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RR 2003/13 NIRA's World Directory of Think Tanks (4th edition) National Institute for Research Advancement Tokyo 2002 xxxviii + 508 pp. ISBN 0 333 99415 9 L65.00 Distributed outside Japan by Palgrave Macmillan Keywords Policy, Organizations, Research Review DOI 10.1108/09504120310455867
What is a "think tank"? According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) one definition is a "research institute or other organization providing advice and ideas on national or commercial problems". In this directory the Introduction states "[t]hink tanks could be regarded as the intellectual and knowledge based `soft infrastructure' of the policy community, assuring a pluralistic, open and accountable process of policy analysis, research, decision making and evaluation." More succinctly, it goes on to equate think tanks with "public policy research institutions having a certain degree of independence".
NIRA or the National Institute for Research Advancement is itself a think tank, being a Japanese semi-governmental institute established in 1974 to conduct research from an independent standpoint and contribute to resolving complex policy issues in contemporary society. Also responsible for the annual Almanac of Think Tanks in Japan, it began publishing this directory on a triennial basis...