A Trial of a Different Kind

As their fellowship comes to an end, the Millennial Public Policy Fellows are using their final DM posts to reflect on their 11-month journey through D.C.’s think tank and public policy landscape. 

When I told my mother that I was leaving my government job to work at a think tank, she was alarmed for multiple reasons. For one, why was I leaving my stable job with good benefits to work at something called a think tank? What does a think tank even do?

I would spend the next eleven months trying to answer those questions to my mother’s satisfaction—and I’m not sure if I was ever successful. My mother may not have fully grasped the ins-and-outs of antitrust law, but she understood the basic premise of my work as a paralegal at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the routine timeline that accompanied each case: what starts out as an investigation might evolve into a divestiture or litigation, or, alternatively, the investigation may close without any enforcement action. Whatever the outcome, the FTC’s role in merger review is fairly straightforward, clearly defined and standardized, with these tangible outcomes directly reinforcing the work of antitrust enforcers. On the other hand, a think tank’s role in policymaking is relatively more ambiguous and amorphous, and the outcomes in policy change are harder to measure. But their flexibility is in part why think tanks play a critical role in today’s policymaking arena.

Government agencies and think tanks share a similar purpose in that both types of institutions are accountable to the people. Whereas the work of antitrust enforcers is often obscured by the non-public nature of investigations and technocratic language of economic analysis in courtrooms—with casual references to acronyms like HHIs, Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, and GUPPIs, Gross Upward Pricing Pressure Index, economic tools that measure market concentration and the competitive pressures on pricing, respectively—much of the work of think tanks faces the public. My time at New America as a Millennial Public Policy Fellow has been spent filling in the gap between government and the public by translating technical issues into accessible content for the general public through curated events, articles, policy briefs, and blog posts that engage audiences on topical issues.

These past eleven months spent addressing the public aspect of public policy and the policymaking process, contributing to the public discourse by writing articles and op-eds, for instance, have reinforced for me the importance of public buy-in in the policymaking process. At the very least, public participation, even in the form of awareness, promotes accountability in the policymaking process. In the context of antitrust, for example, popular interest in the outcomes of high-profile mergers and the state of fair competition generally is a good thing, as it provides opportunity for enforcers and policymakers to reflect on their strategies and recalibrate if need be. Think tanks like New America are an important part of this process, as we comment on the rulings in merger cases that feed into news articles for the general public to consume, research and publish articles on the impact of mergers on everyday consumers, and more.

Antitrust enforcers are, for the most part, limited to the judicial courts to advance their arguments. While this path is also an option for think tanks, as demonstrated by New America’s Open Technology Institute’s challenging of the net neutrality repeal by the Federal Communications Commission and more, think tanks more readily anticipate and respond to these types of issues in the court of public opinion. Think tanks therefore are responsible to the public in this regard, as we are entrusted to put out well-substantiated arguments in our advocacy for the public interest.

To enact meaningful policy change, we need to utilize all avenues at our disposal. In addition to ensuring that experts have a seat at the table, we also need to make sure the public has one, too.