Introduction

Civil society organizations (CSOs) play an important role in broadening and consolidating the processes related to democratic governance in Argentina. CSOs act as meeting points for local communities in all regions and provinces of the country, bringing people together for charitable, social, political, cultural, artistic, sports, and non-profit purposes. This broad civil sector has, as of December 2021 according to the Superintendence of Corporations, 13,651 organizations that contribute directly and indirectly to strengthen the processes of socio-cultural and democratic development of the country. However, a small group of these organizations has a special mission: developing ideas and recommendations based on evidence in order to strengthen or make some of the four stages of the public policy cycle more sophisticated. Those organizations are think tanks. Sometimes they play a strategic role by building a bridge between the different stakeholders in the political, social, and economic arena and government administrations’ agendas.

Likewise, they contribute to create quality knowledge on public policies and to reduce information gaps with stakeholders from the state itself, the market, and the civil society, fostering the ongoing improvement of the coordination efforts between the public policy development and implementation stages. In turn, over the last 15 years, they have also been actively involved in monitoring and evaluation processes, contributing highly technical professional analyses to the governmental decision-making process, and taking an active part in the expansion and improvement of active transparency and accountability processes.

The specialized literature on this kind of organizations is extensive and defines think tanks as research centers that produce knowledge and effective impact on public policies (Brown, 1991; Acuña and Vacchieri, 2007; Garcé and Uña, 2007; Leiras, 2007; Stone, 2013).

A first general glance would allow us to say that Argentine think tanks assume the CSOs format and define themselves as independent, non-profit, and nonpartisan organizations. However, there are some relevant exceptions, taking into consideration variables such as ideological positioning and sources of funding.

According to the Global Go To Think Tank Index Report of the University of Pennsylvania (McGann, 2021), Argentina has a total of 262 think tanks. They account for a small part of the universe of CSOs already mentioned, but still result in Argentina being ranked eighth in the world and first in Latin America.