During the last two decades of the 20th century, think thanks proliferated dramatically in various countries. Once a predominantly American and British phenomenon, think tanks are now dispersed throughout the world (Stone, 2007; Pautz, 2011; McGann, 2014). The most recent overview of the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Programme (TTCSP, 2013) covers 6,826 think tanks in 182 countries. This report indicates that 1,984 think tanks are based in North America, of which 1,828 are in the United States, while Western Europe is home to 1,267 think tanks, of which 52 are based in Belgium. The majority of these ‘Belgian’ think tanks have an exclusively European or, to a lesser degree, international focus. Well-known examples are Bruegel, the Centre for European Policy Studies and the International Crisis Group. The strong presence of these think tanks is not so surprising, considering the large presence of EU institutions in Brussels (Boucher et al, 2004; Nichelson, 2009; Blockx, 2011).

While various scholars have studied think-tank activity at the EU level (for example, Sherrington 2000; Boucher et al, 2004), the nature and work of domestic think tanks in Europe – without an exclusive EU focus – has rarely been documented. Furthermore, the little work on domestic think tanks that does exist focuses mainly on pluralist polities, such as the UK. As a result, we have much less knowledge of the internal organisation and activities of think tanks in a neo-corporatist setting. This chapter constitutes one of the first attempts to cover this empirical void by focusing on domestic think tanks in Belgium.

Defining what a think tank is (or, and especially, what it is not), represents a challenging undertaking. Think tanks appear in great diversity, varying in size, legal form, policy ambit, organisational structure and political significance. As a result, researchers tend to observe many hybrid forms, rather than one dominant model. Furthermore, the national context, including elements such as constitutional architecture and political culture, also plays an important part in determining the particular features of think tanks (Stone, 2007, p 261; Campbell and Pedersen, 2014, p 27). In the case of Belgium, one should pay special attention to three particular characteristics of its political system: the neo-corporatist nature of interest intermediation, the consociational legacy and the federal state structure.