Policy Progress is a ‘think-site’ rather than a think-tank or a blog. There’s a bit about this on our About page, but I thought I’d elaborate some more about my reasoning here.

Policy think-tanks are a pretty common feature of the political landscape in other countries, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. Some are openly aligned with a political perspective or even a particular party, whereas others seek to be more non-partisan.

The most prominent nonpartisan think-tank in New Zealand is the New Zealand Institute (there are also some university centres that arguably fit the definition) and its main rightwing think-tanks are the Business Roundtable and the (Australasian) Centre for Independent Studies.

But there haven’t been any successful attempts to establish an ongoing think-tank on the left of the political spectrum. I suspect this isn’t an accident. In fact, I think it probably comes down to some pretty fundamental obstacles – to do with finding the funding resources and availability of personnel – that aren’t easy to solve.

So what I’m trying to do with Policy Progress is to work around those obstacles.

At the same time, I also want to to tap into some of the opportunities for online communication and publication that have emerged over the last decade, and that are seen vividly in the proliferation of political blogging in New Zealand, but which haven’t really been exploited much by New Zealand think-tanks.

Part of that comes down to working ‘off the smell of an oily rag’. I’m trying to keep Policy Progress’s overheads very low, and I’m doing this in my ‘free time’ while earning an income from other projects.

Ultimately, if the organisation is going to continue long-term and if I’m going to devote as much time to it as I’d like (and maybe bring others on board), it will need to develop some sort of revenue stream(s). But one step at a time. I thought about spending a lot of time trying to line up sponsors and such like before launching, but in the end I decided it was best to simply leap in and take the ‘Field of Dreams’ approach.

The other thing that I see as distinctive about the ‘think-site’ model is that this blog will be an integral component of Policy Progress’s offerings.

Now, blogging is certainly not an unheard-of feature for regular think-tanks these days. Demos in the UK has a regularly updated blog, while the Centre of American Progress has a thriving blog sister-site, Think Progress. But blogging is likely to make up a larger proportion of activity on the Policy Progress site than would be the case for a regular think-tank.

What’s more, the blog will be interlinked with the think-tank’s overall work programme. Rather than focussing on issues currently in the news, many of its posts foreshadow or test ideas and analysis for its reports. In this way, they form part of the analytical process for Policy Progress’s work programme, as well as being a way to achieve greater awareness about its work.

Tags: blogging, think-tanks

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 at 6:52 am and is filed under Overview. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.