Taking (Back) the Initiative

The Economic Opportunity Institute sounds like a typical think tank--of any political persuasion. Each of the name's three interchangeable words evokes Dupont Circle, position papers and regression analysis.

But the institute, from the small building it shares with an architect a few blocks from the University of Washington--about as far from the other Washington as you can get without the Pacific lapping over your fax machines--sees itself differently.

Progressive policy institutes, explains the group's statement of philosophy, come in three flavors. There's "think-tank hands-off research," as in universities. There's "more populist analyses that are picked up by local and national media"--still not quite the institute's style. The third category, in which policy development meets real-world advocacy, "is the niche that we want to exploit," says EOI. "Our job is to develop populist majoritarian policy and push that policy forward into the public eye." In other words: less think, more tank.

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