Think Tank Watch: [Why] Are Washington Think Tanks So Powerful?

As you might have noticed on Twitter, I've been enjoying a blog called Think Tank Watch that covers the industry -- trends, dynamics, comings and goings.  

It's not specifically focused on education -- and that's part of what makes it so useful.

Here's a recent post reviewing a new book (Why Are Washington Think Tanks So Powerful?) examing the rise of the think tanks.  Some of the main points include: 

• Washington tanks tanks are not primary generators of original research; that function lies with universities.
• Think tanks are known for their ability to scour the world for attractive ideas, to legitimate them, and to promote them through electronic communications.
• Think tanks, over the past two decades, have emerged as a complement to, and in some cases a substitute for, lobbyists, due to the ability of think tanks to exploit the rapidly growing information search and propagation capacities of electronic communications.

I've got a whole category about education think tanks, which have supplemented/replaced universities in some regards thanks to their capacity to deliver new ideas quickly and say things more definitively than academics.  That's why we have think tanker Kevin Carey writing in the Times about higher ed rather than Professor So-And-So.  

Previous posts:  Power Couples: The Wonk & The Journo*; Reform Debate Often Detached From Schools & Parents; Smarick Rails Against Anti-Democratic Attitudes & Elites; It's A Small, Small World [For Power Couples]; Andy Smarick Is The New Mike Petrilli?; Meet Conor Williams, New America's New(ish) Education Guy; Big Changes At DC Think Tank [Job Opening!]; "Wait A Minute" [On Common Core].

Disclosure: I've written and done research for some foundations, nonprofits, and think tanks.