Global Trends and Transitions in Security Expertise

From Nuclear Deterrence to Climate Change and Back Again

James McGann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351397735
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The scope of Security and International Affairs research has expanded tremendously since the end of the Cold War to include topics beyond the realm of war studies or military statecraft. The field—once devoted solely to the study of conventional military and nuclear security issues—has diversified to include foci often considered nontraditional, including peace and conflict, political, economic, environmental, and human security.

In this exciting new volume, McGann has undertaken a quantitative and qualitative study of SIA think tanks, looking at global and regional trends in their research. He argues that the end of the Cold War marked a fundamental shift within the field of defense and security studies among think tanks and academics. Tracking the evolution of security as understood by researchers and policymakers is vital as the world follows the path of the Four Mores: more issues, more actors, more competition, and more conflict. As we move forward into a world of rapid change and ubiquitous uncertainty, think tanks will only become more prominent and influential.

The volume concludes with an assessment of the future of Security and International Affairs studies and raises the possibility of a return to a traditional security focus driven by recent events in Europe and the Middle East. This will be an important resource for students and scholars of security studies, global governance, and think tanks.

1    What is a Security and International Affairs think tank?

First examining the nature of expertise and the potential for individual qualifications to become collective understanding and contributions opens up the debate on the role of think tanks as addressed in the previous chapter. Before delving further into the intersection of academia and policymaking – and within SIA specifically – this chapter will explicitly define think tanks.

While there is variation in the field as to how think tanks are defined and delimited, TTCSP has completed extensive work to create a widely accepted and academically rigorous working definition inclusive of disparate regional and global norms yet specific enough to highlight important organizational differences across the think tank spectrum. According to TTCSP, think tanks are public policy research analysis and engagement organizations that generate policy-oriented research, analysis, and advice on domestic and international issues, enabling policymakers and the public to make informed decisions about public policy. Think tanks may be affiliated or independent institutions structured as permanent bodies rather than ad hoc commissions. As previously mentioned, these institutions often act as a bridge between the academic and policymaking communities and between states and civil society with the aim to serve public interest as independent voices that translate research into a language that is understandable, reliable, and accessible for policymakers and a varied public.¹

In an effort to create a typology that takes into consideration the comparative differences in political systems and civil societies, this chapter includes a number of categories to illustrate the many roles think tanks may play in their host societies. Over the last 85 years, several distinct organizational forms of think tanks have emerged which differentiate themselves in terms of their operating styles, patterns of recruitment, and aspirations to academic standards of objectivity and completeness in research. These differences are shown in Table 1.1. Although alternative typologies of think tanks have been offered by other analysts, most think tanks fall into the broad categories delineated in this study and displayed in the table.

Table  1.1  Categories of think tank affiliations

Category	Definition
Autonomous and independent	Significant independence from any one interest group or donor, and autonomous in its operation and funding from government
Quasi-independent	Autonomous from government but controlled by an interest group, donor or contracting agency that provides a majority of the funding and has significant influence over operations of the think tank
University-affiliated	A policy research center at a university
Political party-affiliated	Formally affiliated with a political party
Government-affiliated	A part of the structure of government
Quasi-governmental	Funded exclusively by government grants and contracts but not a part of the formal structure of government
Corporate	A for-profit public policy research organization, affiliated with a corporation or merely operating on a for-profit basis

Think tanks have multiplied and diversified, rising to meet the challenge of an increasingly informed and globalized world. As such, think tanks have sought to fill the “operational gap,” or policymakers’ lack of access to the information and tools that they need to respond to contemporary issues.² Herein lies much of the importance of think tanks: they filter, sort, and synthesize information which they then provide in accessible form to policymakers.

Think tanks address another key gap in the global policymaking process: the “participatory gap,” or the self-perceived exclusion of individuals and private organizations from policymaking. Although think tanks are just one category of actors among civil society, they have in many ways become the representatives of civil society in global policymaking. As such, a country’s think tank sector can function as a barometer of sorts for the strength of that country’s civil society. A robust and influential think tank sector implies a robust and active civil society, whereas weaker civil societies are characterized by low degrees of think tank activity. In short, if analysts and critics associated with think tanks are allowed to operate freely, so too, in all likelihood, can the rest of civil society.

This book looks specifically at SIA think tanks, which can be further subdivided into two categories: defense and national security, and foreign policy and international affairs. SIA are defined as a singular concept because they are inevitably intertwined. States use a variety of methods to maintain security and national interests through diplomacy, military strength, political maneuvering, and economic statecraft. These, in turn, affect interactions with other countries around the world – especially with the increasing connectivity and intelligence of communities around the world. These recent developments – additional actors in contemporary conflicts, technological advancements, and new modes of warfare – have transformed the global view of security in the 21st century. As a result of the dynamic nature of the field, the definition of SIA is widely contested by scholars. For the purposes of this book, we have concluded that the following definition is the most suitable in describing the diverse set of institutions with the requisite level of expertise and purported duty for policy and civil service. SIA think tanks are dedicated to studying how states achieve security in all of its forms: national, transnational, economic, environmental, cyber, and energy. SIA think tanks also study how states interact (diplomacy, economic flexing, and armed aggression) to achieve their desired outcomes.

Within the realm of SIA, defense and national security think tanks are predominantly concerned with defense and security analyses. They look to public policy that addresses international security and military issues, given that national security refers to the concept that a government, along with its parliament(s), should protect the state and its citizens against all kind of “national” crises through a variety of power projections including political power, diplomacy, economic power, and military might. These institutions make analyses based on past and present policies to influence policymakers in an effort to adopt practical and intelligent solutions to current and potential security threats. They generate innovative research on issues crucial to the policy debate, from non-proliferation, transnational threats and geo-economics to climate change, terrorism, and homeland security. Defense and national security think tanks offer strategic advice and political-risk analysis to commercial and government clients, and develop comprehensive analytical approaches to defense and national security issues.

The scope of SIA also includes foreign policy and international affairs think tanks. Such institutions strive to understand the challenges of world affairs and their effects on the international community. They typically influence foreign policy through one of two frameworks. The first, issue articulation, refers to the publication of information through dissemination of research in media, support of high-profile individuals and experts, and cooperation with the government to raise awareness about an issue. Policy formulation, on the other hand, refers to direct and detailed communications with channels of government through briefings, testimonies, consultations, and studies. Foreign policy and international affairs think tanks often encompass many of the non-traditional security foci that we will discuss later in the book, representing the broadening scope of security studies and necessitating the category’s inclusion with the realm of SIA think tanks.

Notes

1    James G. McGann, Think Tanks and Policy Advice in the United States (London: Routledge, 2007); and James G. McGann, The Fifth Estate: Think Tanks, Public Policy, and Governance (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2016).

2    Thorsten Benner, Wolfgang Reinicke, and Jan Witte, “Beyond Multilateralism: Global Public Policy Networks,” International Politics and Society 3 (2000); James G. McGann, Global Think Tanks, Politics and Governance (London: Routledge, 2010); and James G. McGann, “Global Think Tanks: Catalysts for Ideas and Action,” Diplomatic Courier 5 (2011).

2 What is “expertise”?

• Influence of expertise on policymaking

• Think tanks, academics, and “the gap”: where does expertise meet policy?

• Conclusion

“Expertise” has served as a foundation for the authority and proliferation of think tanks throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Although security issues were once the nearly exclusive domain of the military, civilian expertise originating in think tanks and universities has come to play an increasingly prominent role in the study of security, and in the formulation of security policy.¹ Surprisingly, however, the literature on the definition of security expertise itself has been scant until recently, despite the great deal of attention that has been given to the role of expertise in other realms of international relations.² As Barnett and Finnemore³ argue, many international institutions and think tanks derive their authority from expertise. A working definition of the term expertise drawn from an examination of the leading literature on the subject is key to understanding the conditions of the authority think tanks and related institutions exert in the foreign policy world.

There are several ways to define the concept of expertise depending on the circumstance in which it is referred to. In the context of research, Weible⁴ presents “expertise” as “content generated by professional, scientific and technical methods of inquiry … based on accepted analytical approaches as defined by professional peers,” while Gove and Ericsson believe “expertise” constitutes “the mechanisms underlying the superior achievement of an expert, i.e. one who has acquired special skill in or knowledge of a particular subject through professional training and practical experience.”⁵ More generally, expertise is the combination of three fundamentals by someone in a certain domain: knowledge, experience, and skills.⁶ For the purpose of this book, the working definition of expertise is a synthesis of these three widely accepted and cited definitions stated above. It will be understood for the rest of this book to be content generated through professional, scientific, and technical mechanisms generally approved by professional peers and practiced by someone (an expert) who has gained specific knowledge, experience, and skills through extensive professional training and applied practice.⁷

The evolution of conceptions of expertise over the past century and a half to its contemporary form as a basis for authority is intertwined with the rise of think tanks to their current significance in policy formation. The rest of this chapter will review literature regarding the sociology and proliferation of expertise over the past century, expertise in organizational or collective forms, the variety of ways that expertise can influence policymaking, and the participatory “gap” that allows think tanks to act as a bridge between academia and policy. All of these factors contribute to an understanding of how think tanks and expertise have evolved together over the past century.

The influx of experts into the realm of international relations follows a broader trend of growing reliance on expertise in society at large.⁸ Scholars have offered several sociological and economic theories attempting to explain the proliferation of expertise in the modern world. James Smith,⁹ for instance, places the genesis of expertise in the Progressive Era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as social sciences found their place in academia with American graduate schools beginning to provide new avenues for specialization. Giddens,¹⁰ meanwhile, attributes the rise of the expert to the uncertainty and ambivalence of late modernity that is characterized by the sweeping information revolution, continuing cultural development, and increasing social reflexivity, trends that have allowed the scientific pursuit of truth and validity to permeate social life. Relatedly, Knorr-Cetina¹¹ links the trend to the development of post-industrial knowledge societies in which knowledge has become a productive force that increasingly rep...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. What is a Security and International Affairs think tank?
• 2. What is “expertise”?
• 3. What is “security studies”?
• 4. What is security expertise?
• 5. Methodology
• 6. Think tank trends and regional breakdown by security foci
• 7. Case studies
• 8. Conclusion and areas for future research
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index