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International Forum >> The Democracy Forum for East Asia>> Improving Governance and Accountability through Research: The Role of East Asian Think Tanks in the Policy Process
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Introduction
Session I: Think Tanks in East Asia: Who They Are and What They Do Session II: Think Tanks as Participants in the Policy Process Session III: The Role of Think Tanks in Improving Governance and Deepening Democracy Agenda Participants |
Session II: Think Tanks as Participants in the Policy Process Moderator: Marc F. Plattner (International Forum for Democratic Studies, NED) The second session focused on how policy-research institutes attempt to develop productive relationships with lawmakers, government officials, lobbyists and issue activists, the mass media, other scholars, and the public at large. Moderator Marc F. Plattner asked participants to discuss not only what they study but how they translate research findings into practical recommendations that can influence and improve government policy making. Byung-Kook Kim began the session by describing the East Asia Institute, a new type of Korean think tank he created in 2001. "What we do is critically influenced by how we do it," Mr. Kim said, adding that his work is guided by seven operating principles he calls his "Golden Rules." The first of these was "a firm belief that Korea is a great country" that is open to new ideas. If he did not believe this, Mr. Kim said, there would have been no point to creating his new institute. The positive attitude helps the organizers overcome difficulties. The second rule, he said, is full transparency: "The East Asia Institute has no hidden agendas," he stressed. Without putting these Golden Rules into everyday practice, it would be impossible to gain the trust of the sponsors, colleagues, and partners without whom collective actions are not possible. Third, "the East Asia Institute manufactures stars." By this he meant that because the Institute openly gives full credit to its sponsors, colleagues, partners, and researchers, ambitious people will want to participate in its work. Fourth, Mr. Kim said, is his strategy of trying to associate with people "who are smarter, wiser, more established in reputation, as well as more powerful than we are." The institute looks at itself as a vehicle for others to transform their dreams into reality. By doing so, it is able to build up resources. The fifth Golden Rule, he said, is that "we do not put the East Asia Institute first." Instead, the researchers, sponsors, and colleagues and their work receive the spotlight in any public event it orchestrates. Sixth, the Institute tries to make sure that it does not have any conflicts of interest in its funding or research because if there are such conflicts, they are bound to affect the quality of its work and its political credibility. And seventh, all of the East Asia Institute's research projects are done by scholars based in universities outside the center. The Institute has adopted the principle of spending as much money as possible on research by reducing its personnel costs, while bringing together the best manpower from all over the country. At present the East Asia Institute has only two paid staff members, and it probably will never have more than five, Mr. Kim noted. Instead of having a large permanent staff, the Institute commissions task forces and research teams on specific projects, typically by drawing on scholars from universities and from other research institutes. The East Asia Institute launched its first project in November 2001: a task-force study of how to reform the office of the Korean president. The Institute has nine projects planned for 2003, including studies of anticorruption in Asia, social protest, and the implementation of presidential programs; an analysis of the 2002 Korean presidential election; and case studies of selected proposals for economic and political reform. Mr. Kim was particularly proud that the task force on presidential reform had only cost $50,000, which he said was much lower than the cost of conducting such a study in a traditional think-tank setting. The task force, consisting of scholars already employed elsewhere, met weekly for more than seven hours through the spring of 2002 to develop its proposals and refined these in several seminars during the summer. It then began to issue a series of papers and newspaper articles in the fall, which drew good amounts of press attention, leading up to the publication of two books and an executive summary in November 2002. By mid-November, approximately 120 former prime ministers, ministers, senior presidential secretaries, and professors had signed a petition to ask the presidential candidates to endorse the recommendation. In late December, president-elect Roh Moo Hyun endorsed it and began reorganizing his presidential staffs according to the task force's recommendations. Additional conferences and media events were planned for 2003, he added, to educate the public about what is required to strengthen the democratic competence of the Korean presidency. "How did I do all of this with $50,000? The main thing was, I had an idea," Mr. Kim said. In a year when almost every other Korean political research institute was focused on the presidential campaign and the election, the East Asia Institute looked beyond the election and produced a set of reform proposals that would be presented to whomever won the December 2002 election and that could be discussed and debated for months to come. "The most important factor in our success was timing," Mr. Kim concluded. The timing allowed the Institute to realize its goal without much resources. "Independent policy research is relatively rare and is badly needed in Africa." So said E. Gyimah-Boadi, executive director of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD). Several African think tanks had been launched in the 1970s and 1980s, he said, and perhaps the most important and successful of these was the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa), which had more than 100 staff members and extensive conference and publications programs. Other early examples, he added, were the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa and the Harare-based Southern African Political Economy Studies (SAPES) Trust. Although there are many advocacy NGOs in Ghana, few of them conduct real research, Mr. Gyimah-Boadi said. His own Center was about the third oldest policy-research institute in Ghana. Among the issues that it studies are public corruption, corporate governance, the fulfillment of election campaign promises, legislative apportionment, transitional justice, and national reconciliation. The CCD also monitors administrative rule making, which was often used by civil servants to bypass the will of parliament. In one important recent controversy, the CDD had opposed plans by the government to permit the use of both thumbprint and photo voter-identification cards in the December 2000 elections. The CDD favored the exclusive use of photo ID cards as the best means of reducing voter fraud. In the end, however, the courts sided with the government's position, he said. The CDD has an active outreach program, Mr. Gyimah-Boadi added. It publishes a quarterly Democracy Watch and numerous briefing papers, opinion essays, conference proceedings, and occasional papers on specific issues. "The most important qualities of these publications are readability and understandability," he said. In addition to sending its publications to all members of parliament, the Center tries to educate legislators as to what are considered "best practices." "Sometimes we help draft legislation," Mr. Gyimah-Boadi added. "And we both help mobilize citizen participation and do indirect advocacy. In fact, we found that high-quality research actually helps advocacy." The Center for Democratic Development receives all of its funding from international organizations for contract research, Mr. Gyimah-Boadi said. Although the organization has been successful in securing funding from diverse sources, the fact that all of its money comes from abroad has led to local criticism. And he knew of at least one CDD study that had not been released because a foreign donor feared that its publication would offend the government. Nonetheless, Mr. Gyimah-Boadi does not see any alternative to his current reliance on foreign support. "We choose not to accept government funds because the government in Ghana is too close to one political party." And the country simply has too few other sources of domestic funding for policy research, even for a small, seven-person organization like the Center for Democratic Development. MAO Yushi then described the Unirule Institute, whose name is a contraction of its motto, "Universal Rules." Established in 1993, the Institute has grown to a staff of twenty-five, while also preserving its independence. "If you have the same ideas as the government, you are not really independent," Mr. Mao stressed. Unirule received support from U.S. and German donors, as well as from some domestic sources, he said, but no individual donor contributed more than one-third of the institute's overall budget. "We do not want one big donor," he explained. Mr. Mao believed that Unirule had developed a good relationship with government officials because "we talk to them politely and in a spirit of cooperation." Nonetheless, he realized that the Chinese government did not want to introduce democracy for fear of losing control over its citizens. Still, he noted, after years of resistance, the government had finally permitted the World Bank and the Ford Foundation to establish offices and to operate openly in China, which he considered an important sign of China's opening to the outside world. Unirule's work was not limited to economic analysis, Mr. Mao said. Four years ago, the Institute had launched a project that focused on improving government efficiency, promoting transparency in administration, and reducing corruption. Mr. Mao himself established a private Poverty Alleviation Foundation ten years ago that provided minicredit in rural areas-the only such foundation operated by a private individual, he said. And he had also established a school for rural girls to prepare them for employment. "So I think there is always more that one can do," Mr. Mao concluded. According to Jin-Young Kim, a professor of political science at Pusan National University in Korea, "most of the institutions that focus on the development of democracy are not well financed, and most NGOs exist only through the work of volunteers." She knew of many reform ideas that NGOs had proposed on such issues as electoral fraud and slush funds but she had seen little evidence that policy makers take these ideas seriously. "'Political reform' is a catch phrase in Korea now," Ms. Kim noted, although she hoped the time was right for real reform. One of the most important factors in determining whether a think tank is taken seriously, Jong Wan Kim replied, was its credibility. "If the think tank is perceived by the public to be tailoring its research to support a particular government policy, its reputation will suffer and its public influence will diminish. In order for independent think tanks to be influential, they must not be seen as having a hidden agenda." "My sense is that the government not only wants a free hand to determine public policy but also wants to be able to justify it without somebody challenging it publicly. That is one of the reasons why governments establish in-house research institutes, to help them with formulating specific policies that they favor, and whose research findings they can influence," Mr. Kim added. He also believed that, as a result, independent, private think tanks played a valuable role in shaping public policy by offering views that are contrary to official government positions. An effective strategy for independent think tanks in determining policy outcomes, in his view, was "actively shaping public opinion by taking their research findings to the media and to the larger public." Mr. Plattner noted that in the United States it was commonly recognized that most think tanks have an ideological or partisan orientation, and that few people had serious problems with this. But think tanks also developed reputations for the high-or low-quality of their research. The real key to influence, Mr. Plattner stressed, was the quality of the research product. "In Cambodia," LAO Mong Hay said, "our rulers think they know everything, so there is no room for new ideas." While the government would certainly favor research that might attract foreign investment, Mr. Lao did not believe it had any interest in-and certainly would not support-policy research that might undermine its own power. Nonetheless, he was optimistic that what he called "democratic space" in his country was growing. "We only have one or two real think tanks in Cambodia at the moment. We do not expect to have an immediate impact, but we continue to do our work, we circulate ideas, and we wait for the future," Mr. Lao said. Thawilwadee Bureekul agreed with Jong Wan Kim that credibility is the most important thing a think tank needed to have influence. But she believed that in addition to producing credible research, an effective organization needs a respected, high-quality board of trustees. And she said, rather than seeing its role as opposing the government, KPI typically tries to involve government officials, politicians, and NGO leaders in its research, making them "stakeholders" in the reform agenda. The result, Ms. Bureekul said, was that many ministry officials in Thailand trust KPI more than their own research departments. Another element of credibility, Mr. Gyimah-Boadi added, was "institutional accountability." He believed it is vitally important for research institutes to show donors what they do with their funding and also for institutes to have consistency in their message and in the quality of their work. Kun-Hyung Kang, director of the Institute of Peace Studies at Cheju National University, said that although most of the research centers already described were located in capital cities and focused on national or international issues, Korea also had a number of think tanks, including several at his university, that studied local government, local and regional economic development, tourism, and the agriculture and environment of Cheju Island. But Mr. Kang's own institute is also involved in international affairs: it has studied and supported a campaign to have Cheju Island designated as one of four "World Peace Islands," which could make Cheju a possible venue for Asian or even global peace summits. "How does one get credibility?" For Raymond Wu, a trustee of the Chinese Eurasian Education Foundation and convener of its strategic and security studies program, a think tank earns its reputation by developing and nurturing close contacts with local and national media and with key members of the policy community. "Regular exposure in the press helps to build public credibility and impact," Mr. Wu said. The Foundation, which studies China-Taiwan and U.S.-China-Taiwan relations, Asian security, and a host of other issues, also organizes regular public forums that bring together persons of diverse views. And it has "institutionalized channels with other international think tanks," which add to the Foundation's legitimacy. Finally, "We have representatives of all political parties on our board and staff but we try to keep the organization as nonpartisan as possible," Mr. Wu added. "We make broad recommendations but we do not make specific policy proposals." Ryrat Suwanraks said that the credibility of the Thailand Development Research Institute depended on the Institute remaining nonpolitical. "We do not take sides for or against the government, only for or against policy alternatives," she stressed. Szu-chien Hsu, a researcher at Taiwan Thinktank, described his newly created institution as "nongovernmental" and "independent" but with a progovernment orientation. Of course, "the current Taiwanese government was itself a prodemocracy movement just a few years ago," Mr. Hsu said, so it should not be surprising that he and his colleagues remain close to it. But even though Taiwan Thinktank usually supports the government, it has also published studies critical of government policy on particular issues. One example of such a work, he said, was a study that opposed allowing Taiwanese investors to invest in firms in mainland China that manufacture certain advanced computer chips. According to Mr. Hsu, that policy paper had led to "a more balanced public debate on this issue." And Taiwan Thinktank also published a governmental-reform proposal that was seriously considered in parliamentary debates on the government's own proposal on this subject. (The final outcome of those debates has yet to be determined.) Mr. Hsu considered these as good examples of how think tanks contribute to strengthening democracy in Taiwan. Kie-Duck Park then described the Sejong Institute's methods for influencing government policy. Like many other think tanks, Sejong publishes academic journals and policy papers and distributes them to government officials, sponsors seminars and conferences, and runs training programs for government officials and business leaders. Sejong fellows also officially meet each September to discuss research priorities for the coming year. As part of its planning, Sejong asks government officials to identify their key issues, and it takes their responses into consideration when planning its own research agenda. Despite these efforts, Mr. Park admitted, there remains an atmosphere of mutual cynicism between scholars and the government. Ghia Nodia agreed with Mr. Plattner that the main source of a think tank's credibility is the quality of its ideas and products. Yet another source of credibility was an institute's independence. But he saw it as a paradox that while "in the United States, think tanks do not need to hide their partisan affiliations to be recognized as serious research centers, but in Georgia and in many other countries, we are supposed to be nonpartisan." "On the one hand, partisan politics is seen as a bad thing in Georgia," Mr. Nodia continued, "so think tanks strive to maintain a nonpartisan identity." On the other hand, criticizing the government, however harshly, is not considered to compromise one's nonpartisan stance. Rather, think tanks are expected to be antigovernment to prove that they are "independent." There is also a recent trend: "since a large majority of NGOs are funded almost entirely by Western donors, independent research centers today risk being seen as CIA fronts," Mr. Nodia concluded. Larry Diamond said he was pleased to hear about plans to continue the development of think tanks in China. But he wondered if one could generalize from the small-scale projects that had been discussed here to projects that would encompass all of China. Given that China was not yet a democracy, Mr. Diamond wanted to know if the strategies discussed at this meeting to promote greater transparency in policy making could be applied in that country. The ultimate question, Mr. Diamond asserted, is "can you make China a constitutional democracy in an open and transparent way?" WANG Juntao did not believe that the model of think tanks as they function in democratic countries could be applied to China. "In China the government controls all resources. There is no clear legal basis for the existence of independent policy research centers," Mr. Wang said. Even the idea of challenging government decisions by research, conferences, and publishing is a foreign notion. In addition, private research organizations cannot get support from civil society because the government does not allow private enterprises to run independent institutes. Instead, all organizations are required to register as directly or indirectly subordinate to some government body. "Independence means that you are independent of the government," Mr. Wang asserted, "but in China this concept does not exist." As a consequence, researchers run businesses to earn money and then use that money to support their research. "We need to develop a new concept to define the role of think tanks in a transitional society," Mr. Wang concluded. |
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