Colin Talbot & Carole Talbot

Why do Think Tanks matter?

What are generally known as “Think Tanks” have been around for over a century – the oldest listed by Diane Stone, in her book on Think Tanks, is the Fabian Society, founded in 1884.

It is generally accepted that Think Tanks have grown massively in more recent decades in numbers, size and – many argue – influence. Many reasons have been given for this explosion, which we’ll discuss in a future note.

One online global register currently has 2,700 Think Tanks, or similar organizations, in their database. There appear to be about 100 across Africa, 400 each in Asia and north America, 600 in Latin America and more than a thousand across Europe (as far as central Asia). Continue reading →

 [This paper was originally written in 2005 but the arguments it makes are still relevant to today’s debates about policymaking?]

Introduction

This paper seeks to lay out some of the issues surrounding policy formulation and implementation from a ‘tools of policy’ perspective. This is a relatively underdeveloped approach in public policy but one which offers some tangible benefits in expanding the scope of policy choices and developing more realistic analytical, diagnostic and evaluative tools. Continue reading →

As a further contribution to discussions about academic public policy blogging, here is a brief account of the experiment with The Guardian and science policy.

[See important update below – these sites have now closed.]

By James Wilsdon

In 2012, the Guardian’s science section embarked on an editorial experiment with a group of around 15 academic bloggers – inviting them to edit and write regularly for a family of science blogs on the Guardian website  https://www.theguardian.com/science/series/science-blog-network. [NB Now closed] Continue reading →

University-based public policy blog sites are growing in number in the UK. Why?

Partly, this is obviously driven by the so-called “impact” agenda – Universities proving the worth of their research to funding agencies, Government, the media and the public. Impact on public policy is an important part of “impact”.

So why blog sites? A University public policy blogsite offers two huge advantages. Continue reading →

Almost a decade ago, in 2009, I decided to experiment with blogging as a way of engaging with public policy and management debates.

It wasn’t easy. Continue reading →

by Colin Talbot

Trying to innovate in a bureaucratic organization, which most governmental and public organizations are, is notoriously hard.

But, despite the many forecasts of its imminent demise bureaucracy is still very much alive and kicking – for very good reasons. Continue reading →

Colin Talbot

16 Nov 2016

A lot of public policymaking is based on at least some form of social inquiry – how do Governments know what is going on in their societies and what do they want to do about it? Continue reading →