Happy New Year to you all!

I use this opportunity to announce an event that Think Tank Fund  will co-organize in belgrade February

Think Tank Fund together with the Human Rights Governance Grants Program and Foundation for Open Society Serbia from the Open Society Foundations, European Fund for the Balkans, Balkan Trust for Democracy of the German Marshall Fund and the National Endowment for Democracy is organizing:

Balkan Peer Exchange

Enhancing Analysis and Research-Based Advocacy in an Era of Open Data

February 21-23, 2012

Belgrade, Serbia

This event aspires to bring a representative group of think tanks and advocacy organizations as well as donors to address these issues and open new avenues for future cooperation. Its organizers do not have any pre-conceived ideas to float and impose at the event. It is not our goal to spearhead establishment of any networks, regional platforms or anything similar. Likewise, while we expect participants to suggest new ideas and forge new partnerships throughout the event, the organizers do not consider the event as a direct laboratory for designing new projects that they would later underwrite.

The overall objective of the Peer Exchange is to provide a space for representatives of 50 think tanks and advocacy organizations (with established track records in policy relevant research) and a dozen of donors active in the region and offer them a space for peer-to-peer exchange of practices, positive and negative lessons learned and brainstorming on new innovative ideas.

Specific objectives:

-            Sharing opinions / analysis on relevant topics such as EU integration, governmental transparency and accountability, economic policy, social and integration policies

-            Exchanging relevant experiences and good practices on topics specifically linked to these types of organizations (access to information, fiscal transparency and abuse of state resources, political system and transparency of government decisions, quality standards for policy-relevant research)

-            Presenting and promoting good practices of policy research designs / monitoring and advocacy

-            Providing participants with general awareness, knowledge of basic tools and language to formulate and communicate their ideas on how to use data / analysis for effective communication and impactful advocacy to be able to search and identify tools and partners for their implementation.

We hope you will find this event interesting and useful to your organization and apply to participate. Also, feel free to further post this information on your web-site or share it with all of your contacts you would find interested in participating at this event.

Detailed information on the event and on-line application form is  available here www.balkanfund.org/balkanpeerexchange.

The deadline for applications is 12 pm on January 16, 2012. The event will take place in Belgrade, Serbia in February 21-23, 2012.

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While think tanks have been engaged in myriad of topics throughout Central and Eastern Europe, there are  a few where their engagement has been exception rather than a regular happenstance. Drug policy is one of these topics. In a recent conversation with Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, director of Open Society Foundations Global Drugs Policy Program, we looked at ways how to raise the interest of think tanks to engage in this subject from  perspective of a mainstream actor/analyst. To this end, she has written the following blog post about her latest very positive experience working with Institute for Policy Affairs in Poland.

…In 2000, Poland introduced a law that penalized the possession of any quantity of illicit substances. Ten years later, the Institute of Public Affairs, a leading Polish think tank and an OSF grantee, published ‘ Drug Policy in Poland – time for a change’ a report evaluating the financial costs of this law.

The report found that the implementation of the law cost over EUR 20 million per year, with  possession offences rocketing from 2,815 in 2001 to 30,548 in 2008. Yet the majority of prosecutors, probation officers, police officers and judges interviewed for the study felt that enforcing the bill did not help reduce drug use or counter-act trafficking. Among the report’s key recommendations is to decriminalize the possession of illicit drugs, and redirect the huge resources spent on law enforcement to treatment and harm reduction programs.

Ahead of a parliamentary debate in 2011, the report served as a powerful reference point for groups calling for the liberalization of Poland’s tough drug laws, and was frequently referred to in the national media. The debate ended with an amendment to Poland’s drug policy in May 2011, which aims to draw a greater distinction between drug user and drug dealer. At that time the situation was as follows:
Ahead of a visit from Barack Obama, Polish president Bronislaw Komorowski has signed an amendment to his country’s drug law. The newly amended law, approved on Wednesday, May 25, is a small step forward in liberalizing Poland’s drug policy. It aims to draw a greater distinction between drug user and drug dealer. For example, public prosecutors will now have the option of not bringing people to court on possession charges under three circumstances: if the quantity is small, if it is a first-time drug offense, or if the person has a drug dependency.

This change is largely thanks to ongoing advocacy by Polish and international civil society groups. The next steps will be to ensure that prosecutors are aware of these exceptions and that they are used, as experience from other countries shows that amendments often go unnoticed. Also, on the basis of the Czech Republic’s experience, threshold quantities of illicit drugs should be drawn up with the aim of focusing a public debate on decriminalization.

Read more on the changes to Poland’s drug law and the civil society organizations behind it. (Taken from  blog entry Poland steps toward more liberal drug policyby Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, director of OSF Global Drugs Program

This example from Poland shows the crucial role that a think tank can play in social change by providing clear economic and sociological data. However, for such a study to have greater impact, it is important to place the data within a regional context that will have more meaning to policymakers and the public worldwide. This could, for example, involve producing a set of cost-benefits analyses of national drug polices similar to that conducted by the Institute for Public Affairs.

I encourage all interested think tanks that face similar challenges in their own countries in to get in touch with my colleagues at the Global Drug Policy Program.

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Tomorrow, I am invited to speak at a luncheon with some twenty policy fellows of the Open Society Foundations-Armenia and Counterpart International in Yerevan.

Many of these individual researchers – some academic and others eyeing more pragmatic policy research – are toying with the idea to create a think tank. Below, you will find a selection of the questions I prepared for our discussion. The first batch refers to the dilemmas individual researchers might have (and their potential collaborative engagement in think tanks), that a very snap overview of challenges think tanks face in central and Eastern Europe and specific section for newcomers.  All suggestions for additional questions / aspects are welcome. Please use the comment section here.

Sample of questions to be tackled during the luncheon

Questions on the minds of individual researchers

-          How to balance academic research with policy analysis?  – Individual juncture on choosing a career path or ill-made decision based on few facts and plenty of assumptions

-          The pros and cons of going ‘solo’ or joining a specialized research organization ( think tank)

-          Third alternative: Could other types of organizations add value to research and be ‘unusual allies’ to individual researchers?

Current challenges of existing think tanks

-          Quality of current policy research usually fails to match the demand for solutions. The reasons for this situation range from inappropriate research design and methodology to poor writing skills, from choosing effective formats for their policy analysis to neglecting proper communication strategies. Why it is easier for think tanks to be ‘recycle bins’ than ‘idea generators’?

-          Human capital is the biggest asset of each and every think tank. In securing reliable and high-quality researchers, think tanks compete with much more powerful competitors i.e. governments, state agencies, private companies, banks and consulting companies. As a small part of civil society, despite being present in the public life, think tanks are not the first choice to fresh graduates who are interested in embarking on research/policy careers. Likewise, for people working in the think tanks, notwithstanding that monetary remuneration is important, it is crucial to have opportunities to grow professionally and further develop their skills, to learn new things and meet other colleagues across the continent and beyond. Why think tankers do not starve, but few of them are there to earn ‘big money’?

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On September 14^th, Enrique shared an interesting link on his blog

Below you can find his post and my addition.

Many think tanks face the need to undertake organisational assessments -much better than an evaluation. This site offers very useful advice into how to go about it: Reflect & Learn | Learning together about Organizational Assessment.

The purpose of Reflect & Learn (R&L) is to help organizations improve their performance by using Organizational Assessment (OA).  Organizational assessment (OA) is a tool that supports an organization in its quest to learn more about itself. The process of reflection in OA is based on providing an organizational diagnosis that allows organizational stakeholders to learn from experiences and results, in order to facilitate decision-making and foster more strategic vision, more effective programs, stronger governance, etc.  Organizational assessment can be part of a process of change and capacity building.

It offers a series of self-assessment tools as well as detail on key frameworks:

• Universalia Institutional and Organizational Assesment Model (IOA Model)
• A Causal Model of Organizational Performance & Change (Burke & Litwin Model)
• The Seven-S Model
• The Marvin Weisbord Six-Box Model (Weisbord’s Model)
• Open Systems Model

There are also some useful case studies, although they do not include think tanks.

At the Think Tank Fund, we have spent a lot of thought on the aspects of organizational development. While we have consulted the general tools ( many referenced in the depository Reflext&Learn), we thought there is a need for specialized, more tailored approach. Given the breadth of our support, both thematically and geographically, measuring the impact of our grants on the overall development of our grantees is far from being easy. Moreover, a comprehensive evaluation might run the risk of becoming too costly to both: the donor and the grantee.

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A lot has been said on think tanks trying to introduce e-media into their work, to modernize their production and accept the standards of the digital world. A lot have been trying and the web is full of impressive and less successful examples.

In the sea of coverage of the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 a special multimedia coverage by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace caught my attention.

The topic, as we know it is huge. There are so many tenets to cover: the attacks themselves, their aftermath including the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the ‘change of world order’,  war against terror and many more.

CEIP offered an excellent appetizer to all those interested in their analysis by providing a string of 11 short videos ( 1 to 3 minutes each). The design is also impressive because the embedded videos are coupled with CEIP report written for the occasion of the first anniversary.  In one page we really get the gist of their opinion now and their opinion 9 years ago. And as any good appetizer, this one offers the visitor / reader a choice:

- to stay at the level of basic opinion of CEIP experts (for those readers who prefer tapas are or on diet

- or make another click and ‘indulge in the main course’  by reading the full report and CEIP previous analysis on the respective subjects.

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On July 11, Enrique Mendizabal posted the following post on his blog:

Speed Dating for think tanks: How to meet your future partner?

I re-post it now since we received a lot of interest from Latin American think tanks, but not from think tanks in central and Eastern Europe. The post is worth re-reading and acting upon.

The project reduces the financial barriers to partnership building and peer learning between organisations from different regions. The funds will make it possible for two think tanks to work together, visit each other, and maybe even plan future projects. However, before this can happen, other barriers need to be addressed.

Getting to know about other think tanks in the first place is not that easy. How could this happen? Maybe researchers from think tanks meet in global fora or conferences, or in some occasions thy work as part of broader consortia in which other researchers may also be involved. But these are accidental meetings. And they may or may not lead to the right match.

Think tanks seeking to benefit from this grant should not underestimate the importance of finding the right fit. The right fit is not just a common interest to benefit from the funds or to learn from others. The right fit implies that the think tanks getting together are the right ones for each other. Since think tanks come is all shapes and forms it is therefore possible that two very different centres may end up trying to learn from each other and find out that their different structures limit learning between them: for example a think tank with mostly associate researchers may not find the right match in a think tank with mostly full time researchers.

Similarly, short -term project driven think tanks may find it difficult to learn from long-term programme driven ones; advocacy think tanks may find it frustrating to collaborate with academic research think tanks; etc.

Of course, these differences could be a reasons to work together, but this cannot be assumed nor should it be left to chance.

This means that both think tanks ought to be clear, right from the start, of what is it that they want to get out of the relationship, agree on the approaches to achieve this, and know why they think that they are the right match for each other. Vagueness at this stage will result in failure.

With busy domestic political processes to monitor and lots of fires to fight it is not surprising that think tanks from different regions do not know many others elsewhere. Their usual out-of-region links tend to be with think tanks in U.S. and Europe where their researchers studied or from where their funding comes. Finding partners in other regions is much harder.

As individuals we deal with these issues in different ways: upon moving to a new city we search for opportunities to meet others by joining clubs or neighbourhood activities, maybe go speed dating or online dating; others resort to the more traditional matchmaking skills of organised religion (“oh, you should meet my daughter/son, she/he is such a good girl/boy”); while other prefer to go solo and chance it at nightclubs or bars. For each its own.

For organisations, the places and spaces for finding the right fit to try to develop a partnership, may not be that obvious. Just like people they ought to expect lots of trials and errors -and it would be naive to assume that they’ll get it right the first time.

So how can we help?

Here are a few ways that I would like to recommend -and would be keen to support:

• Sign up to Twitter and find each other -some of you are already following @onthinktanks so it should not be hard to let onthinktanks act as a matchmaker. Twit this: Re: @onthinktanks I am looking for #thinktanks in [insert region] to partner with. If you are following @onthinktanks or #thinktanks you’ll be able to find each other and you can take it from there. Because only 140 characters are allowed you won’t be bombarded with lots of text to read and may find it easy to dismiss unsuitable matches.
• Alternatively, start following @ThinkTankFund and do the exact same thing.
• The Think Tank Fund also has a Facebook page that you could use to meet each other. ‘Like’ it and post comments.

• You could also write a few lines below (in the comment box) introducing yourselves. Think of it as Speed Dating: you have 10 lines at most to let others know 1) what your think tank is about and 2) what you are looking for in this potential partnership. You can then reply below or directly to those who posted an interest (do let me know if you do so that I know if this had any effect). I can act as a filter to make sure that the responses you get are clearly articulated and not just random spam.

• Or you could join the ebpdn and post an interest there. There are think tanks from all over the world signed up -as well as sub-communities for each region that may help you get your messages to the right audiences. This might be a bit riskier and you may end up getting lots of responses from people rather than organisations -but it is worth a try.

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Human capital is the biggest asset of each and every think tank. In securing reliable and high-quality researchers, think tanks compete with much more powerful competitors, i.e. governments, state agencies, private companies, banks and consulting companies. The region’s think tanks therefore have to devise special motivation strategies to retain existing staff and attract new talented individuals to opt for this career. As a small part of civil society, despite being present in the public life, think tanks are often not the first choice to fresh graduates who are interested in embarking on research/policy careers. Think tanks predominantly depend on project funding – which is not always stable – to maintain its staff decreasing its job security compared to other types of employments.

Yet, there are more reasons for both existing think tanks and young talented graduates to be courageous and reach to each other. In the countries outside the European Union, the lack of universities, governmental policy institutes and competent public administration makes think tanks one of the few possible outlets attractive to anyone looking at a career in policy research. Also, many young people educated in the best universities abroad or at home do not want to become part of often corrupted bureaucracy. Likewise, the prospect of a small, albeit guaranteed salary, at the few old-fashioned state institutions often does not sate the appetite of motivated returnees from foreign universities. Neither does the prospect of being a junior researcher not allowed to lead a project before they are 40. Finally, the talented managers / leaders of some think tanks in the region have developed oasis for personal development, exchange of know how and team work with like-minded individuals and opportunity for rapid growth.

Before you start thinking that Goran ‘is indulging into an ad for the region’s think tanks’, let me note that I am aware of the many shortcomings, too. Still, even if in small scale, it is worth supporting think tanks to become vibrant places for an increasing number of young educated people to ‘cut their policy teeth’. At the Think Tank Fund we have noticed that often the first step, the first push to circumvent the fear of unsecured funding, of perhaps the fear of mismatch between the individual and the organization is missing. Therefore we have recently re-launched a call to solicit interest from TTs to think of such posts. I encourage all interested think tanks to read more here.

We are also looking at other ways to support think tanks in becoming an attractive and accessible place for young educated MA and PhD graduates. I welcome all of your ideas .

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Yesterday, onthinktanks.org published my guest blog-post.

The post addresses the persistent issue of how to ensure or review think tank’s independence.

We have all heard so many times that policy research is not value free. Some critics go one step further by claiming that impartial analysis is rather a far-fetched ideal than an attainable goal in the everyday work of a researcher. In the other camp, more ‘scientific’ oriented researchers claim that it is only about the scrutiny and the quality of the process. Once complied with certain standards, the research would certainly result into an objective account of the problem and the alternative solutions. Given that think tanks (and NGOs) have taken on roles that historically have been part of the state, it will be necessary for a code of conduct to be aligned to the one we expect from the state. The more the think tankers boost of their own impact, the need for their accountability is greater. The accountability of policy research is thus an aspect that has raised many debates hitherto. Not surprisingly, many of these debates have focused on the way that the research has been carried out. The aspect of who has been carried out the research (who – not only with regard to competencies, but also in terms of values and personal / organizational history) has not been neglected, but somehow treated artificially (including one of my texts cited below).

Read the full text at Enrique’s blog.

or below

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Last week’s parliamentary elections in Macedonia saw the incumbent EU-sceptic government securing four more years of power. While this will certainly not be treated as a big surprise by the Balkan watchers in Brussels, the re-election of this government and its political platform might soon pose a number of challenging choices for EU policy makers. They have the luxury of avoiding the entire set now but such a choice would turn extremely costly for both geo-strategic matters and the EU integration process in the Western Balkans later.

In a conclusion of our trilogy of pre and post election texts on Macedonia Neda Korunovska from Reactor and I wrote a short commentary for E!Sharp. Read it here.

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Some of my international friends asked me about the Macedonian elections and their outcomes. Certainly not a blockbuster news in the international media(some coverage in the Economist) , this deserved little attention ( luckily no one get killed and the election day went smoothly – kudos to the State Election Commission and the Government for that day). With help of Neda ( with whom we wrote the pre-election text on the European Voice) here is summary of results and some random thoughts on the past elections:

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