This text provides a cutting edge analysis of the increasingly central role think tanks play in societies worldwide. Examining their control of global resources both in economic and political policy fields and their inroads into structures of power, it addresses key questions. How have think thanks reached these positions of power? Has the northern core produced neoliberal clones that have hydra-like colonised the globe? Who funds and controls these think tanks and for what purpose? How is policy making knowledge created? How are new policy ideas propagated and validated? How do think tanks become dominant sources of knowledge in public spheres including the media? Exploring the dynamics of think tank networks in specific regions and countries, this book considers the coalitions they generate to advance the social purpose they endorse and, in particular, the spaces they occupy in the structures and fields of power at the national, regional and global level.

Think tanks and global politics: Key spaces in the structure of power.- Think tank networks in Mexico: How they shape public policy and dominant discourses.- The Australian think tank: A key site in a global distribution of power?.- Power without representation: The coherence and closeness of the Trilateral Commission.- The Bilderberg Conferences: A transnational informal governance network.- The rise and decline of the Business Roundtable?.- Neoliberal think tank networks in Latin America and Europe: Strategic replication and cross-national organizing.- Counter-hegemonic projects and cognitive praxis in transnational alternative policy groups.- From research to reality: Developing a radical left think tank in New Zealand as counterhegemonic praxis in a previously empty space.- Why establish non-representative organisations? Rethinking the role, form and target of think tanks.