Think Tanks: Actors in the Transition to Global Politics; A Bulgarian Case Study

Abstract

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, offices of a new class of political actors, Bulgarian think tanks, appeared alongside the buildings of Soviet regime institutions at Sofia, rehabilitated to serve parliamentary democracy.

Ishac, The new developments in the thinking of the World Bank and IMF could only be admired. In a way for the first time international donors are starting to understand that public support for the reform agenda is a necessary pre-condition for the success of any reform policies. The fact that today there are more democratic countries than ever before is both good news and bad news for the IMF and World Bank. It is not enough as was hitherto the case, to enlist the support of the present government before, now you should think about the possible next government. In this context I see think tanks as a major agent for consensus building on the field of policy.

Extract from an email sent by Ivan Krastev, director of the Center for Liberal Strategies, a Bulgarian think tank, to Ishac Diwan, a World Bank official responsible for the creation of an international Global Development Network—GDN, posted on the GDN website on November 24, 1999.