Reframing II : brokering in the marketplace of influential ideas

Abstract

In this vignette, I examine how universities are becoming increasingly linked to think tanks in the new markets for impactful knowledge discussed in the previous vignette. I draw attention to the marketised partnerships and hybrid research-teaching models that are taking form across the borders of the university in a competitive marketplace for producing ideas that will influence public opinion and policy. While there is a long history of relationships between university research and policy making (Pestre 2003), this has been developed around an understanding that universities offer a more distanced critical orientation than think tanks, which provide particular issuefocused reports (Weaver 1989). In recent years, however, think tanks have expanded their role into education activities, while new university-based research institutes have begun to build more market-centric knowledge production relationships with governments and to compete in policy fields that were once the preserve of think tanks (Stone 2013). This vignette examines the blurring and shifting relationships between universities and think tanks in relation to the Brussels-based marketplace for influential ideas regarding European Union (EU) policy. To do so, I draw on material from websites and interviews with representatives of think tanks, university-based research centres and the EU institutions (Bajenova 2016, 2018, 2019).