This article belongs to the special cluster, “Think Tanks in Central and Eastern Europe”, guest-edited by Katarzyna Jezierska and Serena Giusti.

What is the role of think tanks in Europeanization of national public spheres? To address this question, our paper explores the performance of think tanks in the immigration debate in the Czech Republic. Employing political claims analysis (PCA) and treating think tanks as boundary organizations active in multiple fields, we compare the levels of Europeanization of political claims made by think tanks with other actors. Our data set includes 2,374 political claims made on broadcast public TV in the period from April 2015 to March 2016. According to our quantitative data, Czech think tanks chose the discursive strategy of Europeanization more often than any other actor represented. Thus, think tanks have the potential to support Europeanization of national public spheres. However, their representation in media coverage is relatively low. Our results also demonstrate that think tanks should be treated as sui generis organizations since their strategy in the public sphere deviates from that of other civil society organizations. Think tanks Europeanized their claims-making, but others largely stayed on the national level while discussing the refugee crisis.

本文属于由Katarzyna Jezierska和Serena Giusti特邀编辑的特殊集群“中欧和东欧的智囊团”。

智库在国家公共领域的欧洲化中起什么作用？为了解决这个问题，我们的论文探讨了智库在捷克共和国的移民辩论中的表现。通过运用政治主张分析（PCA）并将智囊团视为活跃于多个领域的边界组织，我们将智囊团与其他参与者进行的政治主张的欧洲化水平进行了比较。我们的数据集包括2015年4月至2016年3月期间在公共电视上发表的2374项政治主张。根据我们的定量数据，捷克智囊团选择欧洲化的话语策略的频率比任何其他参与者都高。因此，智囊团有潜力支持国家公共领域的欧洲化。但是，它们在媒体报道中的代表性相对较低。我们的结果还表明，智囊团应被视为特殊组织，因为其在公共领域的策略与其他民间社会组织的策略有所不同。智囊团将其主张欧洲化，但其他人在讨论难民危机时基本上停留在国家层面。