The Role of Political Party Think Tanks: Towards a New Typology

Political party think tanks (also known as study centres, scientific institutes or research foundations) are considered to be the brains of political parties. They perform important tasks for the political party and for society as a whole by – amongst other things – conducting and publishing socially relevant research, writing the party manifesto, organizing lectures and events and preparing policy proposals. Despite their crucial role in various political systems – especially in Western Europe – they have largely escaped academic attention. To examine the role of political party think tanks, the goal of this paper is to develop a comprehensive typology of their role combining the literatures on political party functions and think tank functions on the one hand and taking into account the target audience on the other hand. This leads to a matrixed typology that focuses on whether the role of the party think tanks is internal (focussing on the party, its officials and its members) or external (focussing on society as a whole) and whether they perform political party functions or think tank functions. Evidence for the strength of the matrixed typology is demonstrated by examples extracted from interview-data. This paper aims to contribute to the broader literatures on party politics and think tanks by developing a typology that can be used when conducting research on political party think tanks.