Is the road to progress paved with think tanks?
A new movement aims to map what civilisational progress looks like. But it needs to take a more political turn soon if it wants to make an impact.
We all want more good things in our lives. What those good things are, how they are produced, and who gets them, is the subject of public policy and political deliberation. Yet political discourse has gravitated away from working out how we get more of what we want towards a less serious enterprise.
Nowadays, political journalism cares about people, not policy. Rather than considering how to prepare for future pandemics, end fuel poverty, or make nuclear fusion breakthroughs, air time is given to factional divides in Downing Street over lockdown policy. Progress is of second order importance, leaving the public destined for malaise.
Enter Progress Studies. Progress Studies (yes, this is now an actual discipline) is the study of the causes of civilisational progress, e.g., the combination of economic, technological, scientific, and cultural advancements that have transformed human life and raised standards of living over the past couple of centuries.
It was proposed as an academic field by Tyler Cowen and Patrick Collison after they noticed that there was no intellectual movement focused on understanding the dynamics of progress, or on trying to speed it up.
Since Cowen and Collison’s proposition, a messy constellation of bloggers and thinkers have begun to provide the intellectual foundations for what this new study could look like. Jason Crawford’s Roots of Progress blog explores the history of technology, whilst Matt Clancy’s New Things Under the Sun examines the social scientific literature on modern innovation. Writers of this kind have made valuable contributions to the field, yet there are desperately few institutions and organisations on the scene to better develop, coordinate and communicate these ideas to make the large-scale impact that Progress Studies could have.
Last week, a new think tank signalled a step-change in this erratic ecosystem. The Institute for Progress (IfP), set up by US innovation gurus Caleb Watney and Alec Stapp, aims to triangulate these ideas further, focusing on meta-science (the science of science), immigration, and biosecurity. Not messing about, IfP already has produced several policy papers, covering housing zoning reform, longevity research, and funding people, not projects.
This is a great start, but as Question Time Supremo™ Keir Starmer says, I would ‘encourage them to go further’. I think it is time for Progress Studies to slowly make more substantial interventions into mainstream politics.
Learning from Tufton Street
To do this you need to build an infrastructure that produces neat ideas, distils them into a clear policy agenda and communicates them in an impactful manner.
The big question I have in my head is therefore: where are the UK IfP equivalents?
The Tony Blair Institute often flirts with these ideas (even having a great blog called ‘Progress’), yet are largely focused on a broader international ‘good governance’ platform.
Similarly, The Entrepreneur’s Network (TEN) have done some stellar work on ‘supercharging science and innovation’ (Collison provided a foreword to analysis that included TBI thought). But once again, TEN specialise in (shock) entrepreneurial trends and banging the drum for great immigration. All super valuable and related to progress studies, but still fairly niche.
So, where could a bigger player emerge to compliment these other valuable actors?
I wonder if magazine Works in Progress, whose authors are largely based in the UK, could be expanded to do more in house think tank research. Their writers, such as Saloni Duttani and Ben Southwood, touch on many of the IfP key ideas in an invigorating, thought leading manner. You could also say the same for Our World in Data, who have in my opinion become one of the most important public goods in the entirety of the pandemic. OWID really struggled to get funding early on in their company development, and is easily the best source of information on the progress we are making against important global problems. Having more Progress Studies adjacent organisations like these in the UK would really help pick some of the low hanging fruit around public policy in this domain in the UK.
If I had a pot of funding and wanted to make an impact in the U.K. policy space, throwing seed funding here would definitely be in my top 5 high-impact decisions.
Many don’t realise how crucial think tanks are for political influence. There is much academic literature dedicated to the rise of the Mont Pelerin Society in shaping neoliberal thought. In the UK, the Institute of Economic Affairs and Adam Smith Institute (direct and indirect beneficiaries of Mont Pelerin work) have been integral to the Conservative Party economic philosophy for decades. Even if you think that their research was ‘less rigorous’ than other think tanks, there is no denying their impact as ‘policy entrepreneurs’. The same can be said for the left wing think tanks set up in the Corbyn years to provide the intellectual thrust for alternative, new left economic thinking.
An absence of strong centrist think tanks have really been evident in the lack of clear thought leadership from moderate politicians in recent years (there are exceptions, such as TBI, the Resolution Foundation and Social Market Foundation). It has been easier to blame Russia and fake news for Brexit and Trump than it is to do some serious thinking about the structural issues that led to these events. A UK IfP could help to change that, offering alternative visions for how society is governed beyond the idealess cadre of parliamentarians.
The ‘War on Wonk’
Yet, of course, think tanks are not the be all and end all. Progress Studies as a movement (beyond just wonkery) needs to beef up its approach if they want to make progress more than just a theory.
Should it have a clearer theory of culture? Can a purely technocratic, wonkish worldview really make an impact in the current political climate? Whilst not being too ‘culture war’-ish, the IEA has arguably remained highly relevant to Conservative thought in recent years due to its hard Brexit stance, which has become synonymous with one side of the culture war.
Ironically, Progress Studies doesn’t seem to have much dialogue with more familiar ideas of ‘progressivism’. One look at the list of names of thinkers I have cited in this article would make you see it as no surprise that this movement hasn’t always got norms of egalitarianism, diversity and inclusion at the forefront of its aims (this isn’t to say that PS types aren’t social liberals, most of them are!).
Moreover, if Progress Studies became a broader political movement, how do their ideas translate into an activist/media strategy?
A progress movement should arguably make an active choice about what their key political aims are (progress towards what exactly!?). Climate policy appears to make sense as a priority approach to channel progress studies ideas here, particularly due to the need for intensive R&D innovation in order to sustain a politically viable energy transition. My personal view is that in the next decade, as our climate reality washes over us, having an energy transition solution that doesn’t make us all poorer is going to be in the top two issues on the ballot paper of most developed countries in the world.
More broadly, I do believe that progress and innovation as a political ideal has a large constituency of voters. All individuals want to pursue something of value. To build, to innovate, to create, signals this birth of value that lets people have more good, fun stuff. Andrew Yang tried (and failed) with his ‘not left, not right, but forward’ Democratic nominee run, but this doesn’t necessitate that this souped-up centrist Dad discourse is a non-starter.
Progress is a Political Choice
Progress Studies doesn’t need to become a new “ism” to be successful (though knowing the media, it would be graced with this ideological framing). It just needs to be able to have an infrastructure that can start to shape the thinking of ministers.
This isn’t unreasonable. US research institutions such as Arc and OpenAI are working on big humanity-safeguarding projects with the backing of VC and tech entrepreneurs. Where are the UK angel investors that would be willing to develop similar organisations in Britain? It may well be the case that there are less Brits with a ‘let’s just build something’ mentality than the States, but it really wouldn’t require enormous amounts of money to establish a more triangulated network of progress-oriented organisations.
I can see the benefits of Progress Studies holding fire for now. After all, it is still trying to work out what it is. But the world needs progress, and needs it fast.
Sooner or later, Progress Studies is going to have to start shaping the world, instead of merely interpreting it.
PSA: TxP (Tech x Policy), a community London meetup for people in all things tech and policy that I am helping to organise, are hosting a panel on progress, innovation and institution building at PUBLIC Hall in Westminster on Wednesday February 9th. Free drinks and great banter will be kindly provided.
Of the Week - My Favourites
Podcast: Exponential View - Supercritical’s mission to help tech reach net zero (with Michelle You)
Youtube Video: The Most Unruly - Kanye West: The Making of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Song: Forever - Workforce
Article: Caleb Watney & Alec Stapp (Institute for Progress) - Progress is a Policy Choice