The idea of ‘think tanks’ is one of the oldest in the policy sciences. Although the topic has been studied for decades, recent works dealing with advocacy groups, policy and behavioural insight labs and into the activities of think tanks themselves have led to discontent with the definitions used in the field, and especially with the way the term may obfuscate rather than clarify important distinctions between the different kinds of knowledge-based policy influence organisations (KBPIO) operating in the contemporary policy landscape. In this paper, we examine the traditional and current definitions of think tanks utilised in the discipline and point out their weaknesses. We then develop a new framework to better capture the variation in the kinds of knowledge-based organisations which operate in many sectors.

中文翻译：

---

（重新）政策实验室时代的思想智库：基于知识的政策影响组织的兴起

“智囊团”的概念是政策科学中最古老的概念之一。尽管该主题已经研究了数十年，但最近处理倡导团体、政策和行为洞察实验室以及智库本身活动的工作导致对该领域使用的定义感到不满，尤其是对该术语可能混淆的方式而不是澄清在当代政策环境中运作的不同类型的基于知识的政策影响组织 (KBPIO) 之间的重要区别。在本文中，我们研究了该学科中使用的智库的传统和当前定义，并指出了它们的弱点。然后，我们开发了一个新框架，以更好地捕捉在许多部门运作的知识型组织类型的变化。