Does "Revolving Door" Matter? Institutional Mobility and Think Tanks in China

“Revolving Door” has always been regarded as a trump for the prosperity of American think tanks. There are two main views regarding the importance of revolving door for think tank development. The first view contends that... [ view full abstract ]

“Revolving Door” has always been regarded as a trump for the prosperity of American think tanks. There are two main views regarding the importance of revolving door for think tank development. The first view contends that revolving door enhances connections with key decision makers in White House and Capitol Hill. The second view argues that think tankers who have prior experience in government agencies or other types of organizations have higher expertise and exclusive information sources that help think tanks achieve influence. However, it is worthy noted that there are few such well-known revolving door mechanisms for think tanks in countries outside the United States. Does “revolving door” matter for non-American think tanks?
To research the effects of revolving door on think tanks in China is particularly important, because since 2013, the Chinese authority started to officially promote the establishment of “New Style Think Tanks with Chinese Characteristics”. Many discussions have always argued that China should learn the United States to establish “revolving door” mechanism for the development of Chinese think tanks. This paper aims to debate that revolving door does not matter at all (even has significantly negative effects on think tankers’ social network building) in China.
With unique questionnaire survey data with near 300 think tanks throughout China conducted in 2004, I define key independent variables of “revolving door” as think tank heads who have experienced institutional mobility from various types of organizations to think tanks. I also measure think tanks’ obtained funding, their influence (with three levels: decision-maker influence, social elite influence, and mass media influence) and personal social networks of think tank heads. Then, I test the impacts of revolving door on the policy influence, obtained funding, and personal social networks of the think tanks. Regression models show that after controlling all other related individual (think tank heads’) and organizational features, revolving door does not have any contribution to think tank influence and obtained funding, however, it has significantly negative impact on the establishment of personal social networks of think tankers, which are very important for think tanks to build influence. This finding also manifests that revolving door has an indirect negative impact on think tank influence.
At the final stage of the empirical robustness check, I conduct propensity score matching (PSM) to reduce the selection bias of revolving door. After matching between treatment group of revolving door and control group of think tanker who do not experience revolving door, I show empirical evidence that confirms the above regressive results.