Paper short abstract:

The paper engages with the ways in US think tanks are involved in producing knowledge and disseminating information on the topic of ‘security’, ‘liberty’ and ‘free markets’, in the process articulating and promoting a particular set of libertarian American values.

Paper long abstract:

Think tanks have gained tremendous influence in policy-making over the past few decades. This is especially the case in the US, where they have become a major force in policy debates and government legislation. Think tanks operate as research or policy institutes and initiate and promote research along their priority areas. Recently, in the wake of terrorist threats and debates on national or homeland security, civil liberties, and risk scenarios, many think tanks have placed 'security' on top of their research agendas. Think tanks organize panel debates and seminars, appear in news media, produce articles and books on these and related topics, and hence influence public debates and government policy.

This paper, based on fieldwork in and among think tanks in Washington DC, engages with the ways in which some think tanks are involved in producing knowledge and disseminating information on the topic of 'security'. More specifically, it focuses on the relations between their understandings of 'security' on the one hand, and notions of 'liberty' and 'free markets' on the other. These are notions that are often invoked in discursive acts of defining and promoting a set of libertarian American values, and that invoke and challenge the notion of 'boundary'. By looking at how and why a select number of think tanks are entrenched in the policy-making process, we can begin to understand the nature and extent of think tank influence around 'securitization', and what its implications are.