Democracy’s Think Tank: The Institute for Policy Studies & Progressive Foreign Policy
Since its doors opened in 1963, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) waged a battle against the Cold War and its liberal anti-communist supporters. Frightened by the threat posed by the Soviet Union to liberal democracy, Cold War liberals formulated a blueprint for global U.S. dominance. This strategy’s reliance on illiberal and undemocratic methods at home and abroad IPS to look for an alternative approach to foreign affairs. As IPS founders Marcus Raskin and Richard Barnet saw it, in the process of fighting communism and preserving the liberal capitalist order, Cold War liberals had forsaken democracy.
Democracy's Think Tank tells the story of IPS's crusade to resurrect democracy at home and abroad. Borrowing from populist, progressive, and New Left traditions, IPS challenged elite expertise and sought to restore power to "the people." To this end, IPS, in the words of journalist I. F. Stone, served as the "institute for the rest of us." Democracy’s Think Tank tells the story of IPS's involvement in a broad range of grassroots campaigns aimed at ending the Cold War and increasing participatory democracy in the United States and across the globe. Contemporary observers seeking an alternative to American empire in the twenty-first century will find Democracy's Think Tank offers several possible paths toward a more democratic order.