Abstract
This chapter explains how the industry arrived at its current state. It shows that the Australian industry has evolved across four distinctive eras, and it details the factors contributing to these new growth waves. The chapter evidences the rapid growth in think tank numbers over the past two decades and shows that the prior impediments to the industry’s development no longer persist. The evidence suggests that the Australian industry is not as small or as insignificant as some might suggest. It has matured to the extent that its size is comparable (on a relative basis) to those industries in countries with longer histories.
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Notes
- 1.
Stone (1998, p. 146) suggests that Australia’s first ‘proto-typical’ think tanks were the Institute of Pacific Relations (an antecedent to the AIIA) and The Round Table, but this study could not establish the formation dates of these defunct entities.
- 2.
Marsh and Stone do not precisely define these three periods but provide sufficient guidance to enable their analysis.
- 3.
Most of the defunct institutes in prior think tank lists (sixteen of the one-hundred-and-eighty-four entities originally identified for candidacy) were government- or university-affiliated entities, not ideologically oriented (left- and right-leaning) entities. This point is important in the wave theory context. To be sure, many of the defunct entities are unlikely to have been included in this study even if they had endured. The main text discusses the defunct entities with a discernible ideological bias.
- 4.
The ‘modified population’ includes the present study’s population (ninety-three institutes) plus six defunct institutes extracted from extant lists (see Chapter 3).
- 5.
The Australian Institute of Public Policy was established in 1982 and merged with the IPA in 1991 (Marsh & Stone, 2004, p. 248). As such, it is not a constituent of the present population.
- 6.
Right-leaning think tanks formed during this third wave include the Menzies Research Centre, Institute for Private Enterprise, Mannkal Economic Education Foundation, Samuel Griffith Society, and the defunct Tasman Institute, Bennelong Society, and Lavoisier Group.
- 7.
Robert (Bob) Hawke from the Australian Labor Party was elected Prime Minister in 1983 and served until 1991. Paul Keating (also from the ALP) served as Prime Minister from 1991 until 1996. This period is widely referred to as the ‘Hawke-Keating era’ (Economou, 2014, pp. 172–173).
- 8.
The present analysis references 1990 as the start date for Marsh and Stone’s ‘third-wave’. Only one think tank (the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research) was established in 1990, so the results are not sensitive to that selection.
- 9.
The reduction in APS headcount lessened the ability of the APS to proffer policy ideas—a so-called ‘hollowing out of the state’ (see Denham & Garnett, 2004). The APS headcount fell from approximately one-hundred-and-forty-three thousand at the end of 1996 (Howard’s election year) to a low point of approximately one-hundred-and-ten thousand in 2000. However, the APS headcount exceeded the number Howard originally inherited by the completion of his final year in office in 2006 (Whelan, 2011).
- 10.
Kevin Rudd from the Australian Labor Party defeated Prime Minister Howard in the Federal election on December 3, 2007.
- 11.
The eight government-affiliated entities in the present population are excluded from this analysis because they are not DGR-eligible.
- 12.
According to the Australian Taxation Office, think tanks qualify for DGR status if they are Approved Research Institutes. That is, they ‘undertake scientific research’ and have ‘suitably qualified research committees that evaluate the merits of proposed research programs’ (ATO, 2017).
- 13.
Strikingly, the CIS is one of the very few entities explicitly named as a DGR-endorsed entity within the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997. The naming of CIS in Section 30–40 (Research) of the Act is highly unusual. Indeed, the Australian Tax Office refers to naming DGR-endorsed entities as ‘exceptional’ (ATO, 2017). The other think tanks explicitly named in the Act (only fourteen organisations are named in total) are the Menzies Research Centre, Chifley Research Centre, Page Research Centre, Green Institute, Grattan Institute, and the United States Studies Centre (Australian Government, 2020). But the CIS stands out as an openly ideological (arguably partisan), non-party-affiliated entity—and government legislation individually identifies it as qualifying for DGR status.
- 14.
See Gulmanelli (2014, pp. 582–585) for a detailed discussion on the characteristics and constituents of the ‘Anglosphere’.
- 15.
This analysis necessarily assumes that the GGTTI index accurately calculates the think tank populations for Canada, the UK, and the US. This assumption is credible given the regular scholarly scrutiny of these industries.
- 16.
- 17.
Table 4.1 contains the list of seven prominent autonomous institutes this study identified.
- 18.
It should be noted that CEDA—which was founded in 1960—is part of this study’s first wave of institutes, but is uniquely focussed on economics-related interests.
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Hagland, T. (2023). The Evolutionary Path and Comparative Perspectives. In: Think Tanks in Australia. Interest Groups, Advocacy and Democracy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27044-4_5
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