Thought Piece | Can Think Tanks Still Move the Policy Needle in 2025? Here Are Three Ways They Can

Marie-Thérèse Schreiber, Associate, APROPOS Group

Overall, as think tank entrepreneurs, we’re hopeful that organisations like ours can continue to contribute meaningfully to the health of our democracies. At the same time, we recognise that the state of global politics demands that we become more strategic and deliberate about 'how' we act to remain relevant.

The On Think Tanks Conference 2025 on ‘Think Tanks and Impact’ offered, once again, a fantastic opportunity to take the pulse of the global think tank sector and reflect on some critical issues for think tanks today. 

Congratulations to Enrique Mendizabal, Estefanía Terán Valdez, and Camila Ulloa, as well as the entire On Think Tanks team and to South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) and New South Institute (NSI) for making it all happen. As newcomers to the field, we are grateful to be invited to participate and share the perspective of APROPOS.   

Here are the top three takeaways we found most relevant for anyone working to enhance their policy influence. 

#1 Don’t forget the bureaucracy.   If think tanks truly want to shape better policy outcomes for people, they can’t just aim for the top. As Damian King reminded us in his keynote, engaging the policymakers isn’t enough - the bureaucrats responsible for implementing those policies need to be brought into the conversation early. We agree and have been looking for an opportunity to test our Policy Design Sprint with bureaucrats for some time. If you’d like to partner up on this, let us know! 

#2 No impact without communication.    We’ve heard this before. To get attention for their research, think tanks need to bring in communications teams from the start, which is critical to influence framing - not just hand them a final report and ask for a few tweets. One point we heard that really stood out though: if your think tank has only three employees, one of them must be a comms person. We couldn’t agree more - in fact, we’re now on the hunt for our first full-time communications 'unicorn': find out more here.

#3 Create expectation-free spaces for thinking and dialogue.   One key barrier to influencing policy is trust — “the currency of change is trust” came up multiple times at the conference. Often, what is missing though, is that we don’t get to work on the logical next step: how can we build trust? Trust-building is both a basic human capacity, and a specialised professional skill that can be developed. 

Thanks to our 10 years of experience running the Open European Dialogue, we’ve specialised in creating neutral spaces where politicians can think for themselves - beyond party lines and without being corralled by external agendas. In a world full of solutions but where progress nonetheless seems stuck, a trusted space to reflect with depth and wisdom about our political challenges can be powerful. Offering such spaces as acts of service to the political sector can be an effective way to build the much-needed relationships of trust between think tankers and political stakeholders.