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Niskanen Center
American moderate think tank founded in 2015 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Niskanen Center is an American think tank based in Washington, D.C. that advocates libertarian[3][4] and market-oriented principles regarding environmentalism,[5] immigration reform, civil liberties, and an effective welfare state.[3][4] Named after William A. Niskanen, an economic adviser to Ronald Reagan and former chairman of the Cato Institute, it states that its "main audience is Washington insiders",[6] and characterizes itself as moderate,[7] with others calling it centrist.[8] The organization has been credited with fostering bipartisan dialogue and promoting pragmatic solutions to contemporary political challenges on issues such as family benefits, climate change, and criminal justice reform.[9]
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History
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The Niskanen Center was founded in early 2015 by Jerry Taylor.[10] At its launch, the center was composed primarily of former staffers of the Cato Institute who departed in the wake of a 2012 leadership struggle pitting Ed Crane against the Koch Brothers for control of the libertarian think tank. Taylor[11] and vice president Joe Coon[12] publicly aligned themselves with Crane during the dispute. Both departed shortly after Crane was replaced by John Allison as Cato's president as part of the settlement with the Kochs.
Funding for the center includes donors who seek to counter libertarian-conservative hostility to measures against global warming.[citation needed] North Carolina businessman Jay Faison, a Republican donor, made an early contribution to the Niskanen Center to spur public climate education[13] but has ceased all ties to the organization in recent years.[citation needed] Other donors include the Open Philanthropy Project, which supports the center's work to expand legal immigration,[14] the Linden Trust for Conservation, which provided the Niskanen Center with a grant "to develop and analyze a potential economy-wide carbon tax",[15] and the Hewlett Foundation, which provided the Center with a $400,000 operations grant.[16]
In 2018, the Center published its political manifesto, entitled "The Center Can Hold: Public Policy for an Age of Extremes".[17][18]
In May 2022, the organization announced that Ted Gayer, an executive vice president at the Brookings Institution, would serve as the Niskanen's next president.[19] Gayer started in his role on August 1, 2022.
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Policy areas
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The Niskanen Center's policy approach combines free market principles with support for an "effective" welfare state.[8] The organization focuses on a number of distinct areas of public policy including climate change, social insurance policy, healthcare, immigration reform, and civil liberties.[1] Brink Lindsey describes the Center as representing "bold moderation".[20]
Climate change
The Niskanen Center advocates the imposition of a global carbon tax for the purpose of offsetting global warming and the effects of climate change.[21] The Center also endorses the understanding of climate change as anthropogenic and believes that government action is a necessary component of mitigating the risks associated with long term sea level rise and extreme weather events associated with climate change.[22]
The Niskanen Center's support for carbon taxation represents a nearly complete reversal of Taylor's previous advocacy at the Cato Institute, where he was a vocal climate change skeptic.[23] Taylor explained his shift in a 2015 interview with Vox, indicating that he had "fundamentally switched" his previous beliefs on the issue after seeing new scientific evidence and the more general strengthening over time of the case for the dangers of climate change, as well as arguments from fellow libertarians about responses to the challenge of climate change that were consistent with, and even required by, a libertarian political stance.[24][25]
In November 2015 the Niskanen Center announced the founding of a new Center for Climate Science under the direction of Dr. Joseph Majkut, a climatologist who previously served on the staff of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).[26]
Immigration
The Niskanen Center is pro-immigration. Niskanen has hosted two Hill events focusing on the practical benefits of refugee resettlement to the U.S.[27]
Abundance
The Niskanen Center supports supply-side progressivism, also commonly referred to as the "Abundance Agenda" as an alternative to the emerging right-wing populism within the Republican Party and "democratic socialists [that] have established a beachhead in the Democratic Party".[28]
Factionalism
The Niskanen Center advocates a strategy of factionalism to achieve policy objectives within the existing party system, specifically to cultivate and support a market-liberal faction within the Democratic Party and a liberal-conservative (Rockefeller Republican) faction within the Republican party to allow moderates to "re-emerg[e] as a power center in American politics".[29][30]
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Reception
Writing for Jacobin, Lyle Jeremy Rubin describes the Niskanen Center as publishing "rigorous center-right libertarian opinion",[31] while John Quiggin describes the Center as "liberaltarian".[5]
Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin describes it as the "future of the right" and "eschew[ing] both anti-government libertarianism [...] and democratic socialism".[20]
Jonathan Chait, writing for New York magazine, wrote a column entitled "I Have Seen the Future of a Republican Party That Is No Longer Insane", finding that "Niskanen's manifesto contains multiple points of overlap with the prevailing orientation of the Democratic Party, and almost none with the prevailing orientation of the Republican Party".[17]
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External links
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