512 Revista del Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos Núm. 2 / 2013 historical reference as being the National Conference on Social Welfare (1873)13, the Brookings Institution (1916)14 or the Russell Sage Foundation (1906)15. The SAF-Agriculteurs de France (1867) or the Fabian Society (1884), founded in England, are also often consi-dered to be institutions that influenced in the structural model preceding the modern think tank. Think tanks were born in the exhausted United States of 1865, following the Civil War. The origin of these structures can be found in the post-crisis context as a response to a cycle of reconstruction. Back then they were research institutions in the area of social sciences, financed by foundations, corporations and private donors, with the aim of working with the government on institutional reform policy programmes, mainly for the development of new management processes. The American culture of phi-lanthropy had a decisive impact on the success of the think tanks. The rise of these think tanks coincided with the emergence of philanthropic foundations and the ea-gerness to better manage social issues through the sciences. In this way, the institutes of expert knowledge contributed to the design of the United States’ current political model and to its democratic culture. The oldest and most relevant are the US Industrial Commission (1892), the New York Bureau of Municipal Research (1906), the Russell Sage Fundation (1906) and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (1910). They advise governments, institutions and companies, with a certain level of independence, and focus their research on long-term cycles. The establishment of a space for think tanks in the United States was due to various waves of organisational development related to public policies and supported by research in the social sciences. The first was at the end of the 19th century from the side of the civic federations, which brought together entrepreneurs, trade union leaders and journalists. The second phase – the emergence of municipal offices at the start of the 20th century – came about thanks to the new administrative accounting techniques and to the problems with local administration. The “proto-think tanks”16 erupted into a space that was favourable to the work of the first groups dedicated to research and the management of international relations: the Carnegie and the Council on Foreign Relations.17 During the 1970s, the use of the term think tank became more widespread, just Free Press, 1991 13 LINDEN, Patricia, Powerhouses of Policy, Town and Country, January 1987 14 McGann, James G. and R. Kent Weaver, eds. Think Tanks and Civil Societies: Catalysts for Ideas and Action. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2000. 15 ABELSON, Donald, Do Think Tanks Matter? Assessing the Impact of Public Policy Institutes. Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002, p.17-47 16 MEDVETZ, Thomas. Think tanks in America, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2012, 45-47 17 Ibid.
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