Niskanen Center

The Niskanen Center is an American think tank based in Washington, D.C. that advocates promotes policies that advance prosperity, opportunity, and human flourishing, guided by the belief that a free market and an effective government are mutually dependent. The Niskanen Center is named after William A. Niskanen, an economic adviser to Ronald Reagan.

Niskanen Center

Formation	2015 (2015)
Headquarters	Washington, D.C., U.S.
President	Ted Gayer
Revenue (2022)	$6,750,571
Expenses (2022)	$7,598,252
Website	NiskanenCenter.org

History

The Niskanen Center was founded in early 2015 by Jerry Taylor and Joe Coon. Funding for Niskanen is available on their website.

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. Gayer started in his role on August 1, 2022.

Overview

Named the “The Most Interesting Think Tank in American Politics” by TIME Magazine in 2023, the Niskanen Center promotes policies that advance prosperity, opportunity, and human flourishing, guided by the belief that a free market and an effective government are mutually dependent.

They work to forge a new vision of American governance that draws on ideas from across the ideological spectrum, an approach made possible by our independence from rigid political coalitions. Our ideological openness gives us credibility to work with a broad range of actors, meeting them on their own terms and helping them converge on policies they might support for different reasons. Niskanen aspires to be a voice for the hopes and ambitions of Americans who feel shut out by the hostility of our politics.

Niskanen advocates for a government that provides social insurance and essential public goods, fosters market competition and innovation, invests in state capacity, and does not impede productive enterprise, and is committed to the principles of liberal democracy and an open society that encourages engagement, cooperation, discussion, and learning.

Fundamental principles of American democracy are coming under stress amid our intense polarization. Niskanen commits not only to defending those principles but also to redeeming them by demonstrating that our system can deliver for its people.

Policy Areas

Niskanen provides a constructive and optimistic response to the most daunting challenges Americans face in the 21st century, including slow economic growth and economic insecurity; bureaucratic sclerosis; mass incarceration and high crime rates; climate change and energy bottlenecks; unaffordable housing and healthcare; and a dysfunctional immigration system.

Many think tanks focus on policy, but few combine this work with a broader theory that articulates a fresh vision of the larger political economy. Fewer still add the real-world step of advocating for the policies they develop. As a relatively new, small, and nimble organization, Niskanen has carved out an approach that combines all three elements, and lets each inform and take inspiration from the others.

Climate change

The risks of climate change demand rapid decarbonization. At the Niskanen Center, we believe optimal climate policies are grounded in free market principles and an effective government. A border-adjusted carbon tax provides market-friendly incentives for businesses and individuals to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels and shift to clean energy uses. Removing regulatory barriers to building and deploying low-carbon technologies and infrastructures is key to accelerating the transition to a net-zero economy. Niskanen's team is dedicated to working on these policy areas to contribute to economically efficient and effective climate solutions.

Criminal justice

Niskanen Center's Kristie De Peña moderates a panel discussing the benefits of expanding the U.S. refugee resettlement program on September 20, 2018.

The Niskanen Center’s criminal justice program is grounded in the belief that public safety, social order, and the fair and efficient administration of justice are mutually reinforcing ends and that each is necessary to maintain a free, open, and prosperous society. Governments must protect people from violence and secure property from theft and destruction. In fulfilling this duty, governments are also obligated to affirm the rule of law, respect constitutional rights and due process, impose just and effective punishments, eliminate inequities, and promote the common good across communities.

Niskanen’s approach to criminal justice policy is rooted in the understanding that it should be continuously improved through evidence–derived from experimentation, rigorous evaluation, and cost/benefit analysis. The department works to develop evidence-based policy proposals designed to minimize the social costs of crime and punishment for lawmakers, and help transmit knowledge – what works, what doesn’t, and why – to practitioners throughout the criminal justice system.

Governance

The Niskanen Center’s Governance work supports an effective public sector that upholds the principles of a pluralistic and open society that encourages engagement, cooperation, discussion, and learning. It complements Niskanen's long-standing commitment to improving state capacity and extends it to the deliberative institutions that make policy.

Niskanen seeks to strengthen the national emergency system at the federal level, restoring important checks on abuse while ensuring broader political support for emergency actions taken. At the state level, Niskanen advocates for reforms that increase confidence in elections and improve the voting experience for all eligible voters.

The government’s legitimacy and continued vitality rests on its effective implementation of public policy. When a branch of government fails in this endeavor, the other branches compensate, sacrificing the separation of powers central to a functioning democracy and the protection of individual liberties.

Immigration

The Niskanen Center is committed to the premise that immigration is an irreplaceable pillar of America’s economic, civic, and cultural strength. Our ability to attract the brightest minds and hardest workers worldwide has helped usher in an unprecedented period of U.S. innovation and dynamism. Our economic health depends on newcomers who fill critical gaps in our workforce, pay billions of dollars in taxes every year, and employ millions of Americans in their businesses. Still, inaction has come to be the hallmark of contemporary immigration policy. Years of partisan and congressional gridlock have instilled a sense of complacency in the face of mounting backlogs and challenges.

Niskanen’s immigration department works to address these issues through four concrete policy areas that can garner bipartisan support: The involvement of everyday Americans in an expanded refugee sponsorship and resettlement system; the creation of reformed legal pathways that encourage economic growth; the enhancement of domestic and national security through the deployment of soft power and security initiatives; and the rebuilding of an effective immigration system.

Immigration was integral to America’s past, and by focusing on these policy issues, the Niskanen Center works to ensure it will also be central to our future economic and cultural health and prosperity.

Social policy

The Niskanen Center’s social policy department is rooted in a simple but often overlooked premise: that an innovative private sector and a capable public sector are mutually dependent. Robust social insurance systems protect and uplift those hurt by economic shocks and misfortune while avoiding regulatory approaches to social protection that undermine market dynamism. Together, a dynamic market economy and effective government form a coherent theory of a free and just society–and a foundation for America’s social policy.

Niskanen’s experts engage in policy research and development focusing on family economic security, employment, economic development, healthcare, and housing through a supply-side lens. They promote ideas and arguments that help ensure public policy innovations benefit children, their families, and the American economy, using advocacy and public policy reform strategies that cut across partisan lines. Learn more about the social policy team and our research below.

Key Initiatives

Open Society

The post-1989 era of “end of history” triumphalism has ended. It is no longer possible to assume complacently that liberal democracy is the end point of political evolution toward which all countries will eventually converge. The basic principles of what Karl Popper called the “open society” are neither self-explanatory nor self-executing: Pro-Democracy policies must be constantly articulated, defended, and fought for if they are to remain vital. The Open Society Project was conceived and established as a pro-democracy policy reform organization to come to the intellectual and practical defense of cherished ideals and institutions now under siege.

State Capacity

State capacity refers to the government’s ability to do its job effectively: to raise taxes, maintain order, and provide public goods. A series of calamities during the 21st century – the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, the financial crisis, and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic – has made painfully clear that American state capacity is not what it once was. This deficit not only undermines the prospect for effective public policy in a wide variety of important domains; with our republic now so deeply polarized, it threatens the legitimacy and continued vitality of liberal democracy as well.

The Niskanen Center is launching its new Project on State Capacity, an initiative dedicated to building state capacity, to confront these challenges. Much of our existing work for building state capacity – on immigration, social policy, regulation, criminal justice reform, and climate – already demonstrates a commitment to a vibrant and dynamic public sector as a necessary complement to a vibrant and dynamic private sector. Now, we are reinforcing that commitment by taking on five new issues that we see as critical arenas for the struggle to rebuild state capacity: (1) expanding and upgrading the federal workforce; (2) improving tax collection and closing the tax gap; (3) overhauling how the federal government acquires and uses information technology; (4) streamlining environmental review to reduce delays and cost overruns in infrastructure projects; and (5) revitalizing the country’s sclerotic public health institutions to be better prepared for the next pandemic.

Abundance and Dynamism

The cost of essentials like health care and housing are exploding, and Americans feel the impact. They’re also noticing shortages, ranging from lack of rapid tests during COVID-19 to insufficient housing to electric grid failures. To alleviate this, policymakers must address America’s scarcity problem.

This includes slashing unnecessary regulations that have made it expensive or impossible to build housing or infrastructure; addressing the shortage of health care professionals in the U.S; removing needless barriers to innovation; and investing in clean energy not just to meet our emissions goals, but to make sure consumers have access to cheaper and more reliable sources of energy. Rather than redistributing wealth or allocating scarce resources, the abundance agenda seeks to spur growth so that all Americans can experience fewer shortages, lower costs, and a better quality of life.

Captured Economy

Systematic breakdowns in democratic governance have allowed wealthy special interests to capture broad domains of the policymaking process and twist the rules for their benefit. Steadily worsening “upward redistribution” via “regressive regulation” has contributed significantly to the American economy’s twin woes of stagnating growth and sky-high inequality.

We propose policy changes to improve the functioning of American capitalism – by providing necessary public goods and sharpening incentives for entrepreneurship, competition, and innovation. But first, we must attend to the complex task of rooting out dysfunction. The object of reform here is reversing regulatory capture in key policymaking domains – including finance, health care, housing, and intellectual property – and unwinding the massive misallocations of resources that it has produced.

External links

• Official website