Theocracy includes forms of government claiming to be governed by God or by gods, usually through human lieutenants, or by the revealed law of God. Secular skeptics use the term derisively; however, theocracy has been very widespread as a political system. Political science has thus developed only a limited vocabulary for describing the many types of theocratic regimes. Most political systems have been based on tribal groups, kingdoms, city-states, or empires—many theocratic. Legitimacy of a theocracy is based on the faithful enforcement of divine rule. When the Chinese emperor lost the mandate of heaven, the regime was ripe for dynastic change. A similar idea operated among the Mayan Indians.

Titus Flavius Josephus (Joseph ben Matthias, ca. 37–100 CE) coined the term theocracy in his work Against Apion. In responding to a severe critic of the Jews, he replied that some may have their aristocracy or monarchy, but the Jews had their theocracy. The term implicitly demonstrates the inadequacy of Aristotle’s six forms of government, which were based on the study of one hundred fifty Greek city-states, not all the regimes in history.

Often theocratic systems have been headed by a living god or by the representatives of a divine being, or they have been strongly influenced by religious leaders. Divine rulers have included the Inca in South America and the emperor of Japan, living gods descended from the sun god or goddess. In other theocratic systems, the divine ruler has been a lieutenant of the divine—a charismatic leader, king, priest, or other religious functionary.

Charismatic leaders such as Moses or Joshua of the Hebrew Bible, and others who exhibited great spiritual power in other systems, were viewed as divine agents but were not necessarily considered divine. The power or the spirit of the divine, signified by the successful exercise of power, legitimated their actions.

European monarchs usually claimed a divine right to rule. Arguments made by divine-right political theorists justified earlier ideas of kingship. Sir Robert Filmer (1589–1653) argued in his book, Patriarchia (1680), that the king was the father of the country. To disobey the king was to disobey the JudeoChristian commandment to obey one’s father and mother and, thus, merit the death penalty. In the United Kingdom, divine right was still the official doctrine in 1953 when Queen Elizabeth II was crowned by “the grace of God,” not by the will of the people.

Rule by priests, or hierocracy, has occurred in a number of places. The Jesuits operated hierocracies in Paraguay, among other places. Judah was ruled after the war of the Maccabees (167–160 BCE) as a priestly theocracy.

The revealed divine law, or theos nomos, is the legitimating authority in theonomic regimes. Ministers or devout laymen, such as John Calvin (1509–1564), a pastoral leader of Geneva, have often headed regimes described as theocracies. Calvin used his superior knowledge of the Bible to create a Christian city-state. William Penn’s Pennsylvania and the Puritan colonies were similarly theonomic bibleocracies.

In the twentieth century, theocracies have existed in a number of places. The emperor of Japan did not renounce his claims of divine rule but merely ceased to appeal to them. There have been hints in recent decades that the claims could be renewed. The Wahhabis imposed Islamic theocracy on Saudi Arabia before the kingdom’s founding by King Abdul Aziz al-Saud in 1932. Pakistan was created to be a Muslim theonomy in 1947. In the early 1950s, the Tibetan Buddhist theocracy led by the Dalai Lama was driven out of Tibet. In 1979, the theocratic leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini forced the shah out of Iran and reinstituted the shariah, or Islamic law.

Bibliography:

Abu-Bakr, Mohammed. Islamic Theocracy. Denver: Purple Dawn Books, 1993.
Figgis, John Neville. The Divine Right of Kings. New York: Harper and Row, 1965.
Runciman, Steve. Byzantine Theocracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.

Think Tanks

A think tank is a nonprofit, independent, public policy research institute. This ver y broad definition encompasses diverse organizations in terms of resources, personnel, and specialization. However, they all apply a model of expertise—using social science methods of inquiry to study public issues in order to give policy insights and advice to government and lawmakers and to educate the general public.

Originally, think tanks resembled “universities without students” (Weaver 1989). They employ experts with strong academic backgrounds and seek to convey an image of neutrality by following higher education norms of scientific rigorousness and objectivity. Over time, the work of think tanks has become more politicized, and some of them have tried to market their ideas through sophisticated advocacy strategies. The think tank model of expertise can now be encountered worldwide.

In the United States, think tanks are generally registered as 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations, which grants them exemption from federal income tax and allows them to collect tax-deductible donations. This generous status can be a double-edged sword: Helping them gain access to funds was instrumental to their development. However, it also restricted their actions because it forbade them from conducting political campaign activities to influence elections and prevented them from dedicating a substantial part of their activity to lobbying.

Some aspects of the U.S. political system are believed to have contributed to the emergence and growth of think tanks. Political features credited for the dynamism of the think tank in the United States include: a fiscal status favorable for securing financing for their operations, the openness of the country’s legislative process, the expansion of the federal government and government contracts for research opportunities, the weakness of political parties agenda-setting capabilities, and the need for readily available government positions.

Historical Development

The establishment of independent research institutes in the United States links closely with the professionalization of social sciences and traces back to the turn of the twentieth century. At a time when state bureaucracy was growing, independent research organizations were founded with the progressive idea that scientific analysis was the best way to promote efficiency in government. The Institute for Government Research (IGR), chartered in 1916, was one of the first organizations to produce this type of independent expertise for advancing governmental reform. Under the auspices of its chairman, Frank Good now, and its first director, William Willoughby, both renowned political scientists, the IGR was particularly influential in the establishment of an annual federal budget. In 1927, the IGR became the Brookings Institution.

Several progressive or liberal organizations followed suit in the first half of the twentieth century. In 1943, a group of businessmen, disgruntled by the New Deal and what they perceived as a liberal consensus, establish the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) to promote conservative principals under the same model of scholarly policy analysis and public education that Brookings had developed.

After World War II (1939–1945), the RAND Corporation— formerly a branch of Douglas Aircraft that provided research for the U.S. Air Force—gained its autonomy and popularized the term think tank, which the military had coined. RAND was the first organization that derived almost all its revenues from government contracts. From its original focus on defense strategies in response to the cold war, RAND expanded—on account of a substantial budget—to pursue a very broad range of research. Among its many accomplishments, the organization is credited with major breakthroughs in game theory. The Urban Institute, created in 1968 by the administration of U.S. president Lyndon Johnson to provide expert evaluation of the Great Society programs, is another organization whose research is primarily contracted by U.S. government agencies.

The 1960s and 1970s witnessed the rise of new think tanks that criticized the more neutral approach of their predecessors and decided to more forcefully assert their ideological standpoints. Founded in 1963 by two former members of the Kennedy administration who disapproved of the foreign policy pursued by the government, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) defends left-wing policy analysis, seeking to combine with social activism. During the 1960s, IPS was particularly engaged in the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War (1959–1975).

Edwin Feulner and Paul Weyrich established the Heritage Foundation in 1973 to promote conservative ideas in more activist ways than AEI. Heritage brought a new “think tank culture” based on aggressive marketing of proposals that started what was described as a “war of ideas.” Heritage asserted its influence in 1980 when it provided the newly elected President Reagan with its Mandate for Leadership, a study containing two thousand recommendations for furthering a conservative agenda. During the 1980s and 1990s, fueled by generous conservative foundations, conservative and libertarian think tanks like the Cato Institute flourished.

The Center for American Progress (CAP), created in 2003, is considered the liberal answer to the Heritage Foundation. Its funding came from a group of wealthy liberals headed by George Soros, who attributed part of the success conservatives enjoyed at the time to their strong presence in the think tank world. In order to advocate its ideals, CAP joined forces with a 501(c)(4) organization to gain more leeway for active lobbying.

Role And Influence

Think tanks’ direct impact on policy making is difficult to gauge. They are credited not only with a direct, measurable effect on specific decisions, but also with shaping what is known as the climate of the opinion, or the decision-making environment.

The role of think tanks is controversial because their involvement within the policy elite demonstrates the intricate relationship between knowledge and power. While some critics have denounced them as discourse conveyors for the dominant political and economic players, others praise them for helping democratize developing countries.

The intense politicization of some think tanks might be detrimental to the credibility and influence of research institutes because it damages their reputation for objective expertise. Nonetheless, a worldwide boom in think tanks has accompanied their increasing advocacy.

Bibliography:

Abelson, Donald E. Do Think Tanks Matter? Assessing the Impact of Public Policy Institutes. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002.
Anderson, Lisa. Pursuing Truth, Exercising Power: Social Science and Public Policy in the Twenty-first Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Wacquant Loïc. “On the Cunning of Imperialist Reason.” Theory, Culture and Society 16, no. 11 (1999): 41–58.
Domhoff,William G. Who Rules America? Power, Politics, and Social Change. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005.
McGann, James G. Think Tanks and Policy Advice in the United States: Academics, Advisors, and Advocates. New York: Routledge, 2007.
Rich, Andrew. Think Tanks, Public Policy, and the Politics of Expertise. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Rich, Andrew, and Kent Weaver. “Advocates and Analysts: Think Tanks and the Politicization of Expertise in Washington.” In Interest Group Politics, edited by Allan Cigler and Burdett Loomis.Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1998.
Scott, James M. “Transnationalizing Democracy Promotion: The Role of Western Political Foundations and Think Tanks.” Democratization 6, no. 3 (1999): 146–170.
Smith, James Allen. The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite. New York: Free Press, 1991.
Stone, Diane, and Andrew Denham, eds. Think Tanks Traditions: Policy Research and the Politics of Ideas. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2004.
Weaver, Kent. “The Changing World of Think Tanks.” PS: Political Science and Politics 2, no. 3 (1989): 563–578.

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