Think Tanks in Europe: A pilot definition, research design and categorisation of selected think tanks in Brussels, Denmark and Germany

The emergence of more think tanks in recent decades has spawned some interest in how they function and impact policy-making in the European Union and its member states. So far however few empirical studies of think tanks have been carried out and think tanks have mainly been studied in their national contexts. Questions regarding patterns and differences in think tank organisations and functions across countries have largely been left unanswered. This paper advances a definition and research design that uses different expert roles to categorise think tanks. A sample of 34 think tanks from Brussels, Denmark and Germany are categorised according to different expert roles in a
pilot analysis. As the analysis is sensitive to the interpretation and weight given to different indicators, besides from picturing the think tank landscape, the analysis is intended to trigger a discussion of how and why think tank types converge and diverge across countries and levels of governance, to what extent they are embedded in national contexts and how studies of think tanks can proceed despite methodological problems and disagreement on how to define think tanks.