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.

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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Cooperation between think tanks and NGOs (here I refer mainly to service provision and accountability watchdogs NGOs) as well as other partners is always a big talk in the research community in South East Europe. Regrettably, many people from both sides pay a lip service to the subject instead of engaging in meaningful and regular cooperation. Indeed, there are some structural reasons for this lack of cooperation in this region (to list just a few):
- TTs and NGOs, while operating in the same political and societal sphere, discern significantly in their organizational cultures and often educational background. Ever too often think tanks see themselves as part of the elites, closer to high politics and with exclusive (and often jealously guarded) access to the decision makers. Moreover, many think tanks consider the way how NGOs approach to problems overly simplistic. In turn, NGOs find the researchers too snobbish, distanced from the reality and obsessed with theoretical concepts, someone that talks only to peers with MA and PhD degrees or people in power and condescends the rest.
- TTs and NGOs often compete for funds from the same donors ( and most of the donors are not specialized in policy research, but rather generalist). This immediately sets them apart as competitors for scarce funds (unfortunately the same happens with cooperation between TTs, but let’s say that this is a consequence of the market).
- Given that the market for ideas and analysis is underdeveloped and decision makers are yet to fully use analytical products let alone distinguish between the ordinary and better ones, NGOs could compete for research projects and win them (How many times, we have seen flawed research designs and simplistic conclusions telling us nothing more we knew before the project in question started – TTs occassionally fall in this trap too). Think tanks often are better in research design, but with insufficient capacity, will or both to disseminate their research results and design advocacy beyond the group of usual suspects and peer experts)

…… and there are many more reasons fort his unfortunate divide.

I want to share positive examples instead of bragging about these negative trends and let you know where you could find funds to perhaps join the list

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In his second guest blog-post Andrej provides a loooong and extremely useful list of resources that complements my post from last month.

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It is my pleasure to add the first guest post on this blog.

Andrej Nosko, my colleague and Senior Program Officer at the Think Tank Fund reflects and provides excellent videos, presentations and other resource material from the event the Think Tank Fund organized last week in Budapest.

Evaluation Questionnaire Wordle

During the evaluation tweeting of an event we at Think Tank Fund organized with colleagues from IP program one of the participants tweeted “in God we trust, all others bring DATA” I googled this later to check originality, and found an interesting post adding an important question to it “Do we think, or do we know?” These two blurps are perhaps the most eloquent way of representing the idea behind what we call “evidence-based policy.” Think tanks are in the business of policy research and have intimate relationship with their data. Nonetheless, this intimacy is exclusive and the data is rarely accessible to others beyond the in-house researchers or those that have the necessary ability to comprehend technical reports.

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R&R – Revolutions and Research

Revolutions, similar to big crisis, often invoke reflections among researchers and policymakers alike. I am sure you have read at least one of the following questions in the last two months:

Has anyone (we, in particular) predicted these events?

What did we know about the upraising and popular revolt?

What do we know about the population in these countries? How much do we understand Egypt and Tunisia in order to help them?

Since the upheaval in Tunisia , conventional and social media, and policy journals are simply overwhelmed with all sorts of open editorials, letters, columns, blogs, short and longer studies, either recently rushed through to capitalize on the momentum or being dag from some forgotten folder stored on a rusting hard drives. As you will rightly guess, my intention here is not to join all those who compete with each other in predicting / advising / theoretising the emerging changes and their consequences, but rather to share some insights I learned by reading some of this abundant material (some really lucid insights on how much most of the policy researchers and decision makers, in particular Europeans – West and East and USA are guided by biased perceptions).

Let’s start with the WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies) science…

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Think tanks and individual researchers very often struggle to define what constitutes  quality in their analysis. While academic and policy writing manuals are not short of prescriptions for good writing, indicators or benchmarks for successful policy briefs and papers, this is still an elusive thing. I am sure you have all had a feeling of satisfaction when reading a good policy paper. And that has been first it: a feeling! – a feeling of reading a useful and pleasant read. The rationale and justification, analysis and structure of the paper/ brief have come only later. Similarly, I am sure you have also read many more papers where you felt the information is really useful, the writing is correct, but you miss the sensation of a good read, you felt the paper dry (like a cigarette smoke in a Balkan restaurant) that choked you as you progress reading it.

I do not dare to give my own definitions, anyway there are plenty of others out there. Instead find below two interesting observations about quality of research that I heard recently:

1. On the substance of research:

In the opening speech at this year’s Bled Strategic Forum , Danilo Türk , the President of the Republic of Slovenia has paid a tribute to research and in few words captured the essence of captivating policy analysis and recommendations:

He said ‘Honesty starts with intellectual honesty first’. Then, he listed imagination as an essential ingredient to scientific policy thinking, but also as a necessary step in finding strategies to implement policies. As strategy he defined a carefully thought-through set of measures. Finally, in my opinion he summarizes the essence of every analytical piece:

-         Honest analysis

-         Realistic assessment

-         Imaginative policy recommendations

2. On the form of writing and power of words:

At a recent event that PASOS and Think tank Fund organized at the premises of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), Mark Leonard, its director  speaking on communication of policy research quoted Tom Stoppard to depict the importance/value/necessity of captivating writing on part of policy analysts:

“Words… They’re innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they’re no good any more… I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you’re dead.” Taken from Tom Stoppard in ‘The Real Thing‘

These are two recent gems helping me to ‘corner’ quality of policy research. What are yours?

Sometimes you stumble about something in the web and think: “This is very cool”. That was my reaction towards the animations of RSA, an abbreviation for Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce based in London.

“In the light of new challenges and opportunities for the human race, the RSA seeks to develop and promote new ways of thinking about human fulfilment and social progress.  We do this by providing a platform for ideas and debate, a programme of innovative research and development, and through the activities of our 27,000 strong Fellowship.  By combining thought leadership, social engagement and powerful forms of collaboration, the RSA can make a vital and unique contribution to civic capacity.” (Taken from thersa.org)

My favorites are

a) the professor Philip Zimbardo talk & animation on how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. Those who prefer prof. Zimbardo’s mustaches to the animation, see the video of his talk.

b) 21^st century enlightenment – more for philosophy buffs .

My second stumble for this week is a somewhat unusual but useful repository of material and data on the Balkans and South Caucasus.

Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso (OBC) is a research and electronic media centre devoted to social and political change in South-East Europe, Turkey and Caucasus. The OBC team, based in Rovereto (Trento – Italy), cooperates with a network of over 40 correspondents and local contributors to deliver daily online articles and in-depth analysis on these areas.

In the world dominated by English language and sources from the Anglo-Saxon world this is some refreshment. And it is in English, too for those of us that do not speak Italian. . Check out their latest addition: Postcards from Albania. Look at vibrant Tirana between the two wars and would not find its current strive for modernity surprising. (Thanks to The Economist Blog Eastern Approaches for this gem).

Finally, I share one source that I did not stumble upon. J. Aaron Presnall from The Jefferson Institute has sent the info some months ago. I have finally found some time to play VIDI-Dataviz only now.

I hope you will also find these resources useful