalitions out there that get together around any number of issues. Perhaps these are the connectors, in some fashion, between the institutions and the blogs. Perhaps this is where the blogs should begin, in order to spare us the deadly dullness of something like BrookingsBlog. For years these coalitions have been a way (whether successfully or otherwise) to connect organizers with policy wonks, and that really isn't so different.

Posted by: John | 12/07/2004 at 11:05 PM

All too often, what we get is a culture in which people throw out crazy, flawed, provocative ideas, and then a clique of admirers jump on them and compete to make them even more crazy, flawed, and provocative through escalating hysteria, opposed only by even crazier people from the other side of the fence who drop in to bother them.

Wikis work for a lot of things, but I'm skeptical about their efficacy when dealing with politically charged subjects. Wikipedia is great, but the most politically controversial pages on Wikipedia are also some of the least successful, plagued with edit wars and the need to either periodically freeze the discussion, or adopt a he-said-she-said neutrality so extreme that it makes the article hard to read. Maybe a hard distinction between policy discussions and political mudslinging is part of the solution, but I don't know how one draws the line.

Posted by: Matt McIrvin | 12/09/2004 at 08:39 AM

The Wiki is going to require some more attention. It's definitely an experiment.

Posted by: praktike | 12/09/2004 at 03:58 PM

I think we should be thinking both/and rather than either/or. How can think tanks organize themselves to leverage the intellectual resources of the left blogsphere, and vice versa?

I'm saying that because there are certain institutional capacities that thinktanks can have that bloggers can't. Some examples. Look at the Brookings/Urban tax simulation model. Brookings people put out excellent distributional analyses of the Bush tax cuts using that model. Bloggers generally don't have access to that kind of analytic capacity; it would be very difficult to build something like Taxsim on your own. But a thinktank could fairly easily make the simulation model accessible to people who wanted to use it and generate their own runs.

A second example is the capacity to trace the ongoing evolution of the details of policy proposals as they move through the executive branch and Congress. being "on site" in Washington and having a full time political junkie type job is hugely useful in doing that. The press does a lousy, lousy, terrible job of it. Feeding the details of what is actually likely on the table out to the blogsphere could be very useful in lots of ways.

In a sense the idea here is that the think tanks provide the back office staffing and some analytic expertise and the bloggers write the op-eds.

Posted by: Marcus Stanley | 12/09/2004 at 09:41 PM

Are there at the moment, blogs, personal and/or organizational websites, wikis, etc. that can be found to start filling out this need? Presumably there are three interrelated things to do here so that the information that will be generated can be found and be useful. One is to identify the websites (of whatever form) that fill the needs for analysis of the different categories that one would want covered. I would assume that the majority of these categories are policy driven, that is a website or sites to fill the need for analysis of social security policy, drug policy, etc. But, I may be completely wrong about that, I don't know.
So the second task is to figure out what the appropriate categories are so that the consumers of this information can easily navigate to analysis that is appropriate to their needs and to the needs of the party or of the left or whatever the most appropriate term is.
The third task is to identify the people who have the knowledge to be able to do the second task appropriately. I know, for example, that I am not someone who would know what the appropriate categories are and I don't think I would trust myself to select individual websites either.
I mention all this to try to make the point that if this collaboration of blogs, which I think is a marvellous idea, is to be useful for those of us who aren't knowledgable enough to identify websites and categorize them on our own, it is going to need some careful editing and leadership.
A wiki would seem to be the ideal technical vehicle for such a project, because it easily allows for categorization etc. But whereas most wikis allow anyone who comes along to edit them, I am skeptical that this project would find that approach productive if only because it seems unlikely that the combined efforts of the Internet will be able to lead the left anywhere except to conventional wisdom.
A wiki that is limited so that only those folks identified in task three can edit it, might be a useful approach. Or, a more open approach might be to have those knowledgable people set the categories for such a site, and create a clear mission for the site and tasks for those who want to work on it such that people who come along can understand that mission, participate in it and be able to usefully police others' work.
A final thought: one of the reasons that the wikipedia works as well as it does is that the criteria for knowing if a piece of the wikipedia is out of place is if it is factually correct. This framework allows anyone with access to Google to be a competant editor of the wikipedia. For this new project some of the criteria for inclusion would presumably be usefulness, depth of analysis, ideological correctness among others. (And those are simply criteria for inclusion, there is then a second level of analysis with perhaps radically different criteria when one comes to categorization) This project needs, if it is to be useful for those of us who want easy access to this information and analysis, editors who know about these sorts of things.

Posted by: Anonymous Coward | 12/10/2004 at 09:32 AM

At the very least, it might be worth it for some organization like the Center for American Progress to put together a seminar for progressive-sympathetic organizations to help them figure out what kind of information and messages they can share on their websites or on blogs without compromising their 501c3 status.

Posted by: Patience | 12/11/2004 at 03:12 PM

For what it's worth, I've been spearheading a very similar organization, mostly of academic types interested in questions of framing. We'll be filing for 501c3 status next semester, and we're really still in the initial design stages, but if you want to keep an eye on us, you'll find us at Progressive Commons. We would certainly appreciate any feedback or suggestions.

Posted by: kenrufo | 12/16/2004 at 06:23 AM

Oh and incidentally, we're concerned about the restrictions imposed by c3 status as well, and we are debating filing as a c4 instead. But the lawyers among us seem to think we'll be fine with c3, just so long as no direct money expenditures are made on behalf of certain condemnations, and as long as no direct support for a candidate is given, which we'll avoid doing.

As for the advantages for a web-based think tank like setup, here's one that we shouldn't discount: collective intelligence. With hundreds of thousands mobilized online by the Dean campaign, and the untold number visiting sites like Daily Kos or Eschaton or what have you, the very real possibility of those individuals being able to contribute, through comments, suggestions, information, anecdote, example, etc. It only takes a nice example or some bit of information to transform a good thought into a great one, but no matter how good an individual thinker might be, the possibility of that transformation is greater with the harvesting of the net's collective brainpower (even when you receive a relatively small share of that collective power). Thus the importance of something like creative commons, and doing something that Think Tanks don't normally do, quickly giving up proprietary rights to your own intellectual product, so that others can take it, use it, and disseminate in a viral fashion.

Posted by: kenrufo | 12/16/2004 at 06:33 AM

Check out http://www.blueoregon.com - it's the electronic water cooler for a community of progressives in Oregon.

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Posted by: lisa | 01/09/2005 at 01:29 PM

"Can blogs -- and related network technology -- serve some of the purposes that one would want progressive think tanks to serve?" Yes.

Blogs however are basically worthless as a medium of agreement - they focus on individual and likely idiosyncratic views, and can only start an argument, not end it. The real technology that is useful in this "think tank" process is the wiki. Notably the kind of large public wiki that is in use at [http://disinfopedia.org Disinfopedia.org] or [http://anarchopedia.org Anarchopedia] or the [http://greenparty.ca/lp Green Party of Canada Living Platform]. For example consider the [http://greenparty.ca/lp/list+of+policy+terms list of policy terms] assembled in the latter.

New readers to a wiki encounter FIRST (and maybe ONLY) what is agreed on by the participants. It is an effective way to learn the basic terms of debate, and discover whether you agree with the basic direction of the particular people who are writing - if they do not challenge assumptions that you think are the main problem, you know to find another wiki. If what you read is mostly compatible with your own belief system, then, you can choose whether to challenge the aspects that aren't, or not. You can express tendencies, join factions, and perhaps ultimately join some party that is working to put bodies in the street, and to make effective real law and policy change.

Not that the taking root of such a process happens easily or without contention - even where people champion participatory democracy in their constitutions it can be difficult to do - see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_of_Canada_Living_Platform the Wikipedia article on the Green Party of Canada Living Platform] for good reporting on examples of the tension between bottom-up and top-down process. But is there any doubt who will win, in the long run? This is the Troll Age: trolling and counter-trolling in the media at all levels, from the negative campaign ad to the detailed nitpicking of wiki articles, is how we will change language and win the day.

In that process, wikis are the basic training in consensus decision making:

Wikis focus on consensus, blogs on nitpicking. It is that simple. Wikis can do the job. Blogs can't. Adopt wikis and win. Adopt blogs (or mailing lists, same problem) and lose. This is the choice, and it's the only choice.

Perhaps Americans with their "winner take all" presidential and gubernatorial and mayoral systems are just too focused on the individual. Wikis refocus on the collective will, and that's why they work. WHEN they work, which isn't at all guaranteed. But there are precedents now to follow. We, trolls, lead the way. Join the herd!

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