James G. McGann, Ph.D. Senior Fellow and Director
Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program
This project grew out of the never-ending requests I receive from journalists, scholars and government officials to provide a list of the leading think tanks in a particular country or region of the world. In 2006 I launched a pilot project that was designed to identify some of the leading think tanks in the world in an attempt to answer these inquiries in a more systematic fashion. The report that follows summarizes the findings of this pilot project and provides lists of what might be called the “go to think tanks” in every region of the world. Two hundred twenty-eight institutions were nominated by their peers and are public policy research, analysis and engagement organizations that have become recognized nationally, regionally and globally for producing rigorous and relevant research, publications and programs. While I have done my best to be balanced and systematic in my approach to identifying the leading think tanks in the world much more work needs to be done to improve the selection process. I, therefore, view this report as a starting point and encourage your comments and suggestions for how I might improve the selection process. Additionally, it is also worth noting that the inclusion of an institution in the universe of leading think tanks does not indicate a seal of approval or endorsement for the institution, its publications or programs. Likewise a failure to be nominated does not necessarily indicate a lack of a quality and effectiveness or poor performance. There are 5080 think tanks around the world that are doing exceptional work to help bridge the gap between knowledge and policy. This report is simply an effort to highlight some of the leading think tanks around the world. In this report and through the data I have collected and analyzed from surveys, I have attempted to identify the key think tank “players” or “go-to” institutions around the world. This task was made difficult by the global scale of the effort, the sheer number of think tanks, and also because of the regional, and national differences that exist among them. Accordingly, I developed an expert based selection process and relied on data collected for my ongoing global research on think tanks in order to ensure the accuracy and legitimacy of the results. In this unprecedented research endeavor, this study attempts to identify the 10 leading think tanks in the world (non-U.S.) and then seeks to identify the 30 leading think tanks in the world. In addition, the top 30 think tanks in the U.S. were ranked separately as well as the top 5 think tanks from regions that were underrepresented in the global list of top think tanks. (The Foreign Policy Research Institute was excluded from this survey for the obvious reason that to have included the FPRI in a survey conducted by FPRI would have tarnished the survey’s credibility.) While I am confident in the value and utility of identifying the leading think tanks in the world, a number of important qualifications are in order. First and foremost, there are significant differences between the levels of development and resources in the world which may contribute to certain regions being underrepresented on the list. There are simply more think tanks in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. This may explain, in part, why think tanks in Europe and Asia are overrepresented in the top 30 while regions such as Africa and Eastern Europe are underrepresented. Second, international and defense-oriented think tanks may tend to be overrepresented here due to their orientation toward regional and global issues, while domestic-oriented think tanks may tend to be underrepresented. While think tanks focusing on domestic issues are clearly represented on the lists, think tanks whose mission and programs require that they interact on regional and global level may give them an edge in the rankings. While I have consulted widely in developing the universe of institutions to be considered and attempted to control for certain distortions and biases, I fully recognize that personal, regional, ideological and discipline biases may have influenced the selection made by some of those consulted for this study. Finally, large, multi-issue think tanks may tend to be overrepresented because of the broad scope of their programs and their ability to promote these initiatives to a global audience. It is also important to note that U.S. think tanks (see Table 4 for a list of the top 30 of these) were not included in the universe of institutions considered because I felt their inclusion would have a distorting effect on the study’s outcome. Despite these potential limitations, I am confident that the international focus group that I constituted for this study has enabled me to create the first authoritative list of the leading think tanks in the world.
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