A Dialogue between politics and science: think tanks in Germany
Dieser Artikel in Deutsch
Towards the end of the 90s, the German Federal Government moved to Berlin. And with it, associations and companies, science organisations and journalists and representatives of all sorts of interest groups moved to the new capital as well. Changes in the communication relations between the political actors and the different groups in society have been observed as one of the resulting impacts since then. Journalists are said to have a gruffer way of speaking, while industrial lobbyists are claimed to have increased their influence. Exchange between politicians and scientists has intensified as well, according to what Dr. Volker Perthes, Director of the "Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik", has observed. The foundation moved its headquarters to Berlin in 1998. "We have generally noticed that readiness to consult experts has grown among politicians since the government moved to Berlin," Perthes reports."Moving has meant breaking up old structures. And then there is the requirement for everybody to economise. Before taking on any new staff, one prefers to resort to external specialists. Thus we are relatively often asked to introduce a working group of a parliamentary party to a topic within 20 minutes' time or to take part in a brainstorming session at a ministry. We for our part have introduced new, interactive forms of policy consulting such as joint working groups with politicians. Nowadays, we also take care that we are amply considering the action-oriented requirements of decision-makers and write material in a short, concise and comprehensible manner. Brief summaries are read more."
It has been estimated that there are between 80 and 130 think tanks in Germany. Think tanks are institutions whose research relates to political activities in some way. They include the major economic research institutes, foreign, peace and security policy organisations as well as institutions of social, environmental and engineering research such as the technology assessment academies. The departmental research institutions allocated to individual ministries and conducting research the latter have commissioned form a large group. While the academic institutions are proud of their political neutrality, other think tanks are explicitly engaged in supporting certain political causes or interests in society. These include the research academies of the political foundations associated with the political parties, such as the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, or the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, affiliated to the SPD and the CDU respectively, as well as institutes independent of parties such as the "Öko-Institut" (Institute for Applied Ecology) of Freiburg, whose founding members dedicated themselves to opposing nuclear power and which since then has campaigned for environmental policy issues.
It has proved sensible for institutions that wish to be successful as think tanks to be active at three levels: in the scientific community, in policy consulting and in contacts with the general public. This is also the experience made by Professor Dr. Klaus Zimmermann, President of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), Berlin, and Director of the Bonn Institute for the Study of Labour (IZA). "Our aim is to conduct 50 percent research and 50 percent policy consulting," Zimmermann explains. "Around 45 percent of our overall budget come from consulting orders."Again and again, scientists arrive at results for which they note a considerable need to take action but that are not addressed by politics. In such cases, they frequently get in touch with the press. "What is discussed in public will at some stage attract the attention of the politicians and enter the party programmes," Zimmermann notes. "One example of a topic that is currently keeping us very busy and that we believe is being given too little attention is the law on immigration. One can already reckon with a dearth of qualified specialists in Germany in the future. But they can only come from abroad. However, as a rule, people immigrating currently are low-qualified. Here, there is a lack of political initiative."
When scientists point to a failure among politicians to respond adequately to research results, the other side sometimes replies by way of pointing to their being out of touch with reality. Scientists, it is claimed, work too theoretically and understand too little of day-to-day political activities. Commenting on this, Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. Werner Weidenfeld, Director of the Centre for Applied Policy Research (CAP) at Munich University, claims: "Politics follows a certain reason. At a given moment, a politician has to keep an eye on several aspects of a forthcoming issue simultaneously. There are factual issues as well as strategic considerations on sustaining power. This reason stemming from a given situation in politics is countered by the systematic reason of science, a state of affairs that the scientist has to be aware of.Conversely, the politician ought to bear in mind that the expert will not consider all strategic aspects. Dialogue between politics and science will work whenever both sides are aware of this. For instance the scientist should have a sense of timing. A paper required today may be entirely useless in two days' time. The processing of information progresses in different ways in politics and science."
The think tank model originates from the USA, where these institutions play a major role in politics and are frequently tied to the policies of a single party. According to Weidenfeld, this is also due to the infrastructure of politics in the USA being thinner than that in Germany. What is achieved there by think tanks is dealt with in Germany by parties and associations. Regarding positioning oneself on an increasingly international market of commissioning of reports and studies, Zimmermann maintains that German scientists view their political neutrality as a locational advantage.
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