The Powers That Be

This page links to extract from The Powers that Be, by G. William Domhoff, 1967

• Council on Foreign Relations
• Committee for Economic Development
• Conference Board
• Business Council
• Business Roundtable

Satellites Think Tanks

The Council on Foreign Relations, Committee for Economic Development, Conference Board and Business Council are the Big Four of the policy network, but they do not function in isolation. They are surrounded by a variety of satellites and think tanks which operate in specialized areas or provide research informa-tion and expert advisors for the Big Four. The National Planning Association, for example, is a small policy-discussion group which took its present form in 1942 as part of the concern with postwar planning. It has a more liberal outlook than the CED, but has been very close to it. In the mid-1950’s the two organizations considered a merger, but decided against it because the NPA has a distinctive role to play in that both its leadership and study groups include representatives from labor and agriculture: "NPA did not want to lose the frankness and open interchange it achieved through labor participation, and CED felt it had acquired a reputation for objectivity and did not wish to dilute this good will toward an avowedly business organization by bringing in other groups."25

Similarly, a policy-discussion group started in the early 1950’s, the American Assembly, has many links to the CED, and once considered merger with it. Once again, the merger idea was dropped because the American Assembly has a unique function. Its twice-a-year meetings on a variety of general issues include labor and farm leaders as well as businesspeople and academics. Moreover, the assembly has a greater outreach program to upper-middle-income groups and students through books, pamphlets and a series of regional and local "Little Assemblies" based on the same topics discussed at the semi-annual national meetings in New York.26

The deepest and most critical thinking within the policy net-work does not take place in the policy-discussion groups, as many academicians who have taken part in them are quick to point out. While this claim may be in part sell-serving by professors who like to assume they are smarter than businesspeople and bankers, there is no question but that many new initiatives are created in various think tanks before they are brought to the discussion groups for modification and assimilation by the corporate leaders. There are dozens of these think tanks, some highly specialized to one or two topics.27 Among the most important are the RAND Corporation, the Stanford Research Institute, the Urban Institute, the National Bureau of Economic Research, Resources for the Future and the Center for International Studies at MIT. The institutes and centers connected to universities receive much of their funding from foundations, while the large and less specialized independent think tanks are more likely to undertake contract research for businesses or government agencies.

Some organizations are hybrids that incorporate both think-tank and policy-discussion functions. They do not fit neatly into one category or the other. Such is the case with one of the most important institutions in the policy network, The Brookings Institution. This large organization is directed by big business-people, but it is not a membership organization. It, conducts study groups for businesspeople and government officials, but it is even more important as a kind of postgraduate school for expert advisors. Employing a very large number of social scientists, it functions as a source of new ideas and sophisticated consultants for policy groups and government leaders. In particular, its economists have served both Republican and Democratic administrations since its founding in 1927. It has been especially close to the CED since the 1950’s, but it also has strong ties to the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Assembly.28

Several hybrids function in specialized areas. The Population Council was established in 1952 to fund research and develop policy on population control. Relying on large personal donations from John D. Rockefeller III and several foundations, it helped to create population research institutes at major universities, held conferences and publicized its findings. Case studies reveal that it has done very well indeed in getting its message across Resources for the Future was founded about the same time as the Population Council, with funds from the Ford Foundation. It has become one of the power elite’s major sources of information and policy on environmental issues, although it has to share this role with the Conservation Foundation, the American Conservation Association and three or four other closely related organizations30 In the issue-area of education, and in particular higher education, the Carnegie Corporation has played a central role through a series of special commissions.31

There are also corporate-financed groups in the areas of farm policy, municipal government and even the arts, for the arts are considered by some execu-tives to be important in maintaining the morale of inner-city residents.32

All of these more specialized groups are linked by funding and common directors to the biggest foundations, major policy-discussion groups and largest banks and corporations. Council on Foreign Relations members and trustees tend to dominate in the population establishment, and CED trustees are more evident in farm groups, but these differences are nuances within a general picture of cohesion. Sometimes the specialized groups lend their services to the discussion groups of the larger organizations. They often are listed as advisors on specialized CED policy statements.

References

25. Eakins, op. cit., p. 479. 26. Ibid., pp. 465—471. 27. See Paul Dickson, Think Tanks (Atheneum, 1971), for a descriptionof the major think tanks. 28. Eakins, op. cit.; Bonacich and Domhoff, op. cit. 29. William Barclay, Joseph Enright and Reid T. Reynolds, "Population Control in the Third World," NACLA Newsletter, December, 1970; Steve Weissman, "Why the Population Bomb Is a Rockefeller-Baby," Ramparts, May, 1970; Phyllis T. Piotrow, World Population Crisis: The United States Resporue (Praeger, 1973). 30. Katherine Barkley and Steve Weissman, "The Eco-Establishment," Ramparts, May, 1970; Peter Corner and David Horowitz, The Roclcefellers: An American Dynasty (Holt, 1976), pp. 305-306, 384-385, and 401. 31. Merle Curti and Roderick Nash, Philanthropy in the Shaping of Ameri-can Higher Education (Rutgers Univ. Press, 1965); David N. Smith, Who Rules the Universities? (Monthly Review Press, 1974); and Frank Darknell, "The Carnegie Council for Policy Studies in Higher Education: A New Policy Group for the Ruling Class," The Insurgent Sociologist, Spring, 1975. 32. Wesley McCune, Who’s Behind Our Farm Policy (Praeger, 1956); Frank M. Stewart, A Half Century of Municipal Reform (Univ. of Cali-fornia Press, 1950); Arnold Gingrich, Business and the Arts (Paul S. Eriksson, 1969).