The 2010 Global Go To Think Tank Rankings marks the fourth edition of what has now become an annual report. The Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the International Relations Program, University of Pennsylvania has created a process for ranking think tanks around the world. It is the first comprehensive ranking of the world’s top think tanks, based on a worldwide survey of close to 1500 scholars, policy makers, journalists and regional and subject area experts. The think tank index has been described as the insider’s guide to the global marketplace of ideas. All 6480 think tanks in the world were contacted and encouraged to participate in this year’s nominations process. For this ambitious global project, I have assembled a panel of over 250 experts from around the world, across the political spectrum and from every discipline and sector to help nominate and select public policy research centers of excellence for 2010. This group of peers and experts were asked to nominate and then rank regional or global centers of excellence that they felt should be recognized for producing rigorous and relevant research, publications and programs in one or more substantive areas of research.
The Global Go To Think Tank Rankings was launched in 2006 in response to the never-ending requests that I received from journalists, scholars and government officials to provide a list of the leading think tanks in a particular country or region of the world. When I first designed the project it was intended to identify some of the leading think tanks in the world in an attempt to answer these inquiries in a more systematic fashion. Over the last years the process has been refined and the number of institutions and individuals involved in the project has grown steadily.
The primary objective of the rankings is to recognize some of the leading public policy think tanks in the world and highlight the important contributions these organizations are making to governments and civil societies around the world. In five short years the Global Go To Index has become an authoritative source for the top public policy research institutes in the world. Last year’s Report was launched at a briefing at the United Nations University in New York and at the Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington DC. Over 225 diplomats, foundations and think tanks attended the meeting at the UN and over 100 print and electronic media outlets featured the findings of the study.
Contained in this Report are the results of the 2010 Global Go To Think Tank Rankings. Also included in this report is a summary of the major trends and issues that think tanks face across the globe. These trends were identified through our annual survey of think tanks and interviews with the staff of think tanks and civil society organizations in every region of the world.
Every year we try to respond systematically to comments and suggestions for how we might improve the nomination and rankings process but this year we devoted considerable time and energy to evaluating the entire process. Based on the findings of the evaluation and the other input we received for how to improve the quality and representativeness of the rankings we instituted several changes. Specifically, we made some minor changes to the wording of the nomination and rankings criteria so the meaning was clearer, launched an aggressive outreach effort in Asia, Latin America, Africa and MENA and proposed a set of options for changing the process for the Expert Panel to consider. After careful consideration of how to organize the nominations and rankings process we settled on a mixed approach that was explained in the letter I sent out to every institution in August 2010. This change resulted in turning the process on its head by having an open nominations process in which all 6480 think tanks were invited to submit nominations, rather than having the Expert Panel develop the initial slate of institutions to be ranked as we had done in previous years. The changes dramatically increased the levels of participation from the regions listed above and greatly improved the quality and representativeness of the universe of institutions that were nominated this year. The fact that individuals and organizations from 120 countries participated in this year’s nominations and rankings process is a clear testament to the success of these efforts.
While this year’s selection process is greatly improved, a number of qualifications are still in order. First and foremost, the significant differences between the levels of development and resources in the world continue to contribute to certain regions being underrepresented on the top 50 think tanks in the world list. We suspect that this has to do with the relatively small number of think tanks in developing countries, their underdeveloped capacity and the limited resources available to these organizations. The unfortunate reality is that there are simply more and better-funded think tanks in the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) countries. In addition, the dominant role these countries play in world politics and the influence they exert over political, economic and social thinking is reflected in the global prominence of their think tanks. That being said, the real story is not what organizations make it on the list of the Top 50 think tanks in the world but the ones who make it on the list for the top think tanks in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Eastern and Central Europe.
Despite our best efforts to consult widely and create a rigorous and inclusive process, we cannot eliminate all bias from the selection of the top think tanks in the world. We fully recognize that personal, regional, ideological, and disciplinary biases may have been introduced into the nomination and selection process by some of those consulted for this study. We are confident, however, that our efforts to create a detailed set of selection criteria, an open and transparent
process, and an increase in the participation from underrepresented regions of the world has
served to insulate the nomination and selection process from serious problems of bias and underrepresentation.
It is also important to note that US think tanks (see the list of the top 50 Think Tanks in the US) were not included in the universe of institutions considered for the Top Think Tanks Worldwide list because we felt their inclusion would have a distorting effect on the global rankings. By organizing the process in this way, we were able to further highlight the lesser-known think tanks in other regions of the world.
Finally, we should point out that the data collection and research for this project was conducted without the benefit of field research, a budget or a staff.
Despite these limitations, I am confident that the international experts group and peer nomination and selection process that was constituted for this study has enabled us to create the most authoritative list of high performance think tanks in the world.
The entire report is available here
2010 Global Go to ThinkTank Report
(Source: GoToThinkTank.com)
