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Counter-hegemonic Projects and Cognitive Praxis in Transnational Alternative Policy Groups

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Think Tanks and Global Politics

Abstract

Since the mid-1970s, and particularly since the 1990s, alternative policy groups have generated ideas—both visionary and strategic—for a “globalization from below”. This chapter comparatively analyses eight transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) using a basic conceptual framework for understanding them as sites of cognitive praxis: producers and mobilizers of knowledge for social transformation. In contrast to neoliberal think tanks (NTTs), TAPGs endeavor to expose the problematic role of private interests in the global political economy. Their remit is not to centralize knowledge within elite policy networks, but to diffuse it, including by building the capacity of counter-hegemonic publics. Taken together, the TAPGs introduced here represent an important source of alternative knowledge production and an illuminating contrast to hegemonic think tanks.

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Carroll, W.K., Coburn, E. (2017). Counter-hegemonic Projects and Cognitive Praxis in Transnational Alternative Policy Groups. In: Salas-Porras, A., Murray, G. (eds) Think Tanks and Global Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56756-7_8

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