Zachary Albert Partisan Policy Networks: How Research Organizations Became Party Allies and Political Advocates University of Pennsylvania Press 357 pages, ISBN: 9781512828016
Zachary Albert
On Partisan Policy Networks: How Research Organizations Became Party Allies and Political Advocates
Interview of
November 6, 2025
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In a Nutshell
This book examines how many policy research organizations, like think tanks, have transformed from non-partisan information producers into partisan allies pursuing ideological policy goals. Most policymaking today is structured by “partisan policy networks” united by shared goals and mutual trust – and producing policy that is often poorly informed and unrepresentative of what the mass public wants.
It is fortuitous that this book came out when it did. With the start of the second Trump Administration, people are paying attention to the profound influence of the Heritage Foundation (and other think tanks and interest groups) associated with Project 2025.
Despite Trump’s disavowals, he has drawn directly from the Project 2025 playbook – a conservative to-do list aimed at reshaping (and in some cases dismantling) the administrative state. Many of Trump’s executive actions reflect ideas and language laid out in the Project.
This book provides a framework for understanding these events. In a highly polarized world, elected officials seek information and ideas to advance partisan goals. They care less about the accuracy of information and more about its utility in partisan policy debates.
A growing number of research organizations have evolved to meet this demand. These groups are themselves “policy demanders”; they seek to move legislation toward their narrow or ideological self-interests. By providing elected officials from their preferred party with key policy resources, they subsidize partisan policymaking and move it toward their preferences.
But these partisan research institutions do more than just supply ideas. Increasingly, they also engage in direct advocacy to advance their objectives. Working with elected officials and other organized interests, they lobby, mobilize grassroots supporters, participate in electoral activities, and inform public conversations.
While the historical view of policy research as “above politics” was never fully accurate, what we have today is profoundly different. Partisanship increasingly structures the production and dissemination of information. Research organizations are active participants in partisan battles. And stable partisan networks, built on direct collaborations and partisan reputations, structure most modern policymaking.
These developments pose significant problems for American democracy. Partisan policy networks displace sound research in favor of partisan-motivated ideas, undermining responsible policymaking. They also move policy toward their own, often ideologically extreme preferences, biasing representation. And they prohibit dialogue and compromise between the two parties. In a system that often requires bipartisanship, partisan dynamics produce gridlock and incentivize unilateral presidential action.
The wide angle
Early in my graduate school career I was exposed to an increasingly popular theory of political parties as “extended networks”. Proponents argue that we need to move beyond formal party organizations and elected officials and focus additionally on the constellation of organized interests, movements, and groups that align with each party.
These policy demanders use parties as a vehicle to move policy in their preferred direction. They screen candidates during party nominations and support those who align with their agendas. Because most voters know or care little about policy details, these groups can select candidates who cater to their narrow interests or ideological agendas.
The theory was incredibly enticing. It helps make sense of contemporary polarization in a way that previous theories failed to do. And it explains why parties often do things that seem to go against majoritarian opinion.
But I was also left wanting. The theory is all about how policy demanders use parties to get what they want from government. But most scholarship focused solely on their efforts in nomination contests. It wasn’t clear to me how these electoral activities translated into policy wins. It’s one thing to help get an anti-tax conservative elected, but another entirely to get a law passed that contains detailed, often technical changes to the tax code that benefit particular interests.
The puzzle deepened when I started to learn more about Congressional policymaking. Congress increasingly lacks the resources, expertise, and desire to engage in the hard work of policymaking. Most elected officials are adept at campaigning, fundraising, and messaging, not legislating.
For this reason, I turned my attention outside Congress. While the vast majority of polarization research has focused inside the legislature, there is a robust community of policy researchers and advocates outside of it. These groups had been studied, but not through an explicitly partisan lens, or nearly enough in the present era of polarization.
As I started to collect data, including through interviews with policy researchers in DC, I realized that policy research organizations were the connective tissue tying together extended party policymaking. Once sympathetic members of Congress are elected, these groups provide them with the ideas, research, and talking points to help them pass mutually agreed upon legislation.
These connections are generally quite stable. Partisan trust, rather than reputations for objectivity, are increasingly the coin of the realm in the policymaking world. We can learn a great deal about contemporary policy outcomes, I found, by focusing on these partisan policy networks.
A close-up
There is one particular example in the book that especially highlights its main themes. In 2017, the Heritage Foundation released a new edition of its “Election Fraud Database,” an empirical effort to document instances of voter fraud in American elections.
The accompanying report claimed they had found 1,071 instances of voter fraud. Heritage’s takeaway from the project was simple: “voter fraud is a real and pressing issue that deserves serious solutions, and the Heritage Foundation has the evidence to prove it.”
But subsequent studies highlighted problems with the database and its conclusions. First, over the period Heritage studied, more than 3 billion votes were cast in federal elections, making the 1,071 instances of fraud a miniscule fraction of all votes. Furthermore, the Heritage report stretched the definition of “fraud” to include instances such as voters accidentally using incorrect addresses or improperly assisting others with absentee ballots. Critics argued that Heritage’s desire to push for election security measures biased its research methods and conclusions.
Nevertheless, conservatives inside and outside government cited the Heritage report to support their calls for greater voter restrictions, including the institution of voter ID requirements, restrictions on mail-in voting, and the elimination of same-day registration. State legislatures introduced voter restriction legislation with language mirroring or copying Heritage proposals. And federal lawmakers cited the Heritage study to support their calls for similar interventions.
But Heritage’s efforts did not stop there. Since 2017, the think tank has updated its database, published blog posts, op-eds and books on the topic, and created state-level “Election Integrity Scorecards”. They’ve organized grassroots supporters to lobby state legislatures, and their Project 2025 blueprint has informed the Trump Administration’s efforts to reform state election laws.
As this story shows, many policy research organizations increasingly provide the research and advocacy necessary to achieve partisan objectives. They work closely with party allies in government to advance these goals. And beyond simply producing research, they engage in direct advocacy and lobbying to press their policy demands.
In the process, they become trusted party allies who elected officials turn to time and again for support. In the aggregate, they represent partisan policy networks working together across issues and time. And there are potentially profound implications for American democracy: policymaking becomes more one-sided, more poorly informed, and less representative of society’s preferences.
Lastly
My main hope in writing this book was that people would pay more attention to the powerful partisan and ideological biases introduced into politics by purportedly objective policy research organizations.
With a better understanding of the problem, I hope that we can think about ways to support policy research that is less partisan and polarized. In the book, I explore a number of think tanks that are still conducting responsible research under accepted academic norms and procedures. The Brookings Institution is a prime example. Even some think tanks with ideological perspectives, like the libertarian Cato Institute, refrain from active partisan engagement and produce well-regarded research.
That said, more and more policy research organizations seek to advance partisan, ideological goals, and they work closely with one party to do so. As a society, we need to think about ways to elevate less biased information sources.
This is decidedly un-sexy work. Good research is often boring and inaccessible. Partisan researchers often produce products that are punchy, exciting, and cognitively soothing for partisans who already agree with its conclusions. But for those who care about well-informed policymaking, these outputs often miss the mark.
I conclude the book with several concrete recommendations. Some focus on clawing back lost congressional capacity, which makes our lawmakers reliant on outsiders with narrow interests for information and ideas. Greater investments in crucial internal congressional resources, like policy experts and non-partisan researchers, would help.
Outside Congress, we need to consider how these groups take advantage of – and violate – lax tax provisions that place limits or prohibitions on their lobbying and electoral activities. Investigations and punishment of such violations are exceedingly rare.
At the very least, I hope this book will help others recognize many of these research institutions for what they are: partisan subsidiaries pursuing their own self-interest.
