The role of think-tanks amidst political uncertainty

Enrique Mendizabal

Thank you, thank you for joining us. Good evening, welcome to Chatham House and to this public event, which marks the beginning of the “On Think Tanks” Annual Conference, which is back in person after a few years of doing things online, so we’re quite excited.

My name is Enrique Mendizabal. I’m the Founder and Director of On Think Tanks, and we have a great panel today, but I want to start by saying that this is a conversation, it’s on the record, so no Chatham House Rule, I believe. There’s going to be a, you know, a section of this conversation where we’re going to hear from our speakers, our guests, but there’s going to be plenty of time for Q&A, but not just Q&A, we like to hear what you have to say and what you think about this subject of “The Role of Think Tanks Amid Political Uncertainty.”

At the end of the event, which is just one hour, we’re going to have a reception upstairs, so you’re welcome to join and keep the conversation going for a bit longer. I mean, I would say for as long as you want, but a bit longer, there are a few pubs around the corner.

So, I’ll say something very briefly about the OTT conference and the subject of today, before I ask our panels to – panel members to introduce themselves and we go straight into it. The On Think Tanks conference, we want it to be a fun space for think tankers, as well as others in this space, to reflect on what this is all about, you know, this job is about.

A former boss of mine, Simon Maxwell, Former Director of ODI, used to say that it was – being a Director was the greatest job in the world, but it was very hard. It was, you know, an impossible job, and I think this is – it’s a challenge to run an organisation like this and to work in an organisation can sometimes be a challenge, too. But I think it’s quite rewarding, and at OTT, we like to ask ourselves challenging questions.

This issue of political uncertainty is a challenging question, but it’s not something that caught us by surprise. We run a survey every year, my colleague, Andrea Baertl and Stephanie Nicolle publish a report, the state of the sector report, based on that survey and our public open think tank directory. And when we asked the think tank leaders around the world what was their main concern, besides funding, which is usually what they say, besides funding – or actually more important than funding, because, you know, it was mentioned in different ways throughout the survey, was political instability or political uncertainty. It was affecting the – it had been affecting them over the past year, and they expected it was going to continue to affect them in this coming year. But I think it’s also an observation, I think all of us probably are observing things being a little bit uncertain than they used to. Maybe it’s our impression, you – I hope you guys can help us decide on that.

But I’m going to start by giving you, sort of, an image of what I think of political uncertainty, and it’s – I’m from Peru, and the Peruvian politics have had six Presidents in six years, and I believe the current average lifespan for a Minister, Secretary of State level, in Peru is three days. And this has been going on for about two years, you know, even with two Presidents, over the last two and a half years. So, three to four to five days mostly, and I think that probably illustrates what I mean by political uncertainty.

But I also think about what think tanks can do, and I go back to a book that I always refer to, Jeffrey Puryear, Thinking Politics, he was writing about think tanks in Chile in the 1970s and 80s, and I really recommend it. It’s, like, incredibly cheap on Amazon if you get it online. I think it should be a lot more expensive. But he says that the biggest contribution think tanks made in the transition of democracy between the 80s and 90s in Chile, even though the 1990s government was pretty much made up of think tankers, he said the main contribution wasn’t intellectual or psychological, because throughout the 80s, think tanks organised events that allowed the opposition to join and discuss and relearn how to debate without fighting and dividing itself.

And so that is what helped build the coalitions that then brought about democracy. You know, it’s simplifying the story, but I always thought that was an interesting. And it’s not about writing papers and publishing them and advocating for policy change. It was about the relationship that had to exist in the political system, so I think they contributed towards reducing that uncertainty and that instability. So, with that in mind, I’m going to ask our panel to, you know, sort of, lead us through this conversation about what’s going on now. So, instead of me giving you a long description of your bios, why don’t we start…?

Erica Schoder

I will start with a very short description.

Enrique Mendizabal

Yeah.

Erica Schoder

I am Erica Schoder, and I’m the Executive Director of the R-Street Institute. We are a multidisciplinary think tank based in Washington, D.C.

Dr Jai Asundi

I’m Jai Asundi. I’m the Executive Director of the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy. We’re based in India, our head office is in Bangalore. We also have an office in New Delhi, and we’re currently working on three grand challenges, as I would like to call it. One is on our clean energy transition, second one is on clean air for all, and the third one we’re working on is what we call sustainable secure futures, and with all of this, we are trying to use it – do it using digital transformations also as part of that, and really happy to be here and thank you for inviting me and making me part of this panel.

Enrique Mendizabal

Thanks, Jai.

Bernice Lee

Hi, I’m Bernice Lee. I’m the Hoffmann Distinguished Fellow for Sustainability here at Chatham House. Yes, I’m from the home team here, and also, I’m grateful to be here today because it gave me a chance to reflect on my unfortunately really long stints in different think tanks, thinking that actually, I started my first job down the road in IISS as a Research Fellow, like, in 1997. And from then, I moved on to different sets of career that ended up here, being – you know, running the Energy Environment Programme here, running the Global Economy and Finance Programme here, as well, as well as stints in the UN and the World Economic Forum. So, for me, it’s a particular pleasure to have opportunity to reflect on changes over the years, whether things have changed or not, but also what else can we do, given what we have today?

Enrique Mendizabal

Thank you. So, I’m going to start by asking our panel to give us, you know, in their own words, what does political instability look like, in your own contexts, and what do you think think tanks can do – and how do you think this affects think tanks? So, each one will give us their, sort of, segment on this, and then we’ll go onto conversation and then invite you to share your own views, as well. So, would you like to start…

Erica Schoder

Absolutely.

Enrique Mendizabal

…Erica? Thank you.

Erica Schoder

Thank you so much, and it’s an absolute pleasure to be here with all of you tonight. I’m going to dive right in. Lack of trust. This is what political uncertainty looks like in the United States today. Lack of trust in our institutions, from Congress to the judiciary, lack of trust in our elections, and in the political process itself. This lack of trust creates a doom loop of uncertainty and instability.

Now, no matter where we are in the globe tonight, we can see evidence of a lack of trust all around us. We can see and we can feel how it has infiltrated not just our political discourse, but our individual relationships. So, the question becomes, how do we build trust as individuals, as organisations and as a sector? I’m going to suggest that we do three things better: credibility, conflict and collaborations.

So, let me first start with credibility. You, I and everyone that knows the work of a think tank understands that credibility is the core to our value proposition, and we all know that think tanks do a lot of thinking, not just about public policy, but also about what makes us credible and trustworthy, and we have built a solid foundation in the sector. We know that we need to have credible governance and structures. We know that we need to have credible internal controls that keep us independent. We know that we need to have credible scholars and think tankers who work for us.

But let me take this idea of credibility a little bit further and suggest that we need to behave credibly. We can’t simply be credible organisations and hope that people notice. We have to demonstrate it, and in order to do this, we can’t pretend that we are disinterested parties, disinterested observers, in the political process. Our organisations are made up of human beings, of people who are passionate about building a better future.

So, let’s leverage this. We need to be forthright about the diversity of ideas that inform our organisation’s vision for the future, our ideologies, our values, our principles, our norms. When everyone understands what we will hold ourselves accountable to, this builds trust, but we can go further. As organisations, internally, we need to demonstrate our independence through the choices that we make every day. We need to be transparent about how we make decisions and transparent about those decisions, particularly when we make mistakes, which we all do, and when we change our minds, which we should do when faced with new evidence. When everyone understands how we will hold ourselves accountable, this builds even more trust.

Second, we need to strengthen our ability to have healthy conflict. Without a safe space to lay out our perspectives, our ideologies, our experiences, we as individuals can’t talk freely about our ideas, and we start to self-censor, and we start to lean into our polarised echo chambers. Instead, we need to have meaningful discourse to help us understand the boundaries and limitations of our own perspectives and biases in order to build better ideas together. Now, this starts internally within our organisations. We must build a culture of trust. We have to prioritise spaces to have trust-based dialogue, and we have to build in the accompanying norms to support those conversations.

Beyond the cultural benefits of building trust, this simply helps us fulfil our mission. Evidence-based ideas are the coin of our realm. If we can’t talk about ideas, we can’t properly think about ideas, we can’t test them, we can’t make them stronger. So, investing in this capacity to have healthy conflict also helps us come to better policy solutions.

Third, we need to build better collaborations, and to build better collaborations, we have to find common ground, common ground in an increasingly volatile and complex world. Our civic spaces have diminished, and with that, too, has the opportunity to have healthy civil discourse. Now, think tanks have a unique role to play here in driving informed conversations. We are very good at leveraging complexity, we are very good at leaning into grey area, so let’s build on that.

But to do so will require a true test of our own ability to trust. We have to be willing to trust one another. We have to build relationships that are uncomfortable and that are challenging, and we have to build spaces to bring together strange bedfellows. We cannot let polarisation and partisanship get in the way of building good ideas together.

This is a strategy for active depolarisation, and as the world becomes more uncertain, we must fight the temptation to lean into our echo chambers, because in an echo chamber, we neither challenge nor are challenged, and this is the real threat in an era of uncertainty. So, to thrive in an uncertain time, we need credibility, healthy conflict and better collaborations. We have to build on our strongest asset, trust.

Enrique Mendizabal

Thank you. I’m going to challenge you on some of those.

Erica Schoder

Great.

Enrique Mendizabal

So, a healthy conflict that you alluded to. Jai, what does instability or uncertainty look like in your context and how…

Dr Jai Asundi

So…

Enrique Mendizabal

…do you think this affects think tanks or…?

Dr Jai Asundi

Yeah, so I will just, you know, give you – give a slightly more descriptive rather than a prescriptive notion of what can be done here, and for us, political uncertainty stems from two particular areas. One is in India we have a fairly federal structure, so you have the centre and then you have the states. There are subjects that are very state-specific, and then there are subjects that are very centre-specific, and we actually – given – as a think tank that’s working on energy climate, it actually transcends both these. I mean, there are – some of them are state subject, some of them are centre subjects.

But one of the advantages I think we do have in India is that we have a fairly strong bureaucracy, and a bureaucracy is something that remains irrespective of the political fluctuations. And I think that is something that I do believe has provided the necessary stability for some of the policies that we work on. And as an institution, we have been working with the bureaucracy more, working on certain policies while policies are driven by the politics, but many of them have remained, I would say, consistent over different political dispensations.

So, in that sense, I would say that we have been fairly fortunate, not like Peru, where things have been changing so often. So, from that perspective, I would say that we have been fairly lucky. Many of the work – things that we work on have been towards developing either clean energy strategies or looking at climate issues, and working with a bureaucracy that, irrespective of the fact that there’s one political dispensation or the other, we have been seeing a consistency in the approach because I think, pretty much, some of the ideas are universal now. It’s not something that one side believes completely the other way than the other.

So, from that perspective, I would say that’s where it comes, and so then the question becomes what do we as a think tank do in this particular environment? And I think it’s very important, the words that I use are typically the word like “rigour,” and I think Erica talks about credibility, and I, kind of, use the word “rigour” because we need to produce outputs or produce pieces that are rigorous, that can test – that can stand the test of other people checking whether you’ve done a fairly good piece of work. It is very hard, testing quality is always – people say, “quality, quality, quality,” but what does that really mean?

So, from a think tank perspective, I think it’s very important that you can be challenged so that your assumptions, your – the way you calculate, the way you do whatever you do, should be transparent, available for others to check, test, and say, “Yes, this is – here are where the assumptions fail, here are where the assumptions are fine, and if these assumptions change, what happens?” And I think that’s part of the rigour that you have to bring as a think tank to the debate, to building – I would again, you know, support her in saying yes, that’s how you build the culture of trust.

And finally, I think one of the things that we are working on very actively now is to – is what we call the ecosystem approach. How do we build an ecosystem of entities that can work with us, may not be working on exactly the same things, but build that broader ecosystem so that we can come to solutions? I don’t believe we have these solutions. We don’t think we have the solution, but I think if we work together, we will be able to come up with a solution towards some of the challenges or problems that we face in the subcontinent or in the world today.

Enrique Mendizabal

Thank you. I think it was some – to some extent, you alluded to the conflict issue. So, you put your ideas out there and you allow them to be challenged, to some extent you’re inviting for that healthy conflict…

Dr Jai Asundi

Yes.

Enrique Mendizabal

…to be had in public, which sometimes is hard for think tanks, right, to say, “Well, my idea – it’s my idea, I think it’s a good idea, but maybe – I’m open for a debate,” right? The – it’s hard to do that, right? But, I mean, that’s about showing others that this is okay, that it’s okay to make a mistake, and you don’t have to spin it and pretend that nothing happened and…

Dr Jai Asundi

Right, there’s nothing definite ab – I mean, as Scientists, we know there’s uncertainties, there are bounds, and these uncertainties should be explored because you want to make sure that the solution you are proposing is not so close to an edge where if your – if a situation pushes you over the edge, then you go into a really bad place. And that’s why you want to be in a place where, irrespective of being pushed in either direction, you are still in a fairly good place and you’re not being pushed off, and I think that is the approach. And I think there are terms that other think tanks use, that’s called “robust decision-making.” I think something of that sort needs to be adopted, especially in these uncertain environments.

Enrique Mendizabal

Right, thank you. Bernice?

Bernice Lee

Well, you know, I was, sort of, sitting here thinking again what I wanted to say about uncertainty, and then I thought, I don’t really want to geek out too much on what is uncertainty. What I, kind of, do know is that it was always uncertain, if you work on areas, and I do, which is I would call the intersection between climate action, geopolitics, and trade.

So, in some sense, there are obviously quite – I wouldn’t say it’s very new, but there is definitely a refreshed fetishisation about geopolitics that we see today that also means that instead of going along merrily and then analysing different components of these pieces that I work on, it becomes a conversation stopper. You – in fact, you know, you use geopolitics as a reason to, basically, stop talking and stop engaging, because it’s a given now that something bad is going to happen between China and the US, and that is really going to be everything. I mean, I went to South by Southwest recently in Texas, and I was utterly surprised by the fact that every single conversation about anything in the US is about China. You would have thought that there would be no policy in China, sorry, in the US anymore without China, and everything from cybersecurity to climate change, definitely.

So, what I worry about right now is the fact that – is not just the fact that there is political uncertainty, but the fact is that we now manufacturing the false sense of security about a prediction about the future, despite the fact that it is, in fact, uncertain. So, we – what we have instead is we get lulled into a false sense of security about what we know about the future, despite the fact that nonlinear changes is, in fact, or has in fact, been the norm.

And I work on climate change, so you wouldn’t be surprised for me to say that obviously, high impact, low probability events are increasingly becoming the norm. In fact, all these things that are supposed to happen well within 100 years are happening fast and furious, and so any – in any event, all we do know is that all we could do best in some ways to prepare for the last crisis. I mean, we’re still preparing for the shoe bomber, right? We’re still doing liquids today, like ten years later, almost, in a way that, you know, we now have machines finally catch up with airport liquids.

So, the point is that we can only ever prepared for the last crisis. Now what does that really means? What it means is that given the level of uncertainty and given the fact that there are big geopolitical issues of the day, and I think that all of you would notice that I’m not talking about a particular country, even though I live in this country, because you all read the news, you know, that we just have the most long-term handover, in some ways, of a monarch ever, while at the same time having had probably most number of Prime Ministers in the last year. So, obviously, these are the contexts in which we live.

Now, it’s easy for us to be fascinated about our own polarisation, post-truth, what’s the third thing again? I’m thinking of Moisés Naím’s three Ps: post-truth, polarisation and populism. The reality is that the space for debate is being closed down everywhere in the world as a result of, I would say, partly, you know, important politics getting in the way, but at the same time, unless we start fighting for the space for open debates, regardless of where we are, and all the thing that we value, fact-based exchanges, discourses, evidence, etc., could well be put aside.

So, last but certainly not least, last week, I was in Japan, I was talking about trust, and I – in fact, I was, sort of – I was trying to fight the geeks, really, ‘cause they were talking about data being the new oil. I was like, “No, no, no, trust is the new, oil is the most traded commodity, if you work on climate trade and geopolitics.” I think that we are in a world where we are juxtaposing between what trust really means for the future, on the one hand, and on the other hand, unless we start trusting, despite the fact that we may have fewer reasons to do so than before, we may not be able to come up with the kind of solutions that we know we need in cham – in order to deal with issues that I care a lot about, which is that of delivering global public goods, whether we’re talking about climate security, energy security.

And of course, it’s not surprising that as issues become important – I would like to think that the issue that I work on, climate and energy, are becoming very mainstream, it is therefore not surprising that it gets very caught up with the politicisation of the day, the anti-wokeism in the US and ESG, all the way from obviously rightly energy pricing and stuff. And so, maybe my answer to what we should do is rather boring, which is that, ultimately, it is rather mum and apple pie. And I’m looking at my colleague, Patricia Lewis, who told me that I shouldn’t use that phrase, motherhood and apple pie, but nonetheless, I think that doing the right thing is the only right thing to do.

What do I mean by that? In a way, perhaps it’s not surprising that there’s a lot of doubt about the do-gooding agenda, because there is a lot of hypocrisy. Sometimes it’s not always rigorous, the way do-gooding happens, in – let’s say in my area, which is on energy climate, and therefore, in some ways making sure that it is transparent, it is accountable, perhaps is the only answer. In the same way that if, indeed, we have yellow shirts demonstrating in France about energy prices, we have to do better, too, in terms of coming up with policies that really answer questions of the day beyond our immediate concern, which, of course, is about, like, the cost of living, it’s about, you know, long-term happiness and all sorts of things.

So, my conclusion, therefore, is that political uncertainty is a given. We – I worry about the fetishisation of certain aspects of it that stop us from thinking, but ultimately, perhaps not surprisingly, trust is an issue, but we can try and build it, and at the same time, doing the right thing is the only right thing. And it is a boring and earnest conclusion that I’m sorry that I leave you with, but it’s okay, we’ll have a glass of wine later to get over how boring I am. Thank you.

Enrique Mendizabal

We’ve only got 26 minutes or 20 minutes into the conversation, so we’re not leaving – you’re not leaving us with that yet. Thank you. So, let me go – the last – one of the last things you said or the first thing you said is about this is not new, right? And also, you’re suggesting that it’s likely to be more uncertain in the future, rather than more certain. You know, you’d like to believe that it was more certain in the past than it’s going to be more certain in the future, but what you’re suggesting is that everything points at things becoming more uncertain in the future. But is there anything – so would you agree, Jai and Erica, would you agree that things are – so that’s just a given?

Dr Jai Asundi

I just feel that…

Enrique Mendizabal

It’s just a…

Dr Jai Asundi

…the nature of uncertainty changes, yes.

Enrique Mendizabal

Okay.

Dr Jai Asundi

What you take for granted, no longer, and then some things which you thought would be very uncertain is far more certain. I mean, just – it just changes. I think that it’s a click of – sometimes some issues are – just change over time, and that’s all I feel about it. I – it’s hard to measure one against the other.

Enrique Mendizabal

Yeah.

Erica Schoder

I would say that it’s arguable that we are moving into an era of more and more uncertainty. Just looking at the global picture from deglobalisation to, you know, moving from a unipolar world, the climate, we have so many pieces of this complex puzzle, so many uncertainties building. And if you just take artificial intelligence, just one piece of the puzzle, there’s so much radical uncertainty wrapped up in that, that I don’t see that resolving anytime soon. So, I do believe we are heading into a world that is more and more uncertain.

Enrique Mendizabal

Sure, and Bernice, do you want to go?

Bernice Lee

Yeah, I just want to pick up on the AI point, actually. I said it to a couple of friends last night, something I picked up from, sorry, Galactic – I’ve forgotten what it was now, but more importantly, it was basically asking ChatGPT to come up with a set of four scientific facts in a humorous fashion, that – in the manner of Douglas Adams. And it was smart, it was clever, and I certainly feel that my job is at risk after reading those.

And the more important point perhaps is that we now not only have to trust ourselves, we have to trust a different intermediator now, because we know that it hallucinates, we know that we can’t – and I certainly believe that there is a role, and in fact, I would invest in it if there was someone who would tell me where to invest, in the role of a trusted verifier of what may come out of a machine, machine intelligence. And I certainly think that that is the next generation of think tankery now, is how do we not only absorb, deal with, use, to our benefit, but also, you know, defend against the dark arts that will come with it? But also, at the same time figure out what the verifier, verification, mechanism could and should be doing, any of the anti-black box stuff, and how do we mediate it with humans?

So, I, kind of, feel that this is a new dimension that I didn’t want to bring in earlier, but since you mentioned AI, thank you, I feel that perhaps in – on this occasion of this conference, given the fast progress that we saw, it would be really great opportunity to think through some of these elements around uncertainty, given we now have new actors that we don’t really understand anymore.

Enrique Mendizabal

When I started looking into think tanks some time ago, so one of the things that I liked – what I particularly liked about the literature about think tanks is that when you looked at their history, it suggested that around times of crises, of big crises, think tanks that came out of those crises stronger were the ones who were successful at explaining to the public what had happened. So, whether it was around the First World War or Second World War, even around, you know, recently in the UK, Brexit, right? So, these think tanks that, you know – didn’t try to change the policy right away, but said, “This is what’s going on.”

The Institute for Government, I remember, at our last conference in Geneva, presented, you know, the idea was we’re not there to tell the government what to do, decisions have to be made, but we were often called by government to help them understand what was going on, right, because they themselves were not fully aware of the ramifications of the processes. So, it’s about making – helping make sense of uncertainty. Do you think it’s becoming harder? Is it harder for a think tank like Chatham House or others to say – to explain to the public or to your specialised audiences, you know, what is going on, to give them a feeling that things, you know, things are okay, that things are a little bit certain than they felt, so they can make decisions and they can make – take risks?

Bernice Lee

Well, if I can take the two separately. The first is that I actually think that the reason why, in some ways, established think tanks, I would say, I don’t know whether there’s a really better way of explaining to the world what happened, do better in crises because, in times of crisis, money is scarce, you want the safety. So, people tend to support people and brands that they understand and trust already, and it goes for the trust point.

In terms of whether or not it gets harder or not, I mean, I can only imagine that we have to evolve with time and evolve with all the conditions and goodness that we need to bring with it, which is about rigour, about credibility. And the key, I think, in the context of political strife and the three Ps, indeed, that we cannot take any of it for granted. We have to keep doing it. You know, it’s not good enough that we proved ourself once, we have to keep doing it, and it’s really tiresome, but you know what? We have no choice because the politics will not get easier just by us taking it for granted that we’ve already been established.

So, I think that the context around which we explain things, we need to work on as much as we need to work on the context of the explanation themselves, and now, that would mean that more work. And I certainly think that we need more people who would fund core support for think tanks as a result, because the transaction cost of doing businesses has definitely gone up. All of the stuff, the three Cs we talk about, all the transaction comments about making things happen, collaboration…

Enrique Mendizabal

That takes time and money…

Bernice Lee

…thinking…

Enrique Mendizabal

…and…

Bernice Lee

That’s right, all the…

Enrique Mendizabal

…building trust takes time and money. It’s not about a specific policy, right?

Erica Schoder

Right.

Enrique Mendizabal

It’s about the long-term gain. Erica?

Erica Schoder

Oh, I was just going to add one more thing on that thread, that I think traditionally, we think of our audience as decisionmakers and policymakers, but that’s an interesting idea that we are broadening our audience to the general public, because I don’t think all think tanks think of their primary audience as the general public.

Bernice Lee

No.

Enrique Mendizabal

But decisionmakers are often part of the general public, yeah.

Erica Schoder

Okay, sure, hmmm hmm, right.

Enrique Mendizabal

And so, you know, so we like to separate them, but they’re also, you know, just regular people who consume the same amount of information, right, and they also not – don’t know what’s going on, often.

Erica Schoder

They’re definitely influenced by the general public. We just use different channels to access…

Enrique Mendizabal

Yeah, of course.

Erica Schoder

…them, right?

Enrique Mendizabal

Jai?

Dr Jai Asundi

I – you know, I agree with the aspect about the need for think tanks to be able to communicate to different types of audiences in different ways, and I think the way we communicate with policymakers is very different from the way we would like to communicate with the general public. And it need not be in those dense reports or policy briefs that we think about, but it could be in the form of events or any other type of, you know, communication where we can engage with the public a lot more.

And in some of the areas that we work in, especially on issues around air quality, it is a public good and it is something where public action is required for any solution to work. I mean, I don’t think any government will be able to do anything if the public is not behind it, and I think that’s a very important place for communication to address how the public – I mean, the public should be able to understand what you put out. So, one is it doesn’t mean you dumb it down, but at least treat the public with respect and let them figure out ways in which they can explore.

Because I think in – what – everyone calls it the information age, right? Everyone can Google, everyone can search, everyone can read papers that are already available. I don’t think we need to tell them how they should think when they read a particular paper or particular publication, but how they should critique or critically analyse anything that they read, so that when they come back to you, they should see that, oh, you are taking into account all those criticisms out there when you are putting out. And to me, that is what rigour is really all about.

Enrique Mendizabal

Yeah, and it’s interesting, you also alluded to this, sort of, building the – sort of, building your audience or building your – you know, your…

Dr Jai Asundi

Ecosystem.

Enrique Mendizabal

Yeah, exactly, this is not just influencing policy, but building the institutions that are going to make those choices later on, or to some extent, you’re saying build the – build an intelligent consumer for your work, right? Not just have them take you for gran – take you for what you say and accept whatever you tell them, but, you know, make sure they have the capacity to judge that what you’re saying is rigorous or not.

I’m going to the audience, both online and here, but let me start with one question to them and to your own comment, because you talk about – Erica, you talk a lot about – you started by saying that “We don’t trust anybody,” and I, kind of, feel that way, you know. It’s a – it’s hard to say who do we trust, like, what individual, what organisation, like, truly trust that we would say, you know, whatever they say, you know? You know, there are some, but for – you know, for most people, if we don’t trust Politicians, so, you know, in some countries, we don’t trust parties at all, we don’t trust Politicians, we don’t trust the media, we don’t trust civil society organisations. There’s a spider just coming there, yeah, sorry.

Erica Schoder

Ah. Gently, okay, great.

Enrique Mendizabal

That’s great. That was very cool, very cool. So, why would think tanks somehow be immune to this lack of trust? You know, what – you know, are they not part of that group that we don’t trust? You know, we don’t trust the – you know, those in the public space trying to change policies. Why do we try – why will we try – why would we trust think tanks and how can they differentiate themselves? And maybe the audience has an answer for that. Shall we go first? Sorry, I saw your hand up, did…?

Hilde Rapp

No, that’s fine, it doesn’t mean I have to go first. I’m happy to…

Enrique Mendizabal

Do you want to answer that question? Yeah, go ahead.

Hilde Rapp

Okay.

Enrique Mendizabal

And then…

Hilde Rapp

Hilde Rapp, Centre for National Peacebuilding and member of Chatham House. I’m very intrigued by the spider, because I think that’s actually what we all are, we are spiders sitting in a web, and, you know, we should really be multidirectional and have our feelers out in all directions and know that there’s actually no certainty, that’s an illusion. And the question is, how do we relate to what moves somewhere in our web? How do we build relationships, how we negotiate that?

And so, you know, you’ve been facing inward particularly in your talk, and you’ve been facing more outward, and you’ve been, kind of, facing more on the global scene, as in your paper that you did last year, which was brilliant, where you looked at the challenges we face. So, it’s a different question, how you relate to an NGO on the ground in a developing – so-called developing country, or how do you relate to a troublesome Politician, or how you relate to a member of your – if we are your audience, your audience? And I don’t want to go on any more, but I think these are big questions that we all have to ask ourselves when we do this work. But I think I will return the mic to somebody else who doesn’t…

Enrique Mendizabal

Oh, I like that – the image of, you know, building your web to some extent so that you can capture as much information as you can about your environment and decide how to respond to it, right?

Hilde Rapp

With all that information.

Enrique Mendizabal

Yeah.

Jim Spencer

There’s been quite a lot of concern over – in the UK and in the US over…

Enrique Mendizabal

Sorry, could you say who you are?

Jim Spencer

Sorry.

Enrique Mendizabal

Can…?

Jim Spencer

Jim Spencer, member of Chatham House – over think tanks which may not necessarily have academic rigour at their heart and are effectively lobbying organisations which are dressed up as think tanks. You’ve mentioned much on trust and on transparency. There’s a programme over here which tries to tackle funding lines and who’s actually funding it, and whether that is causing ins – political instability or exacerbating it. And I just wondered if you had thoughts about how the think tank community could police itself.

Enrique Mendizabal

Thank you.

Jim Spencer

Or regulate it.

Enrique Mendizabal

Thank you, that’s a good point, because you’ve talked, I think, about individual think tanks, but I keep thinking what about the whole community, right? To some extent, think tanks are affected by public perception about think tanks, not just, you know…

Erica Schoder

Yeah, if the public actually knows what a think tank is.

Enrique Mendizabal

Yeah, that’s another…

Erica Schoder

Let’s…

Enrique Mendizabal

There’s a very good survey…

Erica Schoder

I was waiting for [inaudible – 40:00].

Enrique Mendizabal

…by Cast From Clay, where they asked that question, you know, how many people actually know what a think tank is and can they name one? Sorry, do you want to respond to that and then we’ll go to…

Erica Schoder

Sure. So, I think that there is an international consensus more about transparency of donor sources. I think that’s what you’re talking about, donor data, more so than in the United States. In the United States, there’s still a raging political debate around freedom of speech and privacy issues. But aside from that, there – I actually think that the ideas that I’m talking about are behaving in a trustworthy manner and actually finding ways as a sector to measure that, finding ways – I know it’s a difficult – a more difficult proxy, because donor trust, donor sources, is a proxy for independence and rigour and quality. It’s just not a very good qual – proxy for independence and rigour and quality.

And so, I think that we can do better as a sector and it is behavioural. We need to demonstrate how we make decisions, the choices that we make every day, the trade-offs that we make when we choose funding sources, the, sort of, totality of our internal controls, and how we – not just the internal controls, but, sort of, how we demonstrate that our staff understand the dem – the internal controls. And I think that there have been some really interesting proposals around this, so, like, an independent audit. We, as think tanks in the United States, are – we undergo an independent financial audit, but we could potentially understan – or undergo more of a behavioural, sort of, internal controls audit, and I think there are some really interesting proposals on that.

Enrique Mendizabal

We’re going to be talking about that over the next couple of days. Here, over there, and then over here. Sorry, yeah, yes, you, sorry. Okay.

Sarah Wilson

Thank you so much. Sarah Wilson, I’m a student at Anglia Ruskin University, but in my day job I am also helping investors with ESG, and there is a real problem with ESG at the moment in that it’s being weaponised, and there is a lack of transparency about where the money is coming from. So, thank you for the last question about transparency and accountability, because there doesn’t appear to be much.

But I am deeply worried when I see academic research being weaponised by NGOs and think tanks, and alleged papers being passed off as real papers that are being peer reviewed and kicked to death. So, I just wonder if there ought to be some kind of code of conduct for think tanks that when they – say they’ve sponsored a paper from XYZ university, that we can really trust it, because of course, nobody believes in experts any longer. And the currency of expertise has been undermined significantly, hence the rise of populism, but on climate change in particular, whether it’s Exxon, Citizens United has been an absolute catastrophe for good free speech. Weaponised free speech, yes, absolutely, but I’m very worried about the role of research being subverted for really inappropriate ends, and I would just really be interested in your views.

Enrique Mendizabal

Does anyone want to respond to that, sort of, a code of conduct?

Bernice Lee

Well, I thought I’d go back to the, sort of, point around, you know, the boundary was never clear-cut, is it, really? It’s not a science. What I mean by that is that at some point, suggesting that maybe clean air is not a bad idea, someone may tell you that you’re advocating, and I’m kind of like, “Am I, really?” if I suggest that we may all want clean air, or for that matter, looking – I’m looking at my colleague here, world peace, is that advocacy?

Now, the point is that nowadays, apparently if you want world peace and clean air for people, you are now politicised. So, then, at some point, I mean, I’m going to be blunt, it is about common sense, but I would agree that in – for – in lack of anything better, let’s work on something that really helped. Yes, I tried to say, the trust is based – trust but verify, remember the famous phrase? You know, the verifier, the quality verifier, the trust verifier. I think it is incredibly important, and as a community, it’s definitely something that we need to take seriously, and not be silly, as I said, about the fact that there’s someone telling you that clean air is good, you tell them that they’re advocating. What are they advocating? Good health, is that an advocacy? I think at some point a bit of common sense would be good for us, as well.

Now, having said all of this, money is obviously a problem and therefore, to – we should all strive to do better on that front. There is just not even a question mark, right? So, to the extent possible, we have to collectively go for more transparency. There are countries where there’s no tradition of independent thinking, so money is how you think. We’re lucky enough to live in a country, certainly to – well, to a certain extent, I thought I was, I hope I still am, in a country where, you know, where the money – the mixture of money does not determine what you say. But nonetheless, it is itself, something that we have to fight for and not take for granted.

Enrique Mendizabal

Before we go – so, on the question of – because a couple of you have asked about, sort of, the – have talked about the sector and a code of conduct, and, you know, some basic standards, to some extent, but a question I have is about that – the definition of that sector. I mean, we talk about think tanks in a context where we – you don’t know who is who and who is doing what. Of course, what – you know, there’s no legislation that says, “This is a think tank, this is an NGO.” A think tank is a self-la – you know, you self-label as a think tank, right?

I always say, but maybe I’m – you know, I’m wrong, but Chatham House doesn’t have on their website think tanks, it’s, I think “research centre,” but it’s just that you choose to say “think tank,” or to belong to this community of think tanks. So, deciding who is in and who is out, in itself, is going to be a difficult exercise, and deciding, you know, what is okay transparency and what’s not okay transparency is – you know, might be an equally complicated one, as well.

Erica Schoder

I would love to build on that because I think that is the question. I think that a think tank can – we can define some core attributes which are evidence-based public policy ideas put into the political process while, staying independent, you know. So, the – we have the evidence-based and the independence, and this is the core of our struggle and our challenge as think tanks, and it’s how do we set those boundaries? And we all do it differently, and that’s what I think we need to see into, we need to put those on the table. How are we setting our boundaries as think tanks in making sure that there’s rigour in the evidence-based public policy solutions or ideas, however we are inspiring or informing or influencing public policy in the process? And how are we staying independent from all of our various stakeholders, not just donors and political actors, a variety of stakeholders, while we are doing this?

Enrique Mendizabal

Well, the response is because in some countries think tanks are part of…

Erica Schoder

Right, exactly.

Enrique Mendizabal

…another organisation, you can’t escape that reality.

Erica Schoder

Exactly, and I think in some – I know in some countries, think tanks are partisan. In the United States, we are strictly nonpartisan, not that everyone adheres to that, and I think that sort of behaviour we need to actually understand why a think tank is making the decisions that they are. Are they actually acting out of political expediency? We need to see into that.

Enrique Mendizabal

So, transparency not just about money, but maybe about…

Erica Schoder

Absolutely.

Enrique Mendizabal

…your ideological…

Erica Schoder

The boundaries.

Enrique Mendizabal

…affiliations…

Erica Schoder

Right.

Enrique Mendizabal

…and connections, your networks, the way you do things. Let me – oh, sorry. No, it was you first, sorry, and then you.

Dr Nadaud

Thank you. Hello, Dr Nadaud. I’m a member of Chatham House. The panel was talking about how these are unprecedented times of uncertainty, and I would argue that we’ve faced, as a world, far more, or equally uncertain times. What is different is the pace of change, rapid technologies, you know, communication, travel, dissemination of ideas. And so, the question is the traditional think tank process is to do research and issue papers, there’s now obviously blogs and webpages, but how can think tanks reimagine what they do to innovate so that they can keep up with the rapid pace of change we’re facing today?

Enrique Mendizabal

Do you want to…?

Dr Jai Asundi

I’m not – okay, you’re…

Enrique Mendizabal

You’re in the field – Jai, you’re in the – you work in technology, in transformation…

Dr Jai Asundi

Yeah, it…

Enrique Mendizabal

…you advise the government…

Dr Jai Asundi

Yeah, at the bleeding edge, as we call it. So, you know, actually, it’s very interesting ‘cause I’d like to, you know, dovetail the previous question on academic work being weaponised, right? I don’t think I ever read a paper from 20/30 years ago that didn’t say that this work was sponsored by XYZ corporation, so it’s been around for a long time, it’s not that.

But I don’t think, also, at the same time, the fact that three peer reviewers accepted the paper to be published in a publication means that that is the gold standard. I think there is an opportunity for people to respond to that particular piece of work, and I think that’s where the ecosystem matters. Because if there’s an ecosystem that can say that not only is – there’s a problem with the way the data is being cut around and, you know, you’re coming to a conclusion that you wanted to, based on cherry-picking your data, then that should be transparent in the way other people can do that.

So, which brings me to the question as to, how do think tanks evolve? And this is something that we’ve adopted in our organisation. We’ve gone – we’re trying to use what we would call the five steps, or the five levels of think tanks. So, the first step is the work that we’ve always been doing, producing peer reviewed work that other peers will say, “Yes, this is great work,” that’s level one. Level two is when a public entity, like a government or a public body will say, “Yes, this solution and idea has got legs. It’s something that we should explore.” The third one is when – third level is when someone says, “Yes, this is a great idea, can we do a pilot based on this particular idea?” And of course, the fourth level would be what we would call – you know, the ultimate in terms of our work is – it is adopted at a regional level. That is something – but then we don’t stop there, we say the level five is when we can actually measure changes on the ground.

So, for example, in our work on air quality, we’re saying can we measure, maybe in five years’ time, that air quality has indeed improved thanks to the efforts that we have – as a think tank have done? And what does it mean for us to be able to implement something at a regional or a broader level is that we can’t just be putting our papers out there and expecting somebody to pick it up from us. We would now have to work with a broader ecosystem, get more people involved. Who will take the idea and run along with us?

We may not do everything, but we’ll at least be the champions for that particular idea that others could then take on and move forward, because I don’t see producing a paper and just stopping right there is enough. And that’s – I think that is one of the pushbacks we got at some point in time, is that, yeah, so what if you just write a paper? It is lying on the desk of some bureaucrat or some entity, that nobody reads and maybe they read ten years later, and they’ll say, “Oh, that was a great paper.” That’s not good enough.

I think we have to figure out ways in which we can work with entities that will take our solutions and also it provides us feedback to saying that this thinking that we had was flawed because we obviously are operating in a very limited space. We need to broaden our horizons, understand the ecosystem better, understand the players better and understand how we can get the solutions that – and maybe even change the way we think about the world in that regard.

Enrique Mendizabal

Something that comes out of what you’ve just said, and also Erica and Bernice, is that paper is the least important thing, right? So, the – you know, all this time that has to be spent building trust, make – you know, making new connections and networks, keeping up with the – you know, changing context, keeping up with new information, new skills, you know, reaching out to new audiences, engaging in healthy conflict, you know, this is also part of what you do as a think tank, is – and is not projectised, right? It’s not easy to just put into a project that ends with the report. In fact, the paper – the report, is just one small bit of what you need to do to navigate through any kind of uncertainty and if it’s getting harder because it’s faster, it means you need to do all these things maybe more and faster, as well. It’s a big challenge for smaller organisations, certainly for the larger ones.

Dr Jai Asundi

As she said, you know, that’s the pitch for core support.

Enrique Mendizabal

Yeah, exactly. Sorry, there’s a comment here, yes, please.

Anneke Schmider

Great, thank you. I’m going to say – my name’s Anneke Schmider. I’m from the European University Institute, I’m saying that for diversity. I also have a day job at Chatham House, that’s for full transparency. I want to turn this on ourselves a little bit and be a bit provocative here, Chatham House, open record, I don’t mind.

I’m hearing things here that I think we hear at every university, I think we hear in every UN agency, I think we hear in a lot of other global agencies, you know, challenges of competition or donors or, you know, how do we get our work seen? I would like for the panel to reflect on some of the real strengths. Why – I mean, why are we all here? Why do we love think tanks? I love think tanks, I love Chatham House. I love European University Institute too, but I really love Chatham House, because, you know, it’s an opportunity to be at the leading age in a rigorous way, bringing in and actually engaging with policy and political ideas in a new way, with impact.

And this is the piece that I think that we should reflect on for ourselves as being a strength for think tanks, the engagement with policy, the deliberate engagement with policy, so valuable in the world that we are existing in now. And so, I’d like to change the title of this to The Important Role of Think Tanks Amidst Political Uncertainty, and perhaps some of the conversation that we’re having here now is about how we actually strengthen that role with greater transparency, with better institutional measures, with codes of conduct, and so on. I think that’s a really fruitful discussion for us to take forward. So, I’ve been very provocative in a very nice way, which is very Chatham House, also EUI, but I’d really like for us to end this on that, kind of, you know, very strong forward-looking sentiment. Thank you.

Enrique Mendizabal

Thanks. Will here, and then, I think we’re going to have to ask the panel to try to wrap up, but we have drinks and opportunity to have a continuous conversation.

Will Paxton

Okay, I’ll try and be quick. So, yeah, Will Paxton from an organisation called Kivu International. We’ve worked with a lot of think tanks around the world, including CSTEP at one point in the past. I’ll just second that, sort of, positive note. I mean, lots of challenges, but actually, the fact that so many organisations can define themselves as think tanks, the fact that they come in so many shapes and sizes, they can adapt very quickly, literally respond to a change in government overnight in a way many institutions can’t, is a positive thing about think tanks and political change, and lots of inst – other types of institution don’t have those upsides.

I just wanted to very quickly chuck in a – what I see as a dilemma. So, we still work with a lot of think tanks in lots of different contexts around the world, and I actually – I think the political uncertainty, I’m not sure, in some countries, it’s – the politics is very stable, actually. Peru is an extreme, but there’s a whole spectrum out there in terms of levels of political instability. The thing that really resonated, though, was the drift towards narrowing of civic space. So, it seems to me that you get – again, not everywhere, there are, sort of – there are chinks of light and positive, sort of, stories out there, but in general, that is something that comes up a lot in our work around the world, and it – that raises a big dilemma, which is really difficult for think tanks.

You – this is going to crudely oversimply it, but do you go, sort of, practical, lowkey, private, policy influencing behind the scenes, because that’s lower risk and you go with the grain of the, sort of, interests and political control that’s being asserted in those – in a particular context, or do you try and defend and promote civic debate and, sort of, democracy, essentially? And I – we see that in a very real way in think tanks, and where you go on that and how you make those judgments feels really critical for the future of lots of think tanks, too.

Enrique Mendizabal

Thank you, which is, sort of, what Jai was alluding to about building the institutions that would make those choices and those decisions. So, I want to get my timing right in my – for the first event I’ve moderated at Chatham House, so I will ask you to try to bring us to a close, so maybe reflect on what you’ve heard. You know, at the beginning, you made some recommendations about what think tanks can do in this context. Are there any new ideas, any new things you might want to consider? And not just thinking about your organisations, but maybe think about other think tanks in your context, those that are small, those that are maybe under resourced, those that are dealing with maybe one issue, those for whom the civic space maybe is closing rapidly, maybe those who are close to those actors in the extremes of the political debate or, you know, sort of, shouting match. Shall we do the opposite, so Bernice, do you want to start?

Bernice Lee

Oh, I didn’t think that I wanted to cheerlead for ourselves, but nonetheless, why not? What a privilege it has been to have the opportunity, obviously, to – you know, as think tankers, we understand what a privilege it is to – in fact, I just came from a meeting a UCL, so I want to quickly conclude on that, which asked us, you know, “Remind ourself of when you were a child, the first time you were told to draw a house from the top, and, you know, other than from where you’re standing, and remember that imagination that you need but also the knowledge that you ultimately accumulate over the years that enable you to be – literally draw the house from above.”

And my conclusion earlier on was that we need to do the right thing because it’s the only right thing to do. At the same time, it would strike me that if, indeed, the world takes more time to explain, and we need to take more time to explain where we’re coming from, then we need to work better at becoming better brokers of solutions together and better brokers of knowledge, as well, together. And so, the question is can we work better together so that we can crack all the nuts that we float out there, the trust nut, the funding nut, the core support, etc.? And I don’t see any option other than to say, well, if we can’t work better together as the brokers of future solutions and future order, then perhaps we, kind of, deserve to go obsolete against all the other less deserving competitors. But yet, at the same time, I just remembered that it’s on the record, but no, we will never deserve to be obsolete, but nonetheless, we need to work better to defend our own legitimacy and our own rigour and all of the above.

Enrique Mendizabal

Great, thank you. Jai?

Dr Jai Asundi

Yes, I’ll just leave with the thought that it’s – I mean, I don’t want to use the cliché term, it depends. I think it depends on the topic that you have in mind. In some areas, you do need to work with civil society, build a broader coalition, and in some areas, especially on very new areas, which it’s going to be very hard – I mean, I think the role of AI in the future is going to become very difficult to really build a consensus amongst people. I think that’s where you may have to work with the governments in the background.

So, I think it just – it all depends. I think it’s a great time to be a think tanker, to be in that space between academia and policy, affecting what’s happening, making sure that you’re constantly thinking about solutions, thinking about it going forward, rather than just thinking about critiquing the present, but talking about solutions that need to be implemented going forward and becoming part of that solution, too. I think that’s when you will start working with different entities and figuring out ways of building trust, building collaborations, to find a way forward. So, I’ll just leave it there.

Enrique Mendizabal

Thank you. Erica?

Erica Schoder

Thank you for your comments. I think that there’s a diversity – there are a great diversity of think tanks in our space, and if you don’t – if you haven’t encountered them, then you need to join us at On Think Tanks because there are so many think tanks that can fill this void and can do all of these things that we are talking about today.

And to your point, I am so optimistic and hopeful. Think tanks play a huge role in our future. We have a big space to fill, where others, other institutions, other actors, have vacated this evidence-based space, and we have a lot to do to build a culture of trust, but we can do it. We have a lot to do to drive informed conversations and to build – to bring in diverse voices into our own organisations and into all of the work that we do as think tanks, but I’m extremely optimistic and hopeful.

Enrique Mendizabal

Great, thank you. Today, this is a great phrase, it’s a great time to be in a think tank, and I think you – I think, you know, you’ve all agreed that building trust and achieving these results can only happen if we work better together. And thank you, Erica, for mentioning, but that’s really what we try to do on think tanks, is to try and make these connections, and it’s those connections that you will build that will help us move forward, whatever that direction is.

So, thank you very much for this conversation, thank you very much for coming. There was a question about transparency, I think we addressed it on the Zoom chat and then, I think we have now a reception upstairs, which you’ll all invited to join us and continue the discussion with the panel and among yourselves. Thank you very much [applause].