OF late, there has been a rapid growth of think tanks in Pakistan. These organisations carry out policy-related research and are a platform for dialogue to facilitate informed decision-making. The growing community of think tanks in Pakistan is linked to the larger global research community. According to the Global Go To Think Tank Report 2020, published by the Think Tank and Civil Society Programme (TTCSP) of the University of Pennsylvania, there are 11,175 think tanks in the world, more than half of them in North America and Europe. The US has 1,872, the highest number for any country, according to Statista, a global data and business intelligence platform. Washington, DC, alone houses 397.
While some US think tanks have a longer history like the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (established in 1910) and the Brookings Institution (1916), 58 per cent of American think tanks were founded in the last 25 years, according to TTCSP’s programme director, Prof McGann.
Asia is catching up, as manifested by a dramatic rise in the number of think tanks since the dawn of the 21st century. Some have become iconic names in the research community, such as the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, which is a composite of 15 institutes, and India’s Observation Research Foundation.