Public Policy Centers

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Public Policy Centers

Policy centers or think tanks (as they are often called) are an influential, diverse part of the U.S. not-for-profit sector. Those that contribute to discussions of science, technology, and ethics include organizations such as the liberal progressive Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland and the culturally conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC. (Bioethics centers, which also contribute to these discussions, constitute a special category of policy centers and are considered in a separate article.)

Historical Background

Policy centers have grown in number and significance since the foundation of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 1910 and the Institute for Government Research (IGR) in 1916, the first private organizations dedicated to analyzing public policy issues at the international and national levels, respectively. Subsequently IGR founder Robert Somers Brookings (1850–1932) established two supporting organizations: the Institute of Economics and a graduate school bearing his name. The Brookings Institution was formed when these three groups merged in 1927.

Both the Carnegie Endowment (with a staff of 100 and operating expenses of more than $19 million) and the Brookings Institution (with a staff of 275 and expenses of about $40 million) are still going strong, and have been joined by roughly 100 active think tanks in the Washington, DC, area.

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