American Think-Tanks And Their Role In US Foreign Policy

Think tanks are nonprofit independent institutions,which,with policy studies as their core tasks,aim at severing the government and the society directly and indirectly.American think tanks firstly emerged in the early beginning of the 20th century.Their evolution experience 4 periods. American can develop rapidly due to the non-centralized political system of U.S.,the loose political parties system,the complex diplomatic decision-making process, the U.S. superpower status and the cultural tradition of private donation.Think-tank has different classification standard. According to the political inclination,they can be sorted into such three categories as conservative think tanks, intermediate think tanks and liberal think tanks. The operation mode of American think tanks help them achieve rapid development.Generally,elitism and pluralism are used to explore the role of think tanks in American political life.But the political reality manifest the combination of the two theories.As intellectual elite, think tanks emerge as an independent image.They play an important role in pluralistic society is not surprising.Roger Hilsman propose Hierarchical power theory to explain the U.S.decision making process.In the theory,the power affect U.S.policy is divided into three levels.American think tanks influence U.S. foreign policy mainly through influencing foreign policy actors in the three levels.The actors include the President who is the representative of the executive, to members of Congress, interest groups and the public.Think tanks impose their impacts on American foreign policies mainly by ways of putting forward ideas about foreign policy,providing talents,providing exchanging platform for policy makers, guiding public opinion and taking part in "the second track" diplomacy.After "9·11", the influential power of American think tanks increased rapidly. They played an important role in the making and implementing of anti-terrorist strategy. "Smart power" diplomacy is inseparable from Center for Strategic and International Studies.Form the two cases,we can know that think tanks were mainly through the participation in the policy setting stage of policies source to influence American foreign policies. To study think tank's role in U.S. foreign policy,we can know that power deeply rely on knowledge in modern political life.We can understand the role in American political life and know the reasons think tanks play an important role in U.S. foreign policy.For the important role of American think tanks,we should pay grate attention to them and carry on "think-tanks diplomacy".We also should learn form their developing experience and take measures to promote the development of think tanks in China.