In early October 1997, the highest officials of the Russian government decided that it was imperative to address the shortage of housing for retired military officers. Already about 150,000 recently retired officers were living either doubled up with friends or family or in makeshift arrangements. Another 50,000 officers would soon be retired as part of the restructing of the country's military forces. Neglect had already spawned a new, conservative, military-oriented political party that was gaining national prominence. Legitimate grievances would fuel the party's appeal, which would pose a genuine threat to the country's liberal reforms in the next elections.

First Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov called upon the Institute for Urban Economics (IUE), a private nonprofit firm organized in 1995, to draft a program within fifteen days. Mr. Nemtsov had worked with IUE previously in testing a consumer subsidy scheme for retired officers when he was governor of Nizhni Novgorod Oblast. He and IUE agreed that this scheme should be the basis for the new program. IUE delivered the draft program on schedule; under it officers will receive grants covering 80 percent of the purchase price of a unit in the locality where they will reside, with the subsidy paid by unit in the locality where they will reside, with the subsidy paid by the bank acting as the government's agent directly to the seller of the unit. Ten days later a plan for financing the program with minimum public financing was delivered by the Institute. By the end of October 1997 President Yeltsin had endorsed the concept. The program was subsequently formally created through a government resolution and is now being implemented.

This kind of successful policy development is easily recognized as extraordinary. Clearly, some private public policy research institutes of the region have become significant players in the policy arena, some of the time. More generally, private public policy research institutes can play special roles in strengthening the decision making process. Indeed, they have demonstrated a singular effectiveness in the Western industrialized nations, especially the United States. First, their analysis can be critical in identifying problems requiring public action, including unintended side effects of new policies under implementation. Second, they can raise the technical level of the discussion by improving the amount of data brought to bear on the issue, expanding the range options considered, and preparing more sophisticated analysis of the options. It is critical for the results of this work to be provided in a usable form to those directly involved in making decisions, if they are to alter the terms of debate. Third, and equally important, by distributing their work widely, in a form accessible to nonexperts, these private public policy firms—often called think tanks—can enable previously uninvolved groups to participate more fully in decisionmaking. Working through the media, they can enfranchise the public to take an active interest in the major issues of the day. In these ways they contribute to the development of civil society.

This book examines the record of free-standing private, independent, policy-oriented research institutes in the former Soviet bloc: the extent to which they have emerged, how active they are in the policy process at the national level and in informing the citizenry about contemporary issues, their successes and shortcomings, their promise for the future, and asks what Western organizations—foundations, bilateral and multilateral donors—can do to support them and help them succeed.

This chapter begins with a portrait of the legacy of the system from which these organizations evolved, the first step to interpreting their role in this region. An overview follows of the kinds of new institutions the countries of the former Soviet bloc would need to form a civil society, among them private public policy research institutes. The different roles that such institutes have adopted in the West, for example, advocacy and scholarship, are outlined, and the emergence of these institutions in Eastern Europe since the start of the transition is described, using recently available survey data. With this as background, we present the design of the project and how information on private policy institutes in the former Soviet bloc and their effectiveness was collected and developed.

Chapter 2 discusses the environment in which Western think tanks operate and how they maneuver in the policy process, in order to develop ideas on what to expect in examining the information assembled on think tanks in the former Soviet bloc. Chapters 3 and 4 describe the structure and the work of the think tanks in the sample and the views of policymakers about the role of think tanks in the policy process. Chapter 5 shifts the focus to the role of Western organizations—the foundations and the donor community—in working with think tanks during the transition period. Chapter 6 presents a series of recommendations for improving the quality of work of think tanks in the region and an assessment of their chances for sustaining an intellectually active environment and continuing to play an important role in the policy process.

The Public Policy Legacy

The context for decisionmaking was substantially uniform throughout the Soviet Union and its satellites and a grasp of it is important for understanding the evolution of policymaking to 1997. To quote Ed Hewett (1988,101) in his discussion of the then nascent economic reforms in the USSR:

The guiding principle behind the design of the Soviet economic system is that the Communist party should have institutionalized control over all major aspects of economic activity in the USSR . . . All subsystems in the formal system are designed to do their part in helping the party exercise control over the economy. Every proposal for economic reform in the Soviet Union has been, and will be, couched in terms that refer to enhancing the party's control over the economy . . . However, "party control over the economy" is a complex concept that is open to many interpretations and that can be worked out in many ways in the formal system.

The party and the government worked together to control resource allocation. The party had clear responsibility for strategic decisions on the direction of the economy and foreign policy. The primary task of government was to run the economy and foreign policy operations to achieve the party's goals.

The decisionmaking process under the Soviet model was tightly restricted. At the national level, the Politburo—the highest party organ—made decisions on broad policy directions.⁽¹⁾ Moreover, decisions about which issues to address were often, but not always, made at the top (Loewenhardt 1981). Senior officials at line ministries, which in the USSR numbered over one hundred (Hewett 1988, 108), their counterparts at the Planning Ministry (e.g., Gosplan in the USSR), and the Central Committee Secretariat were key players.⁽²⁾ The Soviet Union and each of its satellites set up scores of specialized research institutes, some freestanding but many directly tied to line ministries. The most prestigious institutes were part of the National Academy of Sciences complex.⁽³⁾ The organization of research institutes was remarkably similar across countries, with institutes of the academy at the pinnacle, towering above the comprehensive set of research institutes belonging to the branch ministries. Senior officials had their own networks of people who channeled them information from lower levels of government and satellite research institutes, which made the system less top-heavy in reality (Willerton 1992). However, compared with modern Western governments, there was little quantitative or financial analysis of competing options for accomplishing a specified goal. Indeed, goal setting itself was often a somewhat arbitrary process. In practice, the legislatures (the Supreme Soviet) were not policymaking bodies.

The literature indicates a major increase in the policy role played by the Moscow and Leningrad institutes in the USSR during the Gorbachev era and significant variation among the countries of Eastern Europe in the contribution of research institutes to the policy process. First, we look at the evidence for the USSR. Then we examine the record for the countries of Eastern Europe, relying on the record for Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) or GDR.

The USSR. For our purposes, two periods of post-1970 policymaking in the Soviet Union can be distinguished: before and after Mikhail Gorbachev took power.

Before Gorbachev. Western scholars give two fairly diverse pictures of the role of research institutes, particularly that of the National Academy of Sciences, in the policy development process during the post-Stalin period up to Gorbachev.⁽⁴⁾ One group writing before the Gorbachev era gives a quite positive assessment. Hough and Fainsod (1979) describe the institutes as productive—generating reports that fed into the planning process, participating in special committees established by the apparatus to explore new initiatives, and consulting directly with the members of the Central Committee and the Secretariat. They even indicate that the institutes took some initiative in issues such as increased funding for science and stronger measures for environmental protection.⁽⁵⁾ Barghoorn and Remington (1986, 300-03), reviewing the situation at about the same time, agree that the institutes were active but suggest that this activity did not mean much unless the ideas had a champion in the Poliburo, which they indicate was typically not the case. Scholars analyzing decisionmaking on domestic policy issues agree that research institutes did actively advise the ministries with which they were affiliated, and in some instances this information proved useful to the Secretariat of the Communist party or to government apparatus in formulating proposals for Poliburo consideration. But the general view is of limited policy effectiveness (Gustafson 1981, Solomon 1978).⁽⁶⁾

Later writers also take a less expansive view of the institutes' role than those publishing in the 1970s and early 1980s. Lack of initiative in the policy process appeared to be endemic. According to Mendelson (1993, 342, fn.51),

Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director of ISKAN, states that "since the 1970s the institutes . . . have all been involved in foreign policy but in a marginal way." The institutes were involved in sending reports (zapiski), which were "very polite and restrained" and in consulting for the Central Committee.

Tsypkin (1991, 215), analyzing the research and development (R&D) complex in the defense sector, concurs, stating that "If the military fails to formulate requirements in an optimal way, the R&D institutions are unlikely to direct resources productively on their own." Indeed, a kind of self-censorship appears to have been working (Vucinich 1984)—a not surprising fact in view of the heritage from the Stalin era in which the whims of the indicator determined what passed for science and who was esteemed.⁽⁷⁾ Stein (1994,176) argues that many researchers did good work. And observers generally agree that lively intellectual discussion went on when networks of specialists held conferences and other exchanges. The institutes of the National Academy of Science were stimulating places, although operating under quite rigid ideological constraints and usually lacking clients at the highest levels.⁽⁸⁾

Clearly one reason for the relatively anemic role of Soviet research institutes compared with Western think tanks was the monopolistic state client and the related lack of independence. In the West, think tanks can address their findings to, and obtain policy support from, an array of clients—trade associations, public interest groups, the news media, political parties, members of the legislature and their staffs, as well as government agencies. Gustafson's summary, penned in 1981 about the Soviet Union, rings true (158):

The position of the Soviet specialists, in the end, remains entirely dependent upon the goodwill and needs of the political authorities: their participation is governed by the authorities' pleasure; the advice given is largest secret; the portion of it that is subject to public debate is for most part weak echo of what is really being discussed behind the scenes; and there is no appeal—none, that is, that the leaders are obliged to take account of. The Soviet expert, at least in the areas of policy as we have discussed here, is clearly on tap, not on top, however much he may be useful or necessary.

The Gorbachev Revolution. Mikhail Gorbachev's management style was extraordinarily open by Soviet standards. He very actively sought out experts and consulted them at length on topics of particular interest. He sought diverse opinions as a basis for making his own determination. This pattern was clearly evident in the early 1980s before he became general secretary of the party (Stein 1994, 176).⁽⁹⁾ With his ascension to full power, Gorbachev expanded the consultative process but did not change the formal institutional structure correspondingly. He even arranged for those close to him to run institutes, so that they could provide advice in greater depth.⁽¹⁰⁾

The party secretary's practices were emulated by other members of the leadership. Suddenly, the research institutes had clients. As Mendelson (1993, 358) states in the context of describing the decisionmaking process surrounding the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan,

Specialists and writers nearest the epicenter had very direct influence to the top leadership . . . These people were not advising on narrow topics but touched on ideas that broadly affected national security and the reorganization of state and society . . . the pragmatic advice offered to Gorbachev contrasted vividly with the conventional rhetoric offered to Brezhnev.

In contrast with the past, advice on policy was sought before initial decisions were made and reports produced by the institutes were better targeted to the issue at hand (Mendelson 1993, 353).

Certainly the impact on the morale and self-esteem of the institutes' cadres was profound. The value of their technical work was recognized by the highest leadership. This combined with more open contacts with the West must have created particularly dynamic environment for younger researchers. Nevertheless, during this period the range of clients remained tightly restricted to government leaders and functionaries.

My hypothesis is that this flowering of policy advice in the dying days of the Soviet empire had important consequences for policymaking in the initial years of the Russian Federation. Though other factors were also important, the value of professional technical advisers had been certified by the Gorbachev regime. Hence, the new leadership of the Russian Federation was disposed to seek such advice, and a nascent market for the work of think tanks had been created. Importantly, however, this new market for information was not institutionalized during the Gorbachev period: No system of carefully defining and commissioning the revelant and timely policy studies was created.⁽¹¹⁾ But some precedents were established.

Why the National Academy institutes largely lost out to new private institutions in supplying advice has not been explored systematically. But the root causes may have to do with Russian Federation budget policy—severely cutting the budget for the academy—and the internal dynamics of the institutes. With salaries now wholly inadequate, the most energetic researchers created new self-financing centers within academy institutes. Sometimes the institute's leadership was scarcely informed, producing resentment from and friction with other researchers. In the end, many of the most talented eventually left the academy institutes altogether.⁽¹²⁾ The willingness of private firms to fund institutes in which they had a more direct interest than those of the academy was also a factor.

Eastern Europe. The available literature on the three countries under consideration indicates a sharp divergence in the extent of participation in the policy process of research institutes in Hungary, on the one hand, and East Germany and Czechoslovakia on the other, at the conclusion of the pre-transition period. Broadly, the pattern in policy development was an accurate reflection of the degree of liberal evolution in the post-totalitarian regimes in these countries (Linz and Stephan 1996, 294-5). The Hungarian Academy of Sciences in the early days of Communism operated much like parallel institutions in other Soviet bloc countries (Petri 1991). However, from the mid-1960s there was a substantial loosening of control over the economy and over the supporting research institutes. One indicator of the sustained change in the government's attitude was the rich set of empirical studies produced documenting economic inequality and the workings of the second economy—topics strictly off-limits in other countries. Still, one should not overstate the extent of freedom researchers enjoyed; those who went too far were severely suppressed, sometimes losing their institute jobs.

By the mid-1980s, senior members at research institutes and the institutes themselves, particularly economic institutes, had become part of the decisionmaking process. According to Enyedi (1992, 149), at the time

Social scientists working on economic and social reforms have developed close relations with political decisionmakers . . . The relation between politicians and scholars was not always friendly; nevertheless it incorporated many social scientists into the establishment, so that they became a part of the political elite. The interrelation was facilitated by the fact that in the 1980s, the bulk of the (younger) decisionmakers were technocrats, often coming from the same school as the social scientists. High political posts as well as leading economic research were occupied by "boys from Dimitrov Square"—the site of the Budapest University of Economics.

Hence, at the beginning of transition the situation in Hungary was in some ways similar to that in the new Russian Federation: Social scientists, especially economists, had been active in the policy process and therefore might well be encouraged to form new institutions to participate in this process outside of the National Academy of Sciences and other official institutes.

The contrast of the environment in Hungary with that in East Germany and Czechoslovakia is striking. In East Germany especially there appears to have been no thaw in the icy restrictions of the policy process before the collapse of the government. Addressing the absence of critical thinking in political science just at the point of the collapse, Buchstein and Goehler (1990, 669) state, "Political science in the GDR remained merely a label, seen as an instrument for international contacts."⁽¹³⁾ While the government in 1986 did commission analyses of developments in other Eastern European countries, the conclusions were carefully managed by the party to discredit liberalizing developments underway elsewhere (Schbert 1992). In short, the GDR in 1989 seems to have resembled the Soviet Union in the pre-Gorbachev era.

The picture in Czechoslovakia in the early 1980s is one of a quite rigid system in which the National Academy of Sciences was under careful party control (Kaplan 1987). One's sense from the literature is that little liberalization had occurred. At the same time, however, some writers report that the elite economic institutes, especially the Institute for Economics of the National Academy of Sciences, were effectively involved in the decisionmaking process, although it is not clear whether the relations between researchers and policymakers were as developed as in Hungary at the same time (Crampton 1994, 321). Wise (1989) reports that at this time the Institute for Economic Forecasting, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, was calling publicly for a sharp change in economic policy toward market principles. The government adopted limited measures in response to this and other proposals, but these were at best half-measures. So it seems that by the very end of the Soviet era, research institutes in Czechoslokia were more outspoken but not necessarily more influential. The concrete results of advice, visible in Moscow, were absent. Presumably, this provided less stimulation for the best and the brightest to form private institutes at the start of the transition.

Implications and Extensions. The broad impacts of the Soviet system may be summarized in four points.

1. The products of the decisionmaking system were not robust; that is, limited alternatives were considered, methods employed often rudimentary, and analysis (or at least their directors) highly sensitive to what would be politically acceptable results.

2. The monopoly on discussion of principal decisions by a handful of elite individuals and institutions produced a citizenry both uninformed and passive about issues facing their country and at times openly dismissive of their responsibilities as citizens.

3. There were no policy-oriented research institutions independent of government.

4. In the USSR and in some Eastern European countries, creation of a more systematic and prominent role for research institutes in the policy process during the final years of the Soviet empire was important for fostering a future market for good analysis to underpin decisionmaking.

The ultimate measure of decisionmaking under the Soviet system, of course, is the failure of the system to sustain itself, that is, to provide an adequate standard of living while also serving the international aspirations of Soviet leadership. The lack of systematic review of the productivity or efficiency of existing programs was as important as the narrow and somewhat uninformed process for determining new policies. Program evaluation, as defined in the West, was essentially nonexistent in the Soviet bloc. Even in 1997 rigorous program evaluation is absent.

The impacts on societal attitudes toward government were well articulated in a 1996 article in Business Central Europe, a sister publication of The Economist (Gransden 1996, 9):

Communism systematically uprooted and suppressed civil society, seeing in it a challenge to the one-party state's grip on power. Organizations did exist-like trade unions or youth movements-but they were instruments of political control, and were therefore tainted.

The legacy of this is that people in post-communist states don't trust their institutions . . . The (sic) creates an effect that Richard Rose of Strathclyde University in Scotland calls the hour-glass society.

At the base, individuals have strong relationships through informal networks of family and friends. At the top, the political and business elite are tightly bound together through old-boy connections and nomenklatura ties. But the middle layer is largely missing. Political parties are fragmented, weak and unrepresentative; trade unions are seen as discredited vestiges of the old system. And other independent organizations are embryonic or, like the church, seen as marginal (except perhaps in Poland).⁽¹⁴⁾

The need for greater effort to involve the public in civic affairs is not a universally accepted proposition within Eastern Europe. Perhaps Vaclav Klaus, then prime minister of the Czech Republic, has been the most outspoken critic of the idea that more is needed at this stage that the state guaranteeing the basic freedoms such as free speech.⁽¹⁵⁾ But his voice is among the minority in the region's leadership.

The Civil Society Ideal

The rejection of the Soviet economic and political system by the countries of Eastern Europe and the constituent non-Russian republics of the USSR was driven, at least in part, by the desire of these peoples to participate in civil society. Ernest Gellner (1994, 5) provides a basic definition of civil society in his elegant essay on the transformation of the former Soviet empire as

that set of diverse non-governmental institutions which is strong enough to counterbalance the state and, while not preventing the state from fulfilling its role of keeper of the peace and arbitrator between major interests, can nevertheless prevent it from dominating and atomizing the rest of society.

Thus, these countries rejected the state monopoly on political and social organization and information that was at the heart of the Soviet system.⁽¹⁶⁾ The ideal sought instead of the Soviet model was pluralism: top leaders elected through free and open procedures; freedom to speak, associate, travel, relocate within the country, write, and create art; and a society operating under the rule of law. Less often articulated but clearly sought was a higher standard of living—more in keeping with that of the West, for those who knew about conditions elsewhere.

As of the summer of 1997, nearly eight years had passed since those epoch-defining moments of the fall of the Berlin Wal and Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution; and five-and-a-half years had passed since December 1991 when the Soviet Union was declared dead by heads of the Russian, Ukrainian, and Byelorussian republics at Belovezhskaya Puschda, a government compound in Belarus near the Polish border. Positive signs of emergent democracies have been numerous over this period. Many countries of the region have had multiple national and local elections, in which the population voted their minds freely. The electorate has changed the ruling party with frequency consistent with the economic pain visited upon them by the transition. Freedom of the press, especially the print medium, has advanced impressively. Freedom of movement and travel within countries is nearly universal, with only rare holdouts such as the city of Moscow maintaining a residency permit system in contravention to national law. Access to information has expanded dramatically with the help of international electronic networks, although obtaining data gathered by state agencies can still be problematic.

Still, rejection of the old system, unexpected after decades of Soviet dominance, may have been the easy part. Replacing the Soviet system with vibrant and durable democracies is an intricate task and a formidable challenge throughout the region, and many observers assay democracy in the region as fragile. Common limitations abound: Political parties are generally weak and fragmented, discredited judicial systems remain largely in place, and governments continue to rely substantially on entrenched bureaucracies whose political and economic perspective is oriented to the prior regimes (Linz and Stephan 1996, 247-51).

Opinion polls conducted in the region offer mixed signals. Analysis of 1991 survey results in five countries-Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania—draw the following broad conclusions:

• clear rejection of the old political regime (Rose and Mishler 1994, 168);
• the existence of complex patterns between the economic situation and the degree of support for democracy; in their words, "the median citizen is in favour of the new political regime and against the new economic regime" (ibid., 177); and
• interestingly, expectations about the future direction of the economy are more important in determining support for democracy than past or current experience (Mishler and Rose 1996).

These analysis also believe that in the long-run positive evaluation by the citizenry of a country's economic performance will be critical for support of the new regime (Mishler and Rose 1996, 572).

Evans and Whitefield (1995) draw somewhat different conclusions from a set of later opinion polls (1993-94) for eight countries: Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine. They do not find a strong relationship between macroeconomic performance and the population's commitment to democracy. However, there is some link between individuals' economic experience and support for the regime, a finding broadly consistent with that of Rose and Mishler. According to Evans and Whitefield, the principal factor in explaining a greater commitment to democracy is the actual experience with functioning of democracy per se. The character of the transition process (smooth or ridden with conflict) and the institutional structures that emerge are crucial to democratic consolidation (1995, 512). Factors identified as important for consolidation include interethnic conflict (negative); success of left-wing parties (negative); development of the party system (positive); extent of conflict between branches of government (negative); and the separation of constitutional matters from day-to-day political competition (positive) (1995, 513). Considering the findings from such surveys, one's conclusion is cautiously optimistic about the likelihood of democracy taking firm hold. At the same time, however, the multiple opportunities for the process of consolidation to be undermined suggest that progress will be fitful and far from ensured.

The Western governments generally, and the United States specifically, have oriented foreign policy to the region to support the emerging democracies. Although not focused exclusively on the former Soviet bloc, the Clinton administration's policy of democratic enlargement was clearly crafted to address the opportunities provided by the formation of new countries from the Soviet empire. Douglas Brinkley's (1997) description of the motivation and vision behind democratic enlargement makes it clear that the policy closely links economic development with the creation of stable democracies. Moreover, the vibrant economics of other nations would be good for U.S. economic development through trade and investment. Promoting democracy is seen as both virtuous and in the self-interest of the United States. U.S. democracy promotion resources would be concentrated where they were likely to be most effective from the perspective of U.S. economic interest.⁽¹⁷⁾ This position has been set out repeatedly for instance, in Strobe Talbot's 1996 article in Foreign Affairs, "Democracy and the National Interest."

The idea of a causal relationship between democratic government and strong economic performance has had substantial support among political scientists for over thirty-five years and is gaining credence among economists. The links are multiple and the causality two-way. For example, simply by promoting political stability, a strong economy improves the decisionmaking environment. Representative government is likely to restrain large investments in low-return prestige projects. Democracies are associated with higher levels of education and better health among their populations (greater human capital), which in turn begets higher growth.⁽¹⁸⁾ Recently, as reasonably free elections have resulted in national leaders with totalitarian tendencies, unstinting support for democracy has been challenged and a lively debate has ensued. The rise of "illiberal democracy" is beyond this discussion, but it is certainly worth noting that democracy per se may not produce a civil society.⁽¹⁹⁾

A fundamental question facing the key industrialized nations with strong democracies has been what steps they could take to strengthen emerging democracies in the former Soviet bloc. Obviously, this problem calls for a multifaceted response. Appropriately, most resources have gone to economic stabilization and restructuring. But there is a firm belief that a liberal democracy requires more than economic well-being, in particular, strong institutions, rule of law, and a citizenry which has absorbed democratic values.⁽²⁰⁾ Consequently, modest resources have been channeled to assistance and advisory programs directed specifically at "democracy building" to foster the development of citizen participation and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and to strengthen local governments counterweights to national governments.⁽²¹⁾ A number of tools have been employed: grants to help sustain nascent NGOs, advice to new organizations on stimulating citizen interest in their activities and generating funding to sustain operations, help in drafting legislation that has the effect of transferring responsibility and resources to regional and local governments, programs to improve professionalism in the judiciary, advice on the development of political parties, and short courses and study tours to the West for journalists to become more familiar with reporting techniques and media technology, among others. Not surprisingly, the vision of democracy promoted by various donors has not always been the same, which has led to some confusion on the ground. In general, democracy assistance was more popular in the early stage transition than today, when new local organizations have matured and gained self-confidence.⁽²²⁾

An important element in strengthening democracy is improving the policy process and the quality of public decisionmaking by both the executive and the legislative branches. Good policy is based on careful description and analysis of the problem being addressed, defining and evaluating the relevant possible solutions, and full and open consideration of the options. A key element is the availability of solid analysis to all participants in the policy process—something that works to the comparative advantage of small political parties and public interest groups that cannot compete with the resources of the government, large trade associations, or dominant political parties. Naturally, creating the conditions for strong decisionmaking does not guarantee that good decisions will result; narrow interests will often win out in any case. But the odds of merit-based decisions are improved by the type of process sketched above.

Starting Over

The governments that emerged in the countries of the Soviet bloc clearly needed fresh institutional arrangements to improve the quality of decisionmaking, broaden the array of participants in this process, and turn their citizens from passively receiving announced decisions to understanding the issues being debated and, over time, to taking some measure of responsibility for the conditions in their country—in short, to develop civil society. Obviously, open elections of representatives at local and national levels have been the single most important change. Effective guarantees of freedom of speech and other freedoms are also fundamental, as is the creation of an impartial, highly professional judicial system. Beyond these alterations, new types of institutions are needed to make participation a deep-rooted reality and to counterbalance the overwhelming power of central government inherited from old regimes. Among such institutions are

• stable political parties, some with well-defined philosophies and positions, and others in the median-voter-seeking, political broker role;
• trade associations and new or reformed trade unions (such as Poland's Solidarity trade union), some with associated policy and political operations;
• a free and active press, including periodicals addressing policy questions of the day;
• issue-oriented nongovernmental organizations, like those of the environmental movements now present in most countries; and
• public policy research institutes (think tanks).⁽²³⁾

Progress in the formation of these institutions has varied sharply across countries, and the development of think tanks has been no exception. A number of developments in the early years of the transition combined to produce favorable conditions for the establishment of new, private public policy research institutes:

• the existence of available human capital resources: social science professionals in the universities and research institutes;
• the disintegration of the old institutions due to budget cuts and political decisions;
• the search for new forms of private intitative; and
• the necessity felt by some researchers to monitor and understand societal changes and to advocate specific changes.

Where these conditions were combined with the emergence of democratic institutions, the response was the creation of new-style think tanks whose mission and activities were significantly influenced by U.S. and Western European models.

In some Western Europe countries with strong parliamentary systems, such as Germany, an important role is played by policy research groups under the umbrellas of political parties, trade unions, and trade associations, as well as by research institutes closely allied to ministries. These groups sometimes do high-quality work to develop or support the policy positions of the institutions to which they belong, thereby balancing similar work done by government analysts and enriching the policy debate. Perhaps not surprisingly, in these countries freestanding think tanks have not prospered to the extent that they have in the United States.⁽²⁴⁾

It would be wrong, however, to place the burden for better public decisionmaking exclusively outside of government and the parliament. Government itself must do a better job in defining its proposals and analyzing the effectiveness of its programs. One example of strengthening in-house capability comes from Russia. The reformist Gaidar government in November 1991 created the Working Center for Economic Reform within the Office of the Prime Minister to be its internal think tank for policy development in the difficult days of reform.⁽²⁵⁾ Coordination and Development in February-March 1991.

A greater challenge, not often met to date, is to improve policy analysis at the ministry level, including restructing ministries to formally identify an office with explicit policy development and program evaluation tasks. Ministries with limited capacity to understand more sophisticated analyses may well prove to be hostile to new institutions purveying them. Similarly, parliaments in the region, like those in many Western European countries and Japan, generally have small staffs with little training in the social sciences, which limits their ability to absorb policy studies. Beyond suggesting that parliaments build up their current status has clear implications for the type of products that think tanks should deliver to harried parliamentarians: short, well-focused, factually based reports in which policy directions are detailed.

While those working in the region report that the quality of policy analysis has improved during the early years of the transition, much remains to be done. No one would speak of the decisionmaking process in the region as a "marketplace of ideas" to use James Smith's apt phrase (Smith 1991, 190). Proposals are too often based on a general sense of what is to be done rather than on detailed analysis, and too few concrete, well-developed alternatives are offered on most major decisions.

The Role of Think Tanks

Think tanks operate with significant independence and are dedicated to improving government decisionmaking on the principal issues of the day. Their most critical attribute is independence-formal and informal independence in developing and promulgating positions free from interference by political parties, government institutions, and private persons and organizations providing financial support.⁽²⁶⁾ Think tanks remain most numerous in the United States,⁽²⁷⁾ but a recent volume contains descriptions of think tanks meeting this definition in locations as diverse as Mexico, Indonesia, Thailand, and Eastern and Western Europe (Telgarsky and Ueno 1996).⁽²⁸⁾

Typically, think tanks are nonprofit entities: Their objective is better public policy. The philosophy of public service embodied in nonprofit status profoundly affects the way such institutions operate. Think tanks and their supporters are motivated by the belief "that their intellectual input into policy debates makes a difference" (Higgot and Stone 1994, 15). Quality of research and influence on the policy process replace concerns about the number of billable hours and profit margins. Revenues in excess of costs incurred are used to fund publications, support work for which other funding cannot be found, or update in-house technology.

Think tanks are diverse lot, and people have different images of them, depending on the organizations to which they have been exposed. The best way of explaining the range of activities is to describe three types of think tanks, following Weaver's typology (1989).⁽²⁹⁾

University without students. These privately funded institutions do very high quality technical research (in social science terms), competing in quality with university faculties. They distinguish themselves from universities in the policy orientation of their research. Then orientation tends to be long term, dealing with the ultimate implications of broad policy choices such as changes in the tax regime and not with current legislative proposals. Their output is oriented to the policy community: books that are more easily accessible to the intelligent layman rather than academic journal articles. In the United States, think tanks in this group, such as the Brookings Institution and the National Bureau of Economic Research, are the oldest and most venerable.

Contract research organizations. The primary source of funding institutions in this group is contracts from government organizations. The primary products are technical papers and reports for government agencies, but these are often converted into journal articles or harder-hitting policy briefs. The contract work may be balanced and complemented by funds from foundations to undertake research on other topics, extend research funded by government agencies, and reformat and disseminate the results of agency-funded research for other audiences. While much of the research undertaken could, in principle, be done by agency staff, external contracting is preferred, in part to ensure objectively in the analysis, in part to better guarantee the objectivity in the analysis , in part to better guarantee the quality of the work, and in part because of staff limits. In the United States, the Rand Corporation and the Urban Institute are among the most prominent of such institutions.

Both universities without students and contract research organizations see maintaining the highest research standards as paramount. Their clients in the policy community sometimes lack the technical training necessary to evaluate research findings and must trust the think tanks to do work that is above reproach. If clients' confidence in a think tank's technical ability is undermined, the institutions may well have trouble surviving.

Advocacy tanks. These institutions "combine a strong policy, partisan or ideological bent with aggressive salesmanship and an effort to influence current policy debates" (Weaver 1989, 567). Advocacy tanks seldom conduct sophisticated research themselves. Rather, they repackage and summarize work done by others to support their position. They work hard at presenting information in crisp, brief, and readily understood formats (Matlack 1991). Critics cite their partisanship or ideological advocacy as a major limitation (Galster 1996a, 3).

Advocacy research attempts to mimic certain features of social sciences, such as use of theory and statistical techniques, but fails to be genuinely objective. This is primarily because, whether based on liberal or conservative ideology or simply arising out of a particular cause not linked to any ideology, advocacy research starts out with a firmly held position rather than with a potentially rejectable hypothesis.

What advocacy tanks lack in scholarship and objectivity they make up in access to senior policymakers in both the legislature and government agencies. Still, a major limitation of advocacy tanks is that their positions on policy issues tend to be predictable and therefore often less sought after, once policymakers come to understand the consistency of the advice being offered. In the United States, the best known of the think tanks in this group is the conservative Heritage Foundation. In fact, the first advocacy tanks were conservative in orientation. One response to their success was the creation of a smaller set of liberal advocacy tanks to compete directly with them in the policy arena (Smith 1991, 214).⁽³⁰⁾ Another important response to the aggressive behavior of advocacy tanks came from the more traditional think tanks. The traditional institutions have emulated the more effective dissemination strategies of the advocacy tanks and actively compete with the advocacy tanks for the attention of policymakers through briefer, more enticing publications and through tailored seminar formats, some with attendance restricted to senior policymakers and others open to a broader audience featuring a deliberately lively format with spirited debates representing competing points of view.⁽³¹⁾

In the past twenty years there has been a proliferation of think tanks in the United States, most of which focus on one well-defined topic or issue such as international economics, the environment, or children's issues. These new niche institutions have competed successfully with the traditional multisector think tanks for foundation funds.⁽³²⁾ Still, few think tanks exist in any of the pure forms outlined above. Most blend the attributes of two types, though examples of institutions combining the somewhat contradictory attributes of the university without students and the advocacy tanks are rare.

In the former Soviet bloc one might expect to see all three types of think tanks but in somewhat different forms. Support for universities without students has come more from abroad than locally, and this fact may have influenced the extent to which such institutions in this region participated in the policy debate. National governments appear also to have done less contracting for policy research from contract research organizations thus far than have their Western counterparts. In part this results from pressure to support old-line institutes, given the general cutback in funding they have suffered. Contracts from multilateral and bilateral donors have taken up some of the slack. But overall one expects to see comparatively few of the first two types of think tanks in the present environment. On the other hand, advocacy tanks may be relatively more numerous than in the West. One frequently sees an important person—a former political appointee or prominent member of parliament—forming a think tank as a vehicle for participating in the policy process. One would also expect to see a fairly high incidence of niche institutions, often originating with teams of researchers who have left their former institutes to found think tanks specializing in macroeconomics, foreign policy, or domestic issues such as housing or the environment. The high degree of specialization characteristic of the Soviet research system can be thought as the ultimate niche system. These new niche players may be able to survive with a small staff and compete vigorously for resources from a few well-targeted clients with whom the director has good connections.

Regardless of their specific orientation, think tanks have performed in five capacities: ⁽³³⁾

1. as a source of policy ideas;

2. as a source and evaluator of policy proposals;

3. as an evaluator of government programs;

4. as a source of personnel for senior government positions; and

5. as a source of information to news organizations about current policy issues.

Not all think tanks carry out all these functions, and there is good deal of specialization. For example, advocacy tanks weight their program in favor of making and evaluating policy proposals (2), and contract researchers do more program evaluation (3).

One anticipates that in the former Soviet bloc think tanks will be more active in the region's thriving policy process as sources of policy ideas and proposals and of proposal evaluation (1, 2), roles driven by the need for new legislation for economic and political restructuring. Program evaluation (3) has received little attention, in part for lack of government clients. As to the pattern of recruitment from think tanks for senior government positions (4), there is no question that the old regimes' National Academies of Sciences were a fertile source of senior officials at the start of the transition. It is too early to know whether the new think tanks will be suppliers of such talent.⁽³⁴⁾ Indeed, the flow in the past few years been in the other direction: Some senior officials who lost their jobs have created their own think tanks or joined the best of the new group. The involvement of the region's think tanks as a source of background information and stories for the media (5) is explored in later chapters.

Think Tanks in the Early Transition Years

Information collected by Freedom House in Budapest suggests that by early 1997 a large number of think tanks had been created in Eastern and Central Europe, including the Baltic republics. (Unfortunately no systematic data are available for other parts of the former Soviet Union). A total of 106 think tanks from eleven countries are included in the Freedom House Directory—an average of nearly ten per country (Kimball 1997).⁽³⁵⁾ The smallest number reported is for Macedonia—three—and the largest for Hungary—twenty-one. These figures certainly indicate that many think tanks have been formed in the region, and the estimates are definitely conservative.

The Freedom House figures need to be treated with caution because of the definition of think tank employed and the type of survey conducted. Freedom House relied upon various sources to identify organizations that might be private public policy research institutes. Each organizations identified was sent a questionnaire, to be filled in if the organization's activities were consistent with those of a think tank. Presumably not all eligible entities were identified, and not all of those identified responded.⁽³⁶⁾ A firm qualified for inclusion in the directory if a substantial amount of its activity was "directed toward research, advocacy, and/or public education in one of the following fields—democratization/security issues, economic development, environmental protection, and social safety net restructuring" (Kimball 1997, v). An expansive definition of think tanks is employed in the Directory. Entities included had to be independent but did not have to be nonprofit; a few nominally for-profit firms who act on a nonprofit basis are included. Also, a few National Academy of Sciences institutes are included, so not all those included are private entities.

With these caveats in mind, these data provide us with three orienting facts. (1) There are a significant number of think tanks in the region. (2) Most were formed early in the transition period. About 40 percent of the think tanks identified were in existence by the end of 1991, including some National Academy of Sciences institutes and some reconstituted former state organizations. Only about a quarter of those included were created after 1993 (see figure 1.1). And (3) most are small operations. More than 70 percent of the sample has seven or fewer professional staff at the time of the survey; 40 percent had three or fewer professional staff (see figure 1.2). At the other end of the spectrum, only 9 percent had more than twenty professional staff. Since most organizations have a small permanent cadre and rely on part-timers and contract employees to work on projects as necessary, the professional staff figures understate the total level of activity. Nonetheless, the staff size distribution indicates modest operations.

Analyzing Think Tanks in the Former Soviet Bloc

In order to describe the development of think tanks in the region, assess their activities in engaging the public and influencing the policymaking process, and define useful support roles for foundations and the donor community, I needed to develop a strategy for identifying a sample institutions in the region and for obtaining data about their activities. There are two dimensions to selecting specific firms ot institutions. The first is a careful working definition of a think tank, and the second is a strategy for selecting a sample from the pool of institutions meeting our definition. A three-stage strategy was adopted: (1) Four countries were selected that were anticipated to provide somewhat different environments for think tank operations, the limit of four having been imposed by the resources available for the project; (2) a list of candidate institutions was developed; and (3) a sample of about fifteen institutions was selected from the list. Information about the activities of think tanks in the four countries was gathered from three sources:

• in-depth interviews with the leaders of the sample institutions;
• interviews with fifteen to eighteen senior policymakers in each country about the sources of information they use in their work and the role, if any, that think tanks play in providing information and analysis or sponsoring useful events such as roundtable discussions and seminars; and
• interviews with members of the donor community and others thought to be knowledgeable about think tanks in each country.

These data were supplemented with information from additional interviews with donors and other experts in the United States and in other countries in the region.

Thus, I am basing my views on specific information about a nonrandom sample of think tanks in four countries, along with broader information about the workings of the think tank industry in each country. I make no claim that this is a scientifically valid sample; it is not possible to know if the sample is representative because no comprehensive list of public policy entities is available in any country in the region. On the other hand, a random choice of four countries could have easily produced a sample dominated by countries with limited democratic development and thus a similarly dwarfed think tank industry. The deliberate selection of countries with a range of environments gives some idea about the sensitivity of think tank operations to their environment. The purposeful selection of candidate think tanks involved screening out those which preliminary information suggested would not meet my criteria. In Russia candidates were numerous enough to require further choice, and here the selection procedure essentially involved random choice from several strata.

Where I use the information gathered to make statements applicable to the region at large, the reader may judge the risk associated with such statements. I think that the record will show a good deal of consistency across countries in the most important facets of the current situation and the corresponding kinds of actions that can be taken to strengthen the development of think tanks in the region.

Institute included. Attention is directed exclusively toward private entities that operate on nonprofit principles, regardless of their legal structure and organizational form. Any institute or firm selected for in-depth interviews had to be constituted as a legal entity. Thus, informal collections of researchers are omitted, as are university research centers that engage in some policy advocacy but that are not separate legal entities. Legal status was made a criterion because separate legal entities are more committed to the research policy enterprise and must earn or raise funds on that basis alone.

The decision to include certain for-profit entities was based on the fact that, in the early days of the transition when some firms of interest were formed, no specific nonprofit form of organization for private research institutes existed in some countries. Admittedly, it was difficult to decide which for-profit policy research firms to include. In the end, the most critical factor, beyond that of conducting research and publishing the results openly, was the extent of participation in the policy process.

The decision to omit government institutes means that we overlook important developments in some highly dynamic state institutes.⁽³⁷⁾ However, omitting these and university-associated institutes permitted us to concentrate our limited resources on the new breed of think tanks in the region.

All institutes studied were identified as having policy-oriented research as their primary activity. I sought to avoid including advocacy NGOs that did research strictly limited to support their advocacy activities. A number of human rights and environmental NGOs in the region fall into this category. Similarly, institutions which conducted research but were not involved in the policy process, or had only a broad public education function, were excluded.

Independence is a cardinal attribute of think tanks, and I weighed this factor carefully. However, I also thought it important to study a few think tanks with rather close ties to a political party or trade association, because such think tanks may perform an essential mediating role in summarizing research for political or business audiences (see chapter 2). I wanted to learn whether some institutions are developing along the lines of the European model, in which some think tanks are more closely aligned with political parties or trade associations.

Finally, I included only institutes that had existed for a minimum of eighteen months and that were clearly operational. A survey of NGOs of all types in Bulgaria had documented that only 30 to 40 percent of them were functional for practical purposes.⁽³⁸⁾ I wanted to ensure that our sample of public policy institutes contained only those really actively at work.

Topics studied. Among the questions addressed are the following:

• How strong is the record of the existing institutions in producing policy analysis and getting it used in the policy process? What is their record with the media? How do principals at these institutions, and Westerners involved with them, rate their potential in these areas?
• How are these institutions structured? What are their particular agenda-setting and staffing strategies? How do they approach the policy process, and how do they use the media?
• What have been their sources of support to date, and do they have concrete strategies and prospects for the future? How severe is the conflict between retaining independence and generating the necessary funding?
• What kind of support is most useful in strengthening such think tanks—project funding or general institutional development? If the latter, in what form? What would be the most helpful workshop subjects? How successful have foundations and donors been in providing advice and guidance in the past, in addition to direct financial support? What type of help do these organizations say they most need?

Marshaling information. To answer these questions requires detailed knowledge of think tanks activities. While directories of think tanks are available for some countries, as are short summaries for individual institutions, these were inadequate for the task.⁽³⁹⁾ It was therefore necessary to undertake field work to generate the necessary information.

Country selection. To keep the field work at an affordable level, four countries were selected: Bulgaria, Hungary, the Russian Federation, and Armenia. Basic economic and demographic information on these countries, with the United Kingdom included for comparison, is given in appendix A. The foremost factor in choosing these four was the desire to capture the experience of a range of countries in terms of organizational development and activity. Countries where the development of democratic institutions had proceeded very slowly, or had been substantially thwarted, including many of the countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States, were omitted on the grounds that there would be little incentive for think tanks to develop there and that the range of advocacy activity would be very limited.⁽⁴⁰⁾ The choice of the four countries from those where democratic institutions were discernibly emerging was based on the extent of economic and democratic development, as well as on my sense about the state think tank operations from my experience working there, including leaders of indigenous think tanks. It also depended to a lesser extent on the quality of my contacts in various countries and my ability to recruit reliable field associates.

The hypothesized spectrum of think tank development in the four countries studied is depicted in figure 1.3, where development refers to both the level of activity and effective participation in the policy process. The countries' placement corresponds roughly with judgments about the extent of the overall development of democratic institutions in the countries of the former Soviet bloc, since competent analysts would be encouraged to engage in policy research at think tanks in countries where the government is open to outside advice and legislatures are open and effective in their policymaking. In Freedom House's classification (Motyl 1997), Hungary is in the most advanced group of countries in the region, that is, those that "are well on their way toward democracy, with vibrant civil societies, well-established rule of law, and market economies." Russia, Armenia, and Bulgaria are all in a second group of countries that have made discernible progress but less than the countries in the first group. Within the second group, Russia and Bulgaria are classified as relatively advanced in developing democratic institutions, compared with Armenia.⁽⁴¹⁾

I thought one would find think tanks to be relatively important players in Hungary and Russia because of favorable conditions in both countries just at the start of the period of economic and political transition. Moreover, in both countries government and parliament have had significant roles in policymaking. However, the situations also differ: The balance of power is tilted toward the executive in Russia, where the president can issue decrees that carry the force of law, and the Hungarian experience has happily lacked Russia's series of crises between the two branches of government.⁽⁴²⁾ In general, in these two nations, nongovernmental organizations, including think tanks, have been active participants in the policy process.

Armenia was expected to be closer to the other end of the spectrum. Decisionmaking in the Soviet Union was heavily concentrated in Moscow, although each constituent republic had its own parliament, executive, party, national academy, and research institutes. But policymaking itself was underdeveloped, implying that the development of policy support institutions was also attenuated. One would expect to find few Armenian researchers who had been energized by participation in the policy process at the end of the Soviet era and who would create an independent policy institution as a natural extension of their work.⁽⁴³⁾ The low priority given to broad policy development would have fallen even lower after 1988 with the emergence of the Karabagh Movement, dedicated to bringing the ethnically Armenian Nagorno-Karabagh region of Azerbaijan under Armenian control. This all-consuming task sidelined other issues.

On the other hand, Armenians returning from the diaspora after independence—including some appointed to cabinet posts and other senior government positions in 1991—may have been instrumental in the formation of new public policy research institutes. More broadly, Armenia's ethnic unity—over 90 percent of the population is Armenian (New World Demographics, Inc. 1992, table D-1)—and its underlying sense of nationhood set it apart from most other former constituent republics of the USSR. Democracy is present but not vibrant, and the conflict with Azerbaijan has distracted attention from nation building and left few resources for implementing domestic reforms.

Based on interviews with knowledgeable Bulgarians, one can characterize the situation in Bulgaria in the years just before the transition as having been much closer to Czechoslovakia than to Hungary: very limited stimulation for the development of private public policy institutes. In the 1980s the elite research institutes did produce some analysis highly critical of the regime's economic policies, but this had an extremely limited distribution. In the last years before perestroika, discussion of criticism was less tightly controlled; nevertheless, the regime undertook few substantive changes (Bezlov and Stoyanov 1997). Moreover, the Communist party was able to control the transition: The party, through an internal coup, ousted its old leader, Todor Zhivkov, and eventually won the first competitive elections against the still weak democratic forces (Linz and Stephan 1996, 295). The early transition itself has been characterized by combative party politics featuring principally the Bulgarian Socialist Party and the Union of Democratic Forces, by the neglect of economic reforms in favor of comparatively backward-looking policies on restitution and retribution, and by political instability: By spring 1997 Bulgaria had its fourth change of government since 1989 (Kolarova 1996 and Bertschi 1995). Interestingly, the government installed in 1997 has turned to private public policy institutes for several senior appointees.

A survey of think tanks. The project hired a field associate in each country to collect the necessary information. The principal qualifications of the associates were that they be knowledgeable about the public policy industry in their country, reasonably well known so that they could obtain access to leaders of important think tanks, and recommended by someone trusted by the project.

The process began with the field associate making an inventory of all the relevant institutions that could be identified and making a rough classification of the type of topics on which they worked. Sources of information included available directories, foundations that funded policy institutes, institutes cited in articles on NGOs in general or think tanks in particular, and staff at identified institutes who were asked to identify others. The number of potential think tanks which appeared to meet the project's definition in each country is shown in the first column of table 1.1. A list of the organizations from which I drew the think tanks to be interviewed is presented in appendix B. In the second stage, field associates had the goal of interviewing the leaders of about a dozen institutes, following an interview guide common to all countries.⁽⁴⁴⁾ The guide covered such topics as the institution's origins, its policy and research interests, governance arrangements, fund-raising activities, promotion of its policy ideas with decisionmakers, and its broader dissemination strategies-publications, seminars, and work with mass media.

Institutes were selected for interviewing on the basis of their size, reputation, the subject on which they concentrate, and their connections, if any, with political parties and trade associations. The objective was to obtain information on an array of institutes. No claim can be made that those selected constitute a representative sample. Table 1.1 summarizes the results of the interviews and table 1.2 lists the thirty-seven institutes for which interviews were completed and which were confirmed as meeting the project's definition: four in Armenia, eleven in Bulgaria, eleven in Hungary, and eleven in Russia. Cooperation was generally excellent and only a few substitutions were necessary. Many of the organizations interviewed proved unwilling to provide concrete information about the level of revenues, although nearly all were forthcoming about the relative importance of different sources in providing funds.

In all countries, the interviews revealed that some organizations did not qualify: Either they were not private entities or they did not engage in public policy development or work in the public interest; they had a special relationship with a Western funding source that made them behave differently than other think tanks; or they were too recently created to have meaningful experience. On this basis fourteen institutes for which interviews were completed were set aside. The share of possible think tanks interviewed which qualified was higher in Armenia and Bulgaria than in Hungary and Russia. The small number of qualifying institutes in Armenia reflects the nascent development of the policy research community in the country. Indeed, as the director of one Armenian think tank said about the development of indigenous think tanks in his country, "We are far from making similar institutions revelant links in the policymaking chain."⁽⁴⁵⁾

Policymakers' views. In a sense this profiling of institutes informed the project about the supply side of the market. But I also needed to learn about the clients and sponsors for such work. To this end a second set of interviews was undertaken with members of parliament and those in senior government positions involved in policy formulation. Sixty-five usable interviews were completed with seventeen people in Armenia, sixteen in Bulgaria, fifteen in Hungary, and seventeen in Russia (see appendix B for names). Persuading senior people to be interviewed proved demanding in a number of cases. Often it was impossible to determine if this was due to overcrowded schedules or to willingness to speak on this topic. Field associates also encountered reluctance by some policymakers to express opinions about individual institutions with which they had had contact. Nevertheless, most of those approached did grant interviews and were generally quite cooperative.

Expert opinion. A final set of resources was information obtained from interviews by the author with executives of American foundations, both in the U.S. and in field offices in the region; representatives of the donor community, particularly the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the European Community's Phare and Tacis programs; and other people thought to be knowledgeable about either think tanks or the policy process in the four countries. These were open-ended discussions about their impressions of think tanks, including how these institutes allocate their resources among research, advocacy, and public education; think tanks' effectiveness in the policy process; and on the sources of support for think tanks in the past and the future. Lastly, interviews were conducted with persons informed about the policy development process in the final years of the Soviet era to explore conditions in each country that might have encouraged the formation of private, nonprofit public policy institutes. The list of experts interviewed is given in appendix C.

Confidentiality. To encourage an open and frank discussion, as a general rule those interviewed were informed that they would not be quoted directly nor would their observations be attributed specifically to them. Hence, while in this book published sources are cited throughout, the source of specific comments made during interviews is not attributed. The hope was that the pledge of confidentiality would make the respondents more open. The volume of critical remarks received from policymakers suggests that the pledge was successful for this group. Similarly, the observations of most experts appeared to be open and fair. On the other hand, most think tank leaders naturally put a positive spin on their record, and our pledge probably had little influence in this case. Wherever possible information provided in the interviews with these directors was cross-checked with information published in surveys of think tanks.

1. The Party Congress on paper was the supreme body. It elected the members of the Central Committee to handle party affairs between congresses. The committee in turn elected the members of the Politburo from among its members.

2. For detailed descriptions of the government structure and operations, see Hewett (1988, ch.3) and Hough and Fainsod (1979).

3. See Vucinich (1984, 308-9) for a description of the organization in the Soviet Union. According to Hough and Fainsod (1979, 397), in 1975 the USSR Academy had 246 scientific institutions.

4. We are using the 1970s as our representative period of policymaking. There is general agreement that there was steady improvement in the involvement of research institutes in the policy process from the end of the Stalin period through the 1980s in terms of quality of analysis done, the resources available, and the interest of decisionmakers in the product. Gustafson (1981, 93), Solomon (1978, 108-13).

5. Hough and Fainsod (1979, 396-8, 399, 435-7). Loewenhardt (1981, 191-2) gives the following, quite expansive summary statement:

This book has shown that scientists in the Soviet Union, as elsewhere, are eager to execute their obligations by giving advice and seeking influence. We have seen that in at least six out of ten cases academics or scientific institutes were repeatedly asked for advice. These actors hold a special place in the Soviet decisionmaking structure. Formally they are part of the state apparatus, controlled by the Party and therefore far from independent. And yet in reports and through the organizations of conferences they often promote policies that run counter to the status quo or to the wishes of Party and state organizations. It is often through such scientific establishments that groups and individuals arenas. The academics and scientific institutes of the Soviet Union are than only centers of learning. They are to be seen as one of the main vehicles for specialists' participation in decisionmaking.

6. Consistent with a picture of a limited role of the institutes are the findings of Ellen Jones (1984) who studied decisionmaking in the Soviet Union. She concentrated on the workings of the kollegiya, or committee, a term that covers management and decisionmaking committees from the Poliburo to ministry collegia to local party bureaus. She identified no role of institutes in these bodies.

7. Possibly the most celebrated case is that of Trofim Lysenko, a charlatan biologist who enjoyed Stalin's patronage. On this basis he had enormous influence on policy decisions made in Soviet agriculture. Many of his schemes wasted enormous sums of money and resulted in reduced crop yields. He also destroyed the careers of several prominent scientists who tried to expose him. For details see Soyfer (1994).

8. Vucinich (1984) provides a history of the academy; see especially, pp 303-13.

9. Sandle (1998, 211) stresses the positive role played by Andropov when he was Party Secretary in preparing the way for the startling changes under Gorbachev. Sandle also provides additional details on this period.

10. For example, Alexander Yakovlev was brought back from Canada to head the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (Stein 1994, 176).

11. This point was made by Scott Bruckner in an interview with the author, November 13, 1997.

12. See Bruckner (1996, 32) on this point.

13. They also state that there was little critical analysis going on quietly in the background (1990, 669). "No secretly written critical manuscripts or political analyses had been hidden in the drawers, waiting to be published."

14. See Rose (1995) for further discussion of this thesis.

15. On this point see Gransden (1996). More recently, in the summer of 1997, when Mr. Klaus was asked if the people of the Czech Republic needed to know more about what joining NATO would mean for their country, he was reported to have wanted to end the interview. "I don't see the point. I'm absolutely sure they are sufficiently educated. To me, education of people is not a real issue." From Christine Spolar, "Czechs Have Little Inclination to Debate Benefits of NATO," International Herald-Tribune, June 19, 1997, p. 1.

16. Gellner (1994, 163-4) gives a trenchant summary of the fundamental flaw of the Soviet system.

It is the combination of the pursuit of virtue and industrialism which seems to be so disastrous. Marxist societies are ideocracies, i.e., regimes not content with performing a social function at least cost, but concerned with the implementation of a moral order, the prevalence of virtue on earth. Politics becomes the imposition of righteousness. But an industrial society is by definition one in which economic activity is pervasive and crucial. To subject it virtue, to pretend that haggling is inappropriate and immoral, and inequality in inherently improper, is to subject it to constraints which are incompatible with it. The result is the erection of an entirely spurious facade, and squalor and cynicism underneath. The unification of the economy in one single organization and its fusion with the political ideological hierarchy is not merely most inefficient: it also inevitably leads to both totalitarianism—and totalitarianism cannot but be socialist. To allow an independent economic zone is to leave an enormous breach in the authoritarian system, given the importance of the economy. To deprive Civil Society of an independent economic base is to throttle it, given the inevitability of political centralization.

17. As Brinkley (1997, 125) notes, "Put another way, enlargement was about spread democracy through promoting the gospel of geoeconomics . . . Some critics perfer a more militarily activist approach, even a new sort of gun boat diplomacy, but Clinton favors enlargement; he is more interested in helping Toys 'R' Us and Nike flourish in Central Europe and Asia than in dispatching Marines to quell unrest in economically inconsequential nations."

18. The argument was originally advanced in Lipset (1959) and since has spawned a large literature. Notable entries are Diamond (1992) and Lipset, Seong, and Torres (1993). For a summary of the argument from the economist's perspective, see Tavares and Wacziarg (1996); also see Freeman (1989) and Przeworski (1991). In a recent major analysis of the determinants of economic growth using data from over a hundred countries at all levels of development, Barro (1996) concludes that economic development is important in generating democracy but he finds it difficult to document causality running the other way, i.e., that democracy begets growth.

19. On this point see Zakaria (1997), Kaplan (1997), Plattner and Gershman (1998), and Plattner (1998).

20. Talbot (1996, 62) notes that Donald Kagan has given three principles for the requirements of democracy in ancient Greece that remain valid today. "The first is to have a set of good institutions; the second is to have a body of citizens who possess a good understanding of the principles of democracy, or who have developed a character consistent with the democratic way of life; and the third is to have a high quality of leadership, at least at critical moments."

21. Newburg and Carothers (1996) state that is this type of assistance has constituted about 6.5 percent of U.S. government spending to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

22. See Newberg and Carothers (1996) for a critique of these programs.

23. Substantially quoted from Bezlov and Stoyanov (1997, 5).

24. This point is developed further in chapter 2.

25. Unfortunately, this organization obtained less support from successor governments and was moved from the Office of the Prime Minister to the Ministry of Economy. Many of the original staff departed, often to think tanks.

26. As Weaver (1989, 564) and Stone (1996) point out, there is no accepted definition of think tanks. But there is wide agreement on two attributes: nonprofit status and independence.

27. Also see Abelson (1999), Langsford and Browney (1992), Quigley (1996), and Stone, Denham, and Garnett (1998).

28. On the origins of think tanks, see Smith (1991, ch.2). With respect to the number of think tanks in various countries, one indicator is the directory of think tanks published by the National Institute for Research Advancement in Japan. The 1996 edition (NIRA, 1996) lists fifty-five in the U.S. as compared with the next most extensively represented countries: twenty-two in Japan, fifteen in Germany, and thirteen in the United Kingdom. Stone (1996 Annex) in her treatment of U.S. and British think tanks lists seventy in the United State generally, see Dror (1984), Goodwin (1995), Matlack (1991), Peschek (1987), Smith (1991), Ricci (1993), McGann (1996), Stone (1996), Struyk, Ueno, and Suzuki (1993, Annex B), Weaver (1989), and articles in The Economist of May 25 and December 21, 1991.

29. James McGann (1996) and Diane Stone (1996) offer alternative classification systems.

30. See also Rich and Weaver, forthcoming.

31. Seasoned observers such as Charles William Maynes remain doubtful that such competition has fostered better policy or institutional development. In his farewell statement as editor of Foreign Policy, he said (1997, 15-7):

Heretofore, the model that most think tanks aspired to was that of an institution providing disinterested, professional research on public policy problems. The hope was that its research would be of value to anyone in a position to affect policy . . . In today's Washington, ideas are no longer tools made available to everybody. Rather, they are weapons crafted primarily for one's political allies. The aim is less to inform and improve the policies of any particular administration than to achieve victory for an administration that embraces one's own ideology . . .

Less ideologically predisposed foundations and think tanks have not known how to respond to this unexpected assault on the very character of public policy discourse. They have not been prepared for such intensely partisan maneuvering or such ruthless, no-holds-barred ideological combat . . . Their response has therefore been either to ignore what is happening or to seek shelter from controversy by clinging to the center of policy debate, a process that has rendered that center less a point of vital compromise than a place of sterile safety.

32. This trend is described in Smith (1991), McGann (1996), and Stone (1994).

33. Based on Weaver (1989, 568-9).

34. Under the old regime, academy institutes in effect ran graduate schools in their specific disciplines. As such, the institutes were the source of the ministries' cadres. However, this is different from the transfer of senior scientists from the academy to senior posts in government, which rarely occurred. Interestingly, the general pattern was for the most senior management of the academy complex to be drawn from the ranks of the party and not from within the academy.

35. The countries are Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lativia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia.

36. The report provides no information about response rate or the share of returned questionnaires that were submitted by firms ultimately excluded from the directory.

37. Extensive restructuring of the Soviet era research complex has been caused by very deep cuts in national budget allocations for scientific research . Many institutes make ends meet by renting out space in their often capacious buildings on a commercial basis—space now available because of substantially reduced staffs. See Moore (1994) for an overview.

Some National Academy institutes have engaged in substantial transformation of their operations along commercial lines to survive. Sometimes this has involved an entire institute, sometimes part of an institute. An example from Hungary is the new Institute for Social Conflict Research, which has emerged from the former Institute of Sociology. The new institute has considered leaving the academy but as of spring 1997 its director, Pal Tamas, felt that the budget support from the academy was worth more than the additional freedom it would gain from secession.

38. Cited in Bezlov and Stoyanov (1997, 3).

39. Nevertheless the existing directories provided an excellent starting point. Particularly helpful for Hungary and Bulgaria was the inventory of think tanks prepared by Freedom House (Kimball 1997), generously provided to us ahead of publication by Jonathan Kimball. This list was supplemented by that from the Center for International Private Enterprise (1996) and Kevin Quigley's personal list. For Russia, the review by Antonenko (1996) and Nazarova and Krasheninnikov (1997) proved very useful. In Bulgaria, the Center for the Study of Democracy had a list from a recent study of the broader NGO community in the country.

40. Motyl (1997), expressing the judgement of Freedom House, places the following countries in this group: Azerbaiijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

41. The country chapters in the Freedom House report (Karatnycky, Motyl, and Shor 1997) provide good profile on the development of democratic institutions.

42. See Brudny (1995) for a description of the Russian conflict. Since President Yeltsin's incapacitation and the August 1998 financial collapse, the executive has clearly been weakened and the degree of conflict between the two branches of government diminished.

43. It is worth noting that the liberalization of the Gorbachev era did have a very significant impact in Armenia. Beginning in 1988 a popular movement emerged for merging the Nagorno Karabakh region with Armenia. New nationalists also worked with sympathetic deputies in the republic's Supreme Soviet to introduce important amendments to the election law and some articles of the new constitution. In 1990, nationalist Levon Ter-Ptrossian defeated the secretary of the Armenian Communist party in the presidential election. It was an exciting time, but it seems to have had little effect on the openness of the government decisionmaking process. This description is based on information in Odom and Dujarric (1995), Herzig (1996), and an interview with Khachatour Bezirjyan in May 1997 in Yerevan.

44. The interview guide and questionnaire are available from the author upon request.

45. Note that the Center for Health Services Research is part of the American University of Armenia; to bolster our sample size in Armenia we made an exception to our no-universities rule. Magistros in Armenia sounds like a trade association of physicians but is actually an activist think tank that develops public policy, works on legislation, and, perhaps most importantly, carries out demonstration projects on its own initiative to introduce progressive health care practice in Armenia.

Comments and questions may be
sent via email.