The proliferation of private think tanks and the expansion of governmental research agencies in the past quarter century have changed the policy environment. The Brookings Institution, on its seventy-fifth anniversary, offers a singular vantage point from which to observe the ever-changing relationship between expert knowledge and political decisionmaking in our democracy.
James Allen Smith is a historian and author of The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite (Free Press, 1991).