US Think Tanks Continue to Grow – New Transparify Analysis

Think tanks in the United States continue to grow, according to 2016 numbers that now are available. The expenditure of the top 21 think tanks in the United States grew by 6% and revenues by 5% between 2015 and 2016, significantly above inflation. While net assets stayed flat, employee numbers grew slightly, by 3%. The number of staff paid more than $100k increased by 10%, thus showing particularly strong growth.

Within the group of think tanks, there were significant differences. In terms of expenditures, the Wilson Center (60%) grew particularly strongly, as did the Center for New American Security (CNAS, 27%), the American Enterprise Institute (AEI, 22%), the New America Foundation (19%), and the World Resources Institute (WRI, 16%).

The German Marshall Fund (GMFUS) decreased its budget by 11%, and Brookings (-3%) and the Heritage Foundation (-2%) also decreased their expenditure.

The numbers show that think tank funding is choppy. Not too much should be read into a year-on-year change, as funding often comes in lumps, for example through a targeted campaign or a large one-off gift. Yet long-term, the trends are interesting to follow. In 2016, CSIS had a 97% increase in funding, the Wilson Center 72%, CNAS 68%, New America 65%, and the WRI 37%. We are happy to note that New America and the World Resources Institute are 5-star transparent think tanks, too, and that CSIS has 4-star transparency.

In terms of funding decreases, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) had a 49% reduction, though this primarily is a result of a high yield in 2015, and CBPP is now broadly back to its previous funding levels. The same pattern applies to the AEI, with its 29% decrease, after a particularly successful year. The International Crisis Group however, experienced a substantive cut of -29%, down to $13m, and is at its lowest level of funding in more than ten years.

The numbers continue to illustrate the size of the entire sector. The largest institutions remain the RAND Corporation (by far, with its $327m budget), followed by Brookings ($105m), WRI ($90m), the Urban Institute ($88m) and the Heritage Foundation ($81m). In total, the top 21 institutions have a combined budget of $1.15bn, combined net assets of $2.59bn and they employ more than 7,700 people in the United States. (Anyone who pays taxes in the US is in the counts, so this will include interns and non-research staff, and exclude staff in offices outside the US.)

One remarkable change is the increase in the number of staff paid more than $100.000. This has increased by 10% across the institutions, and together there are more than 1,700 people with that level of salary, reflecting that at least in some institutions, expertise is well remunerated.

These are only some of the headline numbers. The spread sheet has much more detail, averages and medians, maximum and minimum, and is sortable. (Thanks to the Transparify team and to Johann Schmidt for assembling the numbers.) It should thus be of interest to anyone who wants to compare think tank numbers.

The data broadly reflects the state of play for 2015 and 2016, as it is taken from IRS sheets for 2014 and 2015, with financial years ending across the year, for the institutions. One fascinating question is how think tank funding has evolved after the 2016 election. We will keep tracking budget data, and analyze future developments.

The data sheet is here. If you find it useful, we are grateful for a quick note via Email or Twitter.

Interested in think tank research? Try Find Policy, a tool in which you can search multiple think tanks in a single search window, giving you instant quality results: www.findpolicy.org

[This item was cross-posted with On Think Tanks.]

Citizens Demand Think Tank Transparency, Too: New US Study

US citizens want think tanks to be transparent about who their donors are, as a new study from We are Flint, a communications consultancy shows. This demand for transparency is particularly pronounced among those that know what think tanks do. The many quality think tanks that are transparent thus do respond to a broader public expectation, and not just to a niche demand from advocacy groups.

The reason why this issue of transparency is important is because only a fifth of Americans trust think tanks, and a further 56% don't know whether to trust them or not, according to the survey, which had more than 2000 respondents. Transparency, by itself, does not ensure trust, but is a necessary step towards it.

More educated people are keener on think tank transparency itself, as the chart below shows.

WeAreFlint Data.jpg

More educated people also know more about think tanks. 57% of those with college degrees agree that they know what think tanks are. Only 20% of those without high school diploma agreed that they knew about think tanks.

Notably, the survey found that people in rural and urban areas were equally supportive of think tanks disclosing their funding. Given the preponderance of conservatives in rural areas and liberals in urban areas in the US, this suggests that transparency is supported across the partisan divide. (We are Flint likely will publish more data and detail in the near future.)

As We are Flint points out, more work needs to be done to communicate the work of think tanks to a broader audience. That finding, of course, lines up neatly with the kind of work that a communications consultancy does. The upside? We are Flint, unlike some hold-out opaque think tanks, is transparent about this.

Read the report here.

 

New Transparify report shows which think tanks are transparent – and which are not

Which think tanks reveal who funds them? And which keep their donors secret?

On Wednesday 29 June 2016, Transparify will launch a report on the financial transparency of 200 think tanks worldwide. We rated each institution on a scale from 0 to 5 stars based on how much information it reveals about where it gets its money from.

Transparify’s special focus this year is on think tanks in the UK. We have convinced some of the largest and best-known policy shops in Britain to disclose details of their funding, and look forward to honouring their commitment to transparency. Our UK ratings this year include 28 institutions, providing wide coverage of the entire UK think tank sector.

The report will give citizens, journalists and policy makers the ability to identify think tanks that are committed to transparency and integrity in policy research and advocacy. At the same time, it will shine a spotlight on those organizations that accept money from hidden hands behind closed doors.

Beyond the UK, Transparify has re-rated all think tanks covered in our previous reports. In total, we rated 200 think tanks from 47 countries in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania, providing a unique overview of national and regional policy research landscapes and global trends in think tank transparency.

The results of previous Transparify studies have been covered by the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, and over 20 other media outlets worldwide. Our initiative has been welcomed by major think tanks and transparency advocacy organizations.

Embargoed advance copies of Transparify’s 2016 report are now available. Interested editors and journalists are invited to contact us via Twitter, or by emailing our team members Dustin Gilbreath (global media enquiries) and Till Bruckner (UK media enquiries only). Members of the media can find more background on think tank transparency and why it matters here and here.

Transparent Donors, Opaque Grantees: High Time for a Nudge

While we are finalizing our ratings, we are here reposting a contribution that Hans Gutbrod previously published with Philanthropy in Focus, a platform by Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support. 

In recent years, donors have increasingly embraced transparency and accountability. Transparency seems to be on its way to becoming the new norm for donors. Yet at the same time, many nonprofit grantees are lagging behind. A recent study by Transparify, the initiative I work with, has shown that even among the world’s leading open data advocacy groups, over half are not fully transparent about who funds them. Similarly, despite significant recent improvements in that field, over half of major think tanks worldwide still do not fully disclose their funding online.

The cost of this opacity was brought home powerfully to me when I was working at a donor organization and needed to go to lunch with a colleague on the same corridor just to understand what work his program was doing with some of our grantees. We needed to talk to each other because sharing this basic information through an internal database was cumbersome and the data did not capture intent. As for the relationships of our grantees with other donors – who gave how much, when, and for what purposes – we usually simply did not know.

Grantee opacity causes severe problems for all stakeholders involved. For donors, it precludes effective coordination, leveraging of synergies and avoidance of overlaps. For grantees, working with blindsided funders leads to inefficiencies and cycles of over- and underfunding. For external stakeholders such as local government bodies, it makes it hard to identify who is doing how much of what, and when current funding is likely to run out. Finally, financial opacity undermines the reputation of integrity and credibility of the nonprofit sector as a whole because citizens are left wondering where all that tax-exempt money comes from, and what it gets spent for.

Transparent organizations are part and parcel of a modern democratic society, not an optional add-on; this applies to grantees as well as to their funders. However, in terms of transparency, some very good donors have a remarkable number of not-so-good grantees. How can the sector move forwards?

First, it is important to realize that the most useful location of information on projects is on the grantee’s website, where it’s visible to everyone – donors, potential partners, citizens and any other interested stakeholder. Crucially, compared to a donor database, the grantee’s website is far closer to the interface where the grant money (hopefully) benefits citizens, and thus the best location to render account to beneficiaries.

Second, donors can easily nudge their opaque grantees by making transparency the new default setting. The cost of doing this is negligible to both donors and grantees, as recent experiences in Georgia (Caucasus) have shown. There, two innovative donors, the Eurasia Partnership Foundation in Georgia and the ACCESS Program of the East-West Management Institute have recently added a single line to their grant application forms that asks potential grantees to provide a link to their own financial disclosure webpage. This nudges all applicants to update their websites and disclose information on who funds them, with what amount, for what purpose, to show that they align with the donors’ preference for transparency. Other donors are planning to implement similar changes soon.

There are many excellent arguments in favor of transparency. Some of the most compelling arguments have been put forward by grantees themselves, including by the Center for Global Development, Global Integrity, Natural Resources Governance Institute, Sunlight Foundation, Stimson Center, Transparency International Georgia, and the World Resources Institute. Equally, a compellingly simple gold standard for nonprofit transparency exists in the form of Transparify’s 5-star benchmark.

With a simple nudge – a one-line addition to the application form (see here and here for examples) – donors could advance such transparency. The first innovative donors are beginning to implement this change. We hope this will spread, so that transparency indeed becomes the norm.

Transparify to Re-Assess All Think Tanks in November

Transparify will begin re-rating think tanks worldwide on November 02, 2015. The assessment will cover all 169 think tanks that we have already rated twice for our previous flagship reports, in order to document their progress. Transparify assesses to what degree think tanks disclose who funds their research and advocacy, using a 5-star rating scale.

Transparify will this year for the first time additionally rate dozens of major think tanks in Britain and Australia. In Britain, we expect to be able to document huge progress from a low baseline. In Australia, the baseline was even lower when we last looked, but the trend there is also positive, with several think tanks reporting that they plan to disclose additional information shortly.

Our ratings process follows a strict protocol designed to ensure data reliability. To date, Transparify has released over 300 data points for think tanks and advocacy groups around the world, and has been widely endorsed. The method is replicable, and has been used by a number of external efforts inspired by Transparify's method. 

The full rating results listing all think tanks will be published in our annual flagship report in February 2016. In past years, our rating results have attracted wide media coverage, ranging from a front page story in the New York Times to the main evening television news programme in Namibia.

Over the past years, the field as a whole has taken huge strides towards greater funding transparency. We look forward to welcoming even more think tanks into the ranks of the transparent this time around!

The Transparify Team

 

More 5-Star Institutions - Momentum Towards Transparency Continues

Next to the 150+ institutions that Transparify rates every year, we have heard from additional policy research and advocacy organizations that are committed to transparency. These organizations either already were fully transparent about their funding, or engaged with us to update their disclosure.

We are glad to highlight the 5-star transparency of these five organizations. They set a great example for other institutions:

Please join us in congratulating these organizations on their 5-star transparency. We are glad to see that the momentum towards more transparency continues. The spread of countries – Bosnia, Canada, Georgia, United States – shows that this move towards more transparency has a global dimension.

If current trends continue, transparency will indeed soon be the norm for all quality think tanks and policy advocacy organizations. This is why it is so valuable that more organizations commit to 5-star transparency. Why is this transparency important? See what institutions themselves have to say on this issue.

Do you want to find out how to get 5-star transparency? Check here how to become fully transparent. 

Why Transparency Matters: the Think Tanks’ Perspective

[a previous version of this post appeared On Think Tanks]

Transparency sometimes can appear like a hard thing to do. Making information available can be an extra effort. Transparency may also invite additional scrutiny. It’s thus not obvious that institutions always welcome disclosure.

Yet Transparify’s experience over the past two years suggests otherwise. Many think tanks welcomed our work. They were enthusiastic about becoming more transparent. Several dozen think tanks engaged, increasing their disclosure, as our 2015 report highlights.

Why? Ask the think tankers themselves – they make a very powerful case in favor of transparency. Here is an overview of their contributions to our blog. 

One common theme across many of these contributions is that transparency is part of research excellence – it communicates confidence in the integrity of one’s findings. In that way, transparency contributes to an open and constructive debate.

This, too, is a reason why we think that transparency should be the default for policy research and advocacy. We hope that more think tanks will join to help set the standard. We believe journalists should routinely ask think tanks and policy experts how they are funded, and highlight when funding sources remain opaque. Also, we think that donors should nudge their grantees to become more transparent. Funding transparency by itself is not a guarantee of integrity, but it is one of the best starting points for a broader debate.

If you want to share your perspective on the importance of transparency, we would very much welcome your contribution to our blog or, as an additional step, you could connect to this theme through On Think Tanks itself.  

Interested in how to increase your transparency? Go here to find out how to get 5-star transparency. 

Do transparency advocacy groups practice what they preach?

Transparify so far has primarily looked at the transparency of think tanks. Yet transparency also matters in many other sectors, including policy advocacy.

Citizens should be able to find out who pays for that advocacy. 

Transparency is particularly relevant for pro-transparency organizations. In line with that idea, we assessed 34 organizations who feature prominently at the Open Data Conference (#IODC15) in Ottawa, Canada. The #IODC15 event, which runs May 28-29, 2015, brings together the leading pro-transparency organizations, experts and donors, from across the world. It thus allows an excellent assessment of the field of pro-transparency advocacy.

Using Transparify's well-established methodology, we rated the extent to which participating organizations publicly disclose through their websites where their funding comes from. 

How transparent are the pro-transparency advocates? 

The news is fairly good, but there is quite some way to go before the sector itself is a role-model. Of the 34 organizations we assessed:

  • 12 are already transparent about who funds them
  • 7 told us that they plan to become transparent in the near future
  • 15 are opaque and seem not to want to disclose more funding data. 

With an average of 2.7 stars, the pro-transparency sector still is less transparent than the leading 35 US think tanks are (3.2 stars). 

Follow us on Twitter to keep up to date about reactions to this report from #IODC15 participants.

We believe that non-profits should embrace transparency for a variety of reasons:

  • non-profits are key actors in democratic societies
  • non-profits enjoy tax free status
  • transparency builds credibility with donors, clients, policy-makers and other stakeholders
  • the sector as a whole is huge, e.g. in the United States it accounts for over 8% of GDP
  • voluntary transparency is the best way to dissuade burdensome external regulation.

We will re-assess all 34 institutions later this year to track and document their progress. To receive our follow-up report by email, sign up here.

To find out who the most transparent pro-transparency advocates are, read our MAY 2015 IODC TRANSPARENCY REPORT.

Roundup of Reactions to Transparify’s 2015 Report

Two weeks ago, we released our 2015 REPORT documenting significant progress towards greater think tank transparency worldwide. Especially the U.S. results were encouraging – over half of think tanks there are now transparent. In contrast, results for the UK were disappointing.

The Financial Times led off its coverage with the observation that “British think-tanks are less transparent about their sources of funding than their European counterparts.” It noted that “only one of 11 British think-tanks assessed, the Institute for Public Policy Research, was rated as transparent,” while three prominent institutions including the International Institute for Strategic Studies were rated as highly opaque.

The Brussels-based EU Observer titled its article “UK and Hungarian think tanks least transparent in EU”. It noted that think tanks based in Brussels itself performed well: “Three of the thinktanks evaluated are based in Brussels: Bruegel (5 stars), International Crisis Group (4 stars), Centre for European Policy Studies (3 stars).”

One World led with the sentence that “Only three think tanks got ‘significantly more opaque’ during 2014, and one of them is Britain’s Overseas Development Institute.” The author suggested that our survey “addresses an important issue because secrecy about funding sources undermines the credibility” of many think tanks.

Broadcaster KBC in Kenya noted the 5-star performance of two Kenyan think tanks, adding that “donor funding has been a contentious issue in the not-for-profit sector with government proposing stringent laws to cap funding to ensure accountability and openness of funding sources”. The issue is also controversial in Hungary, where the government has recently been accused of orchestrating a crackdown on independent NGOs, including think tanks. Transparify’s report sparked a lively debate in Hungary that is still ongoing; we will provide a separate summary at a later point. Several media outlets in Georgia and Montenegro have also covered the story.

On Think Tanks produced a great map of the global results.

Numerous think tanks released statements explaining their commitment to transparency.

“AERC endeavors to observe best global practices in everything it does, and it is encouraging that our outstanding efforts are receiving global acknowledgment,” said Prof. Lemma Senbet, the Executive Director of the African Economic Research Consortium, a think tank based in Kenya with strong global name recognition among international development experts.

Also in Kenya, Kwame Owino, the Executive Director of its Institute of Economic Affairs, tweeted that “If we fail to aim for high transparency, we reduce our ability to demand budget transparency in #Kenya".

In Sweden, Johan Kuylenstierna from the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) commented that “we believe transparency is essential for building trust and credibility. We provide full disclosure of our funding and invite our partners and stakeholders to assess our objectivity and hold us accountable to our mission… Transparency is a keystone in bridging science and policy.”

Why does transparency matter to think tanks? A list of statements by think tanks on their 2015 transparency ratings, including links to the full text of each, is below.

THINK TANK REACTIONS

Check also the contributions by several think tanks on our own blog, by scrolling down.  Transparify will begin re-rating think tanks in November 2016. We look forward to being able to report even more transparent institutions in our next report!

Transparency in Hungary – Political Capital

Guest blogger Péter Krekó from Political Capital, a think tank in Budapest, reacts to Transparify’s recent report, and highlights the country context in Hungary.

Political Capital’s funding transparency recently was assessed by Transparify, and the rating was not particularly flattering. Political Capital does embrace transparency and has nothing to hide about its finances. Given that our institute only receives project funding from its donors, and no core funding, we had put the list of donors on our thematic project websites, here, here and here. We also highlighted our funders with every study, in our press releases, and at our public events.

Transparify's ratings, however, offered a good reminder to make this information even more easily available, therefore we have recently published the list of our Foundation donors on our main website. Additionally, most of our donors do publish information about funding they give to us on their respective websites. We are currently in touch with our donors to ensure that they all agree to publish more information. We are committed to increase our transparency to at least a 3-star level.

At the same time, it is also important to note the regional and national context of transparency. In Hungary for example, there have been several governmental attacks against NGOs and think-tanks over their foreign funding, following the Russian model of action against NGOs. While we are still embracing transparency, as most of the NGO actors in Hungary do, the readers of the study should also understand that the “dangers” of transparency nowadays definitely are higher in some countries in Eastern Europe. 

For more information on the Political Capital Institute, see www.politicalcapital.hu

Transparify to Launch 2015 Report on 17 February – Embargoed Copies Available

Transparify will release its 2015 report on the financial transparency of think tanks on Tuesday, 17 February 2015.

Transparify’s 2015 report will cover 169 think tanks across dozens of countries worldwide, and will for the first time display full rating results for every single think tank. We expect strong coverage by various U.S. media outlets, and additional coverage by British, Spanish, and Brussels-based media.

The report will be released at 02:01 EST (08:01 Berlin time) via the Transparify website.

To receive the report straight into your inbox when we release it sign up here. Alternatively, you can follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

To request an embargoed copy of the report in advance, or to schedule a phone interview, please contact our advocacy manager. Our D.C. representative will be available for radio and TV interviews.

A Debate Worth Having: Anonymity & Remaining Opacity

As think tanks, especially in the United States, have been putting more information online, their disclosure has invited scrutiny and public debate. In the last days there were several items, see Greg Sargent for the Washington Post and Dan Berman in the National Journal. 

We welcome the debate and attention to think tank funding. Greg Sargent quotes our statement on this debate in detail, and we are reposting it here once more: 

Transparify strongly welcomes the Center for American Progress' recent shift towards greater transparency. While we have not formally assessed and rated CAP's new disclosure level yet, it is clear that it represents a substantial improvement over CAP's previous level of disclosure. CAP's move reflects a broad and significant shift by the American think tank community as a whole towards greater transparency over the past year. 

Some commentators have highlighted the fact that CAP, like some other think tanks, has not disclosed the names of some of its donors. Transparify obviously encourages full disclosure, but at the same time realizes that large institutions in particular may need to take one step towards transparency at a time. CAP is definitely moving into the right direction. 

Should there be anonymous donors at all? As Transparify has documented, there are various sides to the debate. Some donors do not want to be named. While we prefer as much transparency as possible, our ratings at this point make allowance for up to 15% of donations being anonymous. The rationale is that sensible organizations typically will not risk their reputations for a small portion of their funding. This rule-of-thumb is not meant to settle the discussion on anonymous funding. It is intended to make it possible to have a constructive debate on such funding, in the first place.

Meanwhile, a small (and rapidly shrinking) minority of American think tanks continue to dig their heels in and refuse to open their books. It's understandable and legitimate that the public is focusing on the funding makeup of institutions who are opening their books.  However, in terms of research integrity, what is far more worrying is what is completely unknown -- the funding makeup of opaque think tanks. 

It's important to ask who is funding 3% of a more transparent think tank's operations. But it's even more important to ask opaque think tanks who do not disclose who their main donors are why they continue to keep their books closed while their peers are progressively disclosing more data.

[one typo amended from original statement]

We will soon be releasing our transparency rating of 150+ think tanks from around the world. To be notified, follow us on Facebook, sign up to our mailing list or follow us on Twitter. 

Thinks Tanks Begin Planning for the 2016 Presidential Transition

Guest blogger Heath Brown discusses the role of think tanks in the US presidential transition, and calls for more transparency in the process. Transparify does not edit the content of guest blogs; the views expressed in this blog are those of the author alone, and may not reflect the views of Transparify.

It may seem shockingly early to start talking about the 2016 campaign, but with a near permanent campaign infrastructure in place, the major candidates are getting ready. Funding plans, social media strategies, and celebrity endorsements are discretely in the works for Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, and Rand Paul.

Less attention has been drawn to the equally important planning for the 2016 presidential transition – the 11 week period between the election and the inauguration. While media consultants are busy cutting the first campaign advertisements, wonks are figuring out the mechanics of a transition between presidents to insure a safe, efficient, and orderly process occurs. Most of these wonks and policy experts now work for the research think tanks that dot Washington and other major US cities.

Starting this early is not a new thing. In 1960, the most famous think tank, the Brookings Institution, practically invented the concept of a carefully planned presidential transition when it briefed representatives of candidates John Kennedy and Richard Nixon during the later stages of the campaign. Brookings feared Cold War threats might be exacerbated if partisan wrangling interrupted the work of the foreign policy establishment prior to the January inauguration.

Twenty years later, and prior to when President Reagan was elected in 1980, scholars at the Heritage Foundation – the conservative think tank founded in the early 1970s by Paul Weyrich, Edwin Feulner, and Joseph Coors – had already mapped an initial policy agenda and identified specific individuals to be appointed to the new Reagan administration.

And in 1999, long before the controversial recount, George W. Bush had tasked one of his closest advisers, Clay Johnson, with developing a personnel plan for his White House. The American Enterprise Institute and other conservative think tanks eventually advised on elements of the Bush transition, including the controversial Energy Task Force chaired by Dick Cheney (see:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/cheney_energy_task_force.html).

In 2008, the Center for American Progress (CAP) had been aggressively planning for the transition, and the president-elect chose that think tank’s leader, John Podesta, to co-chair his transition team (see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/24/AR2008112403005.html). Ultimately many of CAPs key staffers were appointed to the Obama White House and other important federal positions.

So, it is not too early to expect the planning to begin, but where can we expect presidential planning in 2015? Since we do not even know who is officially running, we can just speculate at this point.

If Hillary Clinton decides to run, it is reasonable to expect that the Center for American Progress will again be actively planning, since John Podesta is already talked about as a member of the inner circle of her campaign team. But it is also reasonable to expect that the dozens of experts at the Clinton Foundation are developing some of the foreign policy and international affairs ideas that could later make up a Clinton policy agenda.

If Jeb Bush decides to run, many of the same think tanks that supported his brother in 2000 – including the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute – will again be active. But organizations tied to Jeb Bush’s favored policy issues, especially school reform, should also be central. Bush founded the Foundation for Excellence in Education and continues to serve as the Chair of its Board (see: http://excelined.org/team/governor-jeb-bush/). His foundation will likely be identifying ways to reorganize the US Department of Education and which education policymakers might be nominated to crucial positions.

If Rand Paul decides to run we cannot rely on precedent as we can for Clinton and Bush. Instead, Paul’s libertarian leanings might invite the Cato Institute into the process, and a new array of policy experts with a very different perspective would take part in the process.

Unfortunately, the moment word gets out that a candidate is even tacitly coordinating transition planning they will be accused of “measuring the White House drapes” or “counting chickens before they hatch.” The tendency of the media to frame pre-election transition planning as presumptuous prevents candidates and think tanks from the type of transparency that would advance rather than hinder democracy.  Think tanks should be involved in planning, but transition planning should be made as public as Federal Election Commission regulations require major aspects of the campaign. Greater transparency would reduce concerns that voters and other large segments of the country are shut out of a critical aspect of federal policymaking. Think tanks can be leaders in this move toward openness if they openly report the transition planning that will likely dominate their work in the new year.

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Heath Brown is assistant professor of public policy at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. He is the author of Lobbying the New Presidents: Interests in Transition that has just been released in paper-back (see: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138848993/).