The structure of policy research: a bibliographic study of British think tanks

Over the last decade there has been an increasing sociological interest in issues of policy knowledge, policy expertise, and (especially) the research and advocacy organisations referred to as ‘think tanks’. Whereas political scientists have used think tanks as a means to study ideological projects within political parties, sociologists have focused mainly on two areas of inquiry. First, exploring how think tanks are located within a ‘space between fields’ - an interstitial location at the cusp of fields of politics, media, academia, and business which produces a mode of hybrid intellectualism. Secondly, how think tanks marshal cross professional intellectual teams to position, redefine, and stabilise uncertain political-economic problems through ideologically palatable and ‘reasonable’ policy solutions. However, little is known about the intellectual life within the wider community of think tanks, or how these organisations interact with one another. In response, I draw upon Gil Eyal and Patrick Baert’s focus on ‘intellectual interventions’ to study the intellectual structure of the British think tank community. Through an analysis of co-citation and co-authorship data this paper: (1) maps intellectual networks; (2) ascertains community cohesiveness, and (3) uncovers intellectual authorities shared across the community and within specific cliques of think tanks. This novel methodological approach enables us to understand how the think tank community is structured, how think tanks interrelate, and also what knowledge is deemed authoritative within a space between fields.