The Role of Think Tanks in Combatting COVID-19 and Improving Pandemic Preparedness

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Academic Paper from the year 2023 in the subject Health - Public Health, grade: 1, 0, Free University of Berlin (Otto-Suhr-Institut für Politikwissenschaft), course: Global Perspectives on Megatrends and the Role of Think Tanks in International Cooperation, language: English, abstract: When the COVID-19 pandemic started, Think Tanks were just as many other institutions forced to adapt to the new circumstances. Whereas some were not able to continue with there work, most of them managed to continue with their research and used their resources to support the global fight against the pandemic. To show in which way they have influenced the handling of the pandemic and which policy recommendations they did provide to improve pandemic preparedness is the key purpose of this paper. Like never before, think tanks had to measure up to their self-claim to provide independent, high-quality research and practical policy recommendations. At the same time, they were confronted with challenges many institutions and companies that used to rely on analogue work faced during the pandemic, among others increased stress and worries of their staff followed by decreasing productivity. For think tanks this problem was accompanied by a serious lack of new research funding as a study from On Think Tanks (OTT) about the COVID-19 impacts on the sector found. However, the same study showed that the respondents (from whom nearly 85 % worked either for a think tank or a policy research programme or department) were relatively optimistic regarding the pandemic effects on their research institutions. Only 16, 4 % reported serious concern about the future of their institution whereas 44 % expected to be challenged but able to handle the situation well. 31 % did not even expect too many disrupting changes because their institutes had already established remote work before (idem. 6). Some answers even had a positive angle, as the study participants expected a modernisation towards digitalization, an expansion of their potential audience due to the establishment of webinars, and the development of new decentralized, agile work methods.