Towards a Comparative Analysis of International Affairs Think Tanks

Think tanks are organizations seeking to inform or influence public policies on the basis of research and analysis. Numerous think tanks focus on international affairs. Such international affairs think tanks (IATTs) can play a multitude of roles, e.g., they may provide opportunities for interactions among professionals; inform and defend the foreign policies of individual states; engage in informal diplomacy; nurture next-generation scholars and practitioners, etc. IATTs come in various stripes and colours, reflecting both exogenous and endogenous factors – the particular contexts they are embedded in and the specifics of the particular organizations. I offer a topological framework for mapping IATTs and use this framework for a comparative analysis of IATTs in four democracies: Germany, Japan, South Korea and the US. I conclude by presenting some observations on how differences among IATTs shape their respective approaches to informing and influencing foreign policies.