Major U.S. Think Tanks: RAND Corporation

In 1948 RAND was created at the urging of its original sponsor, the Air Force. After World War II, RAND focused especially on research in national security. Today RAND operates on a broad front, making its research available to public policy makers at all levels, private sector leaders in many industries, and the public at large. RANDs research and analysis aims to: provide practical guidance by making policy choices clear and by addressing barriers to policy implementation; develop solutions to complex problems by bringing researchers in all relevant academic specialities; dissemination of research findings. RAND has more than 500 employees.

Official Organizational Status: Independent Institute

Political Orientation: U.S. Center-right

Scope/Research Areas: RAND specializes in: Foreign relations and diplomacy, security and defense, economic issues, regional studies, science sand technology, labor and human resource development, social issues, education and health and welfare.

Funding Sources: 1998 Budget: US$ 113.5 million. National, local and state government (83 %) and private donations (17 %).

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Table: Publishing Programs of Think Tanks



Think Tank

Periodicals

Publication of Research Findings

Brookings Institution (Washington D.C., US)

Brookings Review, Brookings Papers on Economic Activities

Recent titles include: Hess, Frederick M.: Spinning Wheels. The Politics of Urban School Reform. (1998). Haass, Richard N.: The Bureaucratic Entrepreneur. How to be Effective in Any Unruly Organization. (1998).

Heritage Foundation (Washington D.C., US)

Policy Review

Publication of journals, newsletters, magazines, research reports, policy/issue briefs, video, CD-ROM, website.
Recent publications include: Holmes, K. and J. J. Przystup: Between Diplomacy and Deterrence. Strategies for U.S. Relations with China. (1997). Holmes, K. and T. Moore (eds.): Restoring American Leadership. (1996).

American Enterprise Institute (Washington D.C., US)

The American Enterprise, Newsletter

Types of publications are newsletters, magazines, monographs and books.
Recent titles include: Income Inequality and IQ. (1998). Morrisey, Michael (ed.): Managed Care and Changing Health Care Markets. (1998).

Cato Institute (Washington D.C., US)

Regulation, Cato Journal, Policy Report

Research findings are published in the form of: journals, newsletters, magazines, research reports, monographs and policy/issue briefs.
Some recent publications include: Moore, Thomas: Gale Climate of Fear. Why We Shouldn't Worry About Global Warming. (1998). Carpenter, T. G. and B. Conry (eds.): NATO Enlargement. Illusions and Reality. (1998).

RAND Corporation (Santa Monica, CA, US)

RAND Research Review, RAND Journal of Economics

Types of publications are journals, newsletters, magazines, research reports, working/discussion papers, monographs and policy/issue briefs. An important outlet is the RAND publication series. In 1997, RAND published 73 reports and papers in this series. Many RAND studies also appear as books from commercial publishing houses and university presses, and as articles in professional, scholarly, and technical journals.

Institute of Economic Affairs (London, UK)

Economic Affairs, Newsletter

Research findings are published in the form of journals, newsletters, magazines, research reports, working/discussion papers and monographs. Some recent titles include: Regulation Utilities. Broadening the Debate . (1997). The Conservative Government's Economic Record. (1998).

Adam Smith Institute (London, UK)

ASI Bulletin

Some recent publications are: Singapore versus Chile. Competing models for welfare reform. The Eastern Market. The Future of the Post-Communist Countries.

Center for Policy Studies (London, UK)

CPS Newsletter

Types of publications are newsletters, magazines, research reports and policy/issue briefs. Recent titles include: Selbourne, David: One Year On. The "New Politics" of Labour. Eltis, Walter: Further Considerations on EMU. It will Create Instability and Destroy Employment.



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Examples of Mainly Corporate Funded Think Tanks: Manhattan Institute

The Manhattan Institute, founded by William Casey, who later became President Reagan's CIA director, besides subsidies from a number of large conservative foundations has gained funding from such corporate sources as: The Chase Manhattan Bank, Citicorp, Time Warner, Procter & Gamble and State Farm Insurance, as well as the Lilly Endowment and philantropic arms of American Express, Bristol-Myers Squibb, CIGNA and Merrill Lynch. Boosted by major firms, the Manhattan Institute budget reached US$ 5 million a year by the early 1990s.

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Examples of Mainly Corporate Funded Think Tanks: Cato Institute

Founded in 1977 the Cato Institutes 1998 budget made up US$ 11 million. Its funding consists of corporate and private donations (especially from corporations and executives in the highly regulated industries of financial services, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals industries) and sales of publications.

Catos corporate donors include tobacco firms: Philip Morris (Rupert Murdoch sits on Philip Morris board of directors) and R.J. Reynolds. Financial firms: American Express, Chase Manhattan Bank, Chemical Bank, Citicorp/Citibank, Commonwealth Fund, Prudential Securities and Salomon Brothers. Energy conglomerates: Chevron Companies, Exxon Company, Shell Oil Company and Tenneco Gas, as well as the American Petroleum Institute, Amoco Foundation and Atlantic Richfield Foundation. Furthermore the Cato Institute is funded by pharmaceutical firms: Eli Lilly & Company, Merck & Company and Pfizer, Inc., foundations, like Koch, Lambe and Sarah Scaife and companies from the telecommunications sector: Bell Atlantic Network Services, BellSouth Corporation, Microsoft, NYNEX Corporation, Sun Microsystems and Viacom.

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Think Tanks and the Internet

As think tanks try to push policy making in their desired direction in such diverse fields as health, education, taxation, regulation and national security it is not surprising, that also the Internet has entered their issue list:

RAND, a center-right U.S. think tank not only argues for the usage of certain guidelines concerning the use of e-mail, but has also released a research report - sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense - entitled "Strategic Information Warfare: A New Face of War". In November 1999 RAND has furthermore launched a co-operation with the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) aimed at combating the threat of cybercrime. ICCs practical expertise and RANDs research and analytical capacities shall aid at finding solutions to fight hackers, industrial spies, and other criminals who may exploit the Internet to attack commercial and public-sector systems.

Another of the big players in the elite of think tanks, the conservative Washington D.C. based Cato Institute quite surprisingly has started to defend human rights in Cyberspace. Jonathan D. Wallace' "Nameless in Cyberspace: Anonymity on the Internet." sees the constitutionally guaranteed right of freedom of speech and expression in the United States under attack by proposals to limit or restrict the use of anonymity on the Internet.

Yet another conservative think tank, the U.S. based Center for Strategic and International Studies in June 1999 has initiated a Conference (Global Information Infrastructure Commission) to accelerate the development of E-Commerce in India. Among the Conferences participants were not only government representatives from India and the United States, but also the CEO of Global TeleSystems Group Inc., the vice chairman of Fujitsu and the executive president of Siemens A.G., as well as the World Bank and the World Intellectual Property Organization.

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Corporate Money and Politics

The fact that corporate money is seeking to influence public policy is nothing unusual. From the different ways of how private money helps to shape politics the first, and most familiar is direct campaign contributions to political candidates and parties, which is especially widespread in the United States. While the second great river of money goes to underwrite lobbying apparatus in diverse state capitals, the third form of attempts to influence public policy making is less well-known, but nearly as wide and deep as the two others - it is money which underwrites a vast network of public policy think tanks and advocacy groups. Although tried to be labeled in another way, unmistakably, these donations are naked attempts by corporations and other donors, to influence the political process.

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The Microsoft Case

Shortly after Microsoft was faced with federal antitrust charges, full-page newspaper ads supporting Microsoft's claim of innocence were run by the Independent Institute. The ads took the form of a letter signed by 240 academic experts and purported to be a scholarly, unbiased view of why the government had gone overboard in its case against the company. According to an article published in the New York Times, Microsoft had not paid for the ads, but was in fact the single largest donor to the Independent Institute, a conservative organization, that has been a leading defender of the company since it first came under fire from federal prosecutors.

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CIA

CIA's mission is to support the President, the National Security Council, and all officials who make and execute U.S. national security policy by: Providing accurate, comprehensive, and timely foreign intelligence on national security topics; Conducting counterintelligence activities, special activities, and other functions related to foreign intelligence and national security, as directed by the President. To accomplish its mission, the CIA engages in research, development, and deployment of high-leverage technology for intelligence purposes. As a separate agency, CIA serves as an independent source of analysis on topics of concern and works closely with the other organizations in the Intelligence Community to ensure that the intelligence consumer--whether Washington policymaker or battlefield commander--receives the adaequate intelligence information.

http://www.cia.gov

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Citicorp/Citibank

American holding company (formerly (1967-74) First National City Corporation),
incorporated in 1967, with the City Bank of New York, National Association (a bank tracing to 1812), as its principal subsidiary. The latter's name changed successively to First National City Bank in 1968 and to Citibank, N.A. (i.e., National Association), in 1976. Citicorp was the holding company's popular and trade name from its inception but became the legal name only in 1974. Headquarters are in New York City.

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World Bank

The World Bank as well as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) originated during World War II in preparation for postwar international financial and economic cooperation. Initiated by the United States and Great Britain. The principal functions of the World Bank are to assist in the reconstruction and development of its member countries by facilitating capital investment for productive purposes, to promote private foreign investment by guarantees of and participation in loans and other investments made by private investors, and to make loans for productive purposes out of its own resources or funds borrowed by it when private capital is not available on reasonable terms.

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World Wide Web (WWW)

Probably the most significant Internet service, the World Wide Web is not the essence of the Internet, but a subset of it. It is constituted by documents that are linked together in a way you can switch from one document to another by simply clicking on the link connecting these documents. This is made possible by the Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML), the authoring language used in creating World Wide Web-based documents. These so-called hypertexts can combine text documents, graphics, videos, sounds, and Java applets, so making multimedia content possible.

Especially on the World Wide Web, documents are often retrieved by entering keywords into so-called search engines, sets of programs that fetch documents from as many servers as possible and index the stored information. (For regularly updated lists of the 100 most popular words that people are entering into search engines, click here). No search engine can retrieve all information on the whole World Wide Web; every search engine covers just a small part of it.

Among other things that is the reason why the World Wide Web is not simply a very huge database, as is sometimes said, because it lacks consistency. There is virtually almost infinite storage capacity on the Internet, that is true, a capacity, which might become an almost everlasting too, a prospect, which is sometimes consoling, but threatening too.

According to the Internet domain survey of the Internet Software Consortium the number of Internet host computers is growing rapidly. In October 1969 the first two computers were connected; this number grows to 376.000 in January 1991 and 72,398.092 in January 2000.

World Wide Web History Project, http://www.webhistory.org/home.html

http://www.searchwords.com/
http://www.islandnet.com/deathnet/
http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/feature/199...
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Eli Lilly & Company

Eli Lilly & Company discovers, develops, manufactures, and sells pharmaceutical and animal health care products. Research efforts are directed primarily towards discovering and developing products to diagnose and treat diseases in human beings and animals and to increase the efficiency of animal food production. Pharmaceutical products comprise neuroscience products, endocrine products and anti-invectives. Products are manufactured and distributed through owned or leased facilities in the United States, Puerto Rico, and 27 other countries and sold in approximately 160 countries.

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International Chamber of Commerce

The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) is the world business organization, the only representative body that speaks with authority on behalf of enterprises from all sectors in every part of the world. ICC promotes an open international trade and investment system and the market economy. Its conviction that trade is a powerful force for peace and prosperity dates from the organization's origins early in the century. The small group of business leaders who founded the ICC called themselves "the merchants of peace".

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Chevron

Chevron is a U.S. petroleum corporation formed in 1926 with the merger of Standard Oil Company of California and Pacific Oil Company. Headquartered in San Francisco, it operates today in more than 90 countries, either directly or through affiliates.

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American Petroleum Institute

Major national trade association representing petroleum industry efforts in exploration and production, transportation, refining, and marketing.

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Pfizer

Pfizer Inc is a research-based, global pharmaceutical company. The company has three business segments: health care, animal health and consumer health care. Its products are available in more than 150 countries. Headquarters are in New York.

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