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Think
Tanks
In the last 30 years, all major changes
in Government and Opposition Policy started as ideas within Think
Tanks. As independent, privately financed bodies, they are crucial
incubators of the ideas that will shape our future.
Dan Lewis is actively involved with the following Think Tanks: The
Economic Research Council - as Research Director and with the Centre
for Policy Studies as a Research Fellow.
The Economic Research
Council - http://www.ercouncil.org/
The
Economic Research Council was founded in 1943 as the Joint Council
for Economic and Monetary Research. Its origins go back at least a
decade earlier to the 1930s, when a number of prominent people,
concerned at the poverty around them in the midst of plenty, started
questioning the use in Britain of a monetary system that had failed
the nation in the past and was liable to go on perpetuating the
sequence of boom, slump, boom of the 1920s.
If orthodox
economics were to blame then its basic tenets should be challenged:
and the challengers should be informed citizens who made it their
business to learn more about the practical aspects of economics, and
to get more people to join them in this process of enlightenment.
Objectives
The Council has seven
objectives. Reflecting its origins, the first is:
1. To promote education in the science of
economics with particular reference to monetary practice.
The other six are:
2. To devote sympathetic and
detailed study to presentations on economic and monetary subjects
submitted by members and others, reporting thereon in the light of
knowledge and experience.
3. To explore with other bodies the
fields of monetary and economic thought in order to positively
secure a maximum of common ground for purposes of public
enlightenment.
4. To take all necessary steps to increase
the interest of the general public in the objects of the Council, by
making known the results of study and research.
5. To
publish reports and other documents embodying the results of study
and research.
6. To encourage the establishment by other countries of
bodies having aims similar to those of the Council, and to
collaborate with such bodies to the public advantage.
7. To
do such things as may be incidental or conducive to the attainment
of these objectives.
The Centre for Policy Studies - http://www.cps.org.uk/
The Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) is an independent think tank
which develops and publishes public policy proposals and arranges
seminars and lectures on topical policy issues, as part of its mission
to influence policy around the world. It also maintains a range
of informal contacts with politicians, policymakers, civil servants
and the press, in Britain and abroad.
The CPS was founded in 1974 by Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph,
and can claim a large share of the credit for initiating policies
such as privatisation, trade union reform, council house sales,
pensions deregulation, education reform, free trade, health service
reform and the recent restructuring of the tax system to favour
traditional families.
The Centre bases all its policy proposals on a set of core principles,
including the value of free markets, the importance of individual
choice and responsibility, and the concepts of duty, family, respect
for the law, national independence, individualism and liberty.
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