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The role of think tanks in American politics has been increasingly subjected to systematic analysis over the last 10-15 years. In this article I review some of this literature, focusing mainly on the questions of what think tanks are, why this phenomenon is so strongly associated with the US, & what influence think tanks have on US policy-making. Think tanks comprise a wide range of organizations, from pure research institutions to the ideologically-based "advocacy think tanks" characterized by their combination of a strong political agenda & aggressive marketing techniques. The American political system has several features that allow think tanks access to the decision-making process, such as a fragmented structure with a weak party system, a central role for the mass media, & an issue-dominated political agenda. There is no good measure of the general influence of think tanks in US politics, but case studies indicate that the central role of the ideologically-based advocacy think tanks may serve to undermine the role of experts in American politics in the long term. References. Adapted from the source document.

When Nordic political scientists talk about dictatorships, they often refer to dictators in exotic lands, forgetting that Denmark-Norway was a dictatorship between 1660 and 1814. During that period the country was an authoritarian dictatorship with some totalitarian characteristics that spent between 1/3 and 2/3 of its budget on the army. Denmark, Norway and Sweden - that shared similar characteristics - were eventually able to break away from this, due to the growth of stable administrative, juridical and to some extent social institutions. The development towards the final breakaway in Norway and Denmark, which occurred in 1814 respectively 1848, is described in detail. L. Pitkaniemi