Capitol Idea: Think Tanks and U. S. Foreign Policy

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McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP, 2006 M08 14 - 392 páginas
Abelson focuses on a host of high profile think tanks - including the Brookings Institution, the Heritage Foundation, and the Project for the New American Century - and on the public and private channels they rely on to influence important and controversial foreign policies, including the development and possible deployment of a National Missile Defense and George Bush's controversial war on terror. In the process of uncovering how some of the nation's most prominent think tanks have established themselves as key players in the political arena, he challenges traditional approaches to assessing policy influence and suggests alternative models.

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Contenido

Introduction
3
Policy Experts and Presidential Campaigns
23
The Origin and Evolution of American Think Tanks
43
Competing Visions and Conceptual Approaches
97
Think Tanks and the Marketplace of Ideas
110
Think Tanks and the Study of Foreign PolicyMaking
127
In Search of Policy Influence
147
7 Is Anybody Listening? Assessing the Influence of Think Tanks
163
The Debate over National Missile Defense
182
911 the Bush Doctrine and the War of Ideas
201
Think Tanks Foreign Policy and the Public Interest
225
APPENDICES
233
Notes
303
Works Cited
337
Index
359
Derechos de autor

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Página 110 - By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.
Página 110 - If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society ; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution.
Página 110 - Among the numerous advantages promised by a wellconstructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides...
Página 137 - I, the bureaucratic politics model sees no unitary actor but rather many actors as players, who focus not on a single strategic issue but on many diverse intra-national problems as well, in terms of no consistent set of strategic objectives but rather according to various conceptions of national, organizational, and personal goals, making government decisions not by rational choice but by the pulling and hauling that is politics.
Página 63 - To promote, carry on, conduct, and foster scientific research, education, training and publication in the broad fields of economics, government administration, and the political and social sciences generally, involving the study, determination, interpretation and publication of economic, political and social facts and principles...
Página 214 - American hegemony is the only reliable defense against a breakdown of peace and international order. The appropriate goal of American foreign policy, therefore, is to preserve that hegemony as far into the future is possible."39 History strongly suggests that this optimism is an illusion.
Página 68 - The purpose of this institution is to promote peace. Its records stand as a challenge to those who promote war.
Página 75 - Corporation was chartered in 1948 as a nonprofit institution to "further and promote scientific, educational, and charitable purposes, all for the public welfare and security of the United States of America.
Página 191 - We need a new framework that allows us to build missile defenses to counter the different threats of today's world. To do so, we must move beyond the constraints of the 30-year-old ABM Treaty. This treaty does not recognize the present or point us to the future. It enshrines the past.
Página 324 - Berman, The Influence of the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations on American Foreign Policy: The Ideology of Philanthropy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983), pp.

Acerca del autor (2006)

Abelson Donald E. : Donald E. Abelson is academic director of the Wilson College of Leadership and Civic Engagement and professor of political science at McMaster University.Donald E. Abelson is professor and chair, political science, and director, Centre for American Studies, The University of Western Ontario. He is the author of Do Think Tanks Matter? Assessing the Impact of Public Policy Institutes. He lives in London, Ont

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