Research Groups Boom in Washington

[Robbien]

Source: NYT

The economy may be slowing down, but Washington’s ideas industry is booming.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research institution that was effectively broke seven years ago, just bought a $33 million vacant lot downtown as the site for a new home. The Council on Foreign Relations is expanding its Washington office to a $60 million building on F Street. The United States Institute of Peace is erecting a $180 million headquarters of steel and white translucent glass on a corner of the Mall.

Not least, the rapidly growing Brookings Institution — its operating budget is up nearly 50 percent in the past two years alone — just paid $18.5 million for a satellite building across the street from its headquarters on Massachusetts Avenue, in a stretch near Dupont Circle known as Think Tank Row.

The result of this boom has been ever more Washington conferences, policy papers and, for better or worse, outside influence on government. Most immediately, the research institutions, which operate as Washington’s government-in-waiting, are supplying the presidential campaigns with policy staffs.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is drawing expertise from Brookings, the Council on Foreign Relations and from a start-up, the Center for a New American Security. Senator Barack Obama has advisers from Brookings as well as from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Rudolph W. Giuliani is drawing from the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Senator John McCain has tapped into both the American Enterprise Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/washington/30tank.html?em&ex=1201842000&en=dfaa8f0bc2c7c667&ei=5087%0A

[tridim]

1. Hey, let's start investing more money in SCIENTIFIC research.

We don't need any more think tanks.

[PassingFair]

2. "Stink tanks" more like.

What about the "Cato" Institute?

[ShockediSay]

3. Amen!!! Funded & for profit Lobbies at work nt

[OKthatsIT]

4. NGOs = make dirty work CLEAN for the BANKERS

[Acumensch]

5. Gapminder

With all this research and information, there needs to be a way to aggregate it all. We live in a sea of information. One interesting thing I found on Gapminder.org was that a lot of publicly funded data is not open to many people, like data at the UN that is supposed to be public. Gapminder researchers make interesting flash animated graphs that let you map out country-specific economics using publicly funded data.