Independent Institute

The Independent Institute is a libertarian public policy research organization founded in 1986 by David J. Theroux based in Oakland, California. The institute has more than 140 research fellows and is organized into seven centers addressing a range of political, social, economic, legal, environmental, and foreign policy issues. It publishes books, reports, blogs, podcasts, and the quarterly scholarly journal The Independent Review.

History

The institute was originally established in San Francisco, was re-located to Oakland in 1989, and since 2006 has had an office in Washington, D.C. According to the 2020 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report, the institute is number 42 in the "Top Think Tanks in the United States"¹.

Publications and programs

Since 1996, the institute has published the quarterly scholarly journal The Independent Review, whose founding editor and editor at large until 2013 was the economist and historian Robert Higgs². Currently, the editor is economics professor Robert M. Whaples, with Christopher J. Coyne, Gregory J. Robson and Diana W. Thomas acting as co-editors³.

The institute conducts various conference programs. The institute's Independent Policy Forum has included seminars by individuals including James M. Buchanan and Gore Vidal.

Its program in criminal justice sponsored a series of televised debates on PBS-TV, Stopping Violent Crime: New Directions for Reduction and Prevention, moderated by Harvard law professor Arthur R. Miller, former U.S. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, federal judge David Sentelle, civil libertarian writer Wendy Kaminer and others⁴.

In 2006, the institute opened an office in Washington and expanded its media program, including a syndicated weekly column by senior fellow Álvaro Vargas Llosa in The Washington Post⁵. In 2006, the institute released an "Open Letter on Immigration" addressed to President George W. Bush and members of Congress and signed by numerous economists, including five Nobel laureates⁶.

Policy areas

The institute's stated mission is "to boldly advance peaceful, prosperous, and free societies, grounded in a commitment to human worth and dignity"⁷.

The institute maintains MyGovCost.org, which focuses on the critical analysis of fiscal policy and government waste. It includes a calculator described as enabling Americans to estimate their lifetime federal tax liability and the hypothetical alternative investment return⁸.

Independent Institute scholars have criticized the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on economic⁹, legal¹⁰, ethical¹¹ and privacy grounds¹².

Independent Institute scholars have leveled several criticisms of Medicare. Senior fellow John R. Graham has lamented the widespread indifference to the Medicare Trustees report's warnings of Medicare's mounting fiscal problems¹³. He has, however, defended Medicare Advantage for giving seniors more choices than traditional Medicare. John C. Goodman has argued that healthcare inflation in the United States began with the creation of Medicare¹⁴. To help curb Medicare spending, Graham has proposed incentivizing enrollees to seek less expensive medical treatment abroad¹⁵. Craig Eyermann has also proposed giving Medicare enrollees a direct economic stake in lowering the costs¹⁶. Goodman has called for the privatization of Medicare¹⁷.

The Independent Institute has criticized the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, for what it sees as over-regulation as a result of political and bureaucratic incentives. The institute's FDAReview.org website cites numerous scholarly studies by academic economists that question the agency's safety, effectiveness and incentives¹⁸. Senior fellow Robert Higgs has argued that the FDA's regulation of healthcare products is "hazardous to our health"¹⁹. Senior fellow Alexander Tabarrok has questioned the need for the FDA's pre-approval requirements for pharmaceuticals on the grounds that doctors successfully prescribe many drugs for off-label usage²⁰.

Civil liberties and human rights

Independent Institute fellows have written on a variety of topics related to civil liberties and human rights. Historian Jonathan Bean anthologized and annotated numerous historical speeches, letters and articles that show individualist perspectives that animated the American civil-rights era in his book Race and Liberty in America: The Essential Reader²¹. Since 2012, Bean has served on the Illinois State Advisory Committee, a federally appointed panel that advises the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and his experience led him to claim that the mainstream civil rights community was out of touch with the public's civil rights concerns.

Second Amendment legal scholar Stephen Halbrook, who has won three firearms cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, has argued in several Independent Institute books and articles that civil liberties are more secure when individuals have legal access to firearms²². His 2003 book, The Founders' Second Amendment, traced the U.S. Constitution's guarantees of "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms" back to the American colonists' fears of British oppression²³. His 2013 book, Gun Control in the Third Reich, examined firearm registration and restrictions in pre-World War II Germany²⁴.

Economists Christopher Coyne and Abigail Hall have argued that interventionist militarism can lead to a "boomerang effect", setting in motion political, institutional and ideological forces that contribute to the suppression of civil liberties in the aggressive country²⁵.

The institute has also criticized major aspects of the criminal justice system as antagonistic toward civil liberties. Senior fellow Bruce L. Benson argued in The Enterprise of Law that before the British crown took over the courts, the legal system focused on restitution for victims, rather than punishment, corrections and deterrence²⁶.

In The Power of Habeas Corpus in America, winner of a 2013 PROSE Award in Law and Legal Studies²⁷, research fellow Anthony Gregory put forth a revisionist view of the writ of habeas corpus, arguing that rather than always promoting the cause of civil liberties, the legal idea has served "both as an engine and a curb on state power"²⁸.

Criticism of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan

In the aftermath of 11 September attacks, the Independent Institute was an early advocate of using privateers (rather than a military invasion of Afghanistan) to bring the co-conspirators of the terrorist attacks to justice under international law, as authorized in Article I, Section 8, clause 11 of the United States Constitution²⁹.

Opposition to the Iraq War

The Independent Institute promotes a U.S. foreign policy of free trade and non-interventionism, and this perspective was apparent in a host of publications and events it sponsored during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.

Even before the United States led the 2003 airstrikes on Iraq, the Independent Institute's fellows and speakers voiced opposition to a U.S.-Iraq War³⁰. That opposition continued for the duration of the conflict. In a Reason magazine symposium marking the 10th anniversary of the war's inception, research fellow Anthony Gregory called the Iraq war "the worst U.S. government project in my lifetime", and senior fellow Robert Higgs said the sizable political and material benefits that accrued to the war's architects demonstrate that "crime pays"³¹.

Senior fellow Ivan Eland, who directs the institute's Center on Peace and Liberty, wrote extensively on the Iraq war and told an audience at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference that the war helped illustrate why the America's Founders warned against foreign entanglements and were suspicious of standing armies³². He has also argued that conservatives who seek a more limited government should celebrate Calvin Coolidge instead of the more interventionist Ronald Reagan³³.

Eland has argued that the best strategy for minimizing sectarian strife in post-Saddam Iraq is for Iraqis to peacefully partition their country along ethnic and religious lines, a view once also supported by then-Senator Joe Biden³⁴ and former Ambassador Peter Galbraith³⁵.

Climate change

The Independent Institute has published works by atmospheric physicist and professor emeritus of environmental science Fred Singer, who was an advocate of climate change attribution denial and impact denial³⁶. The works include Hot Talk, Cold Science: Climate Change's Unfinished Debate, with a foreword by Frederick Seitz, another Institute research fellow³⁷. The book included Singer's 1998 essay, "Unfinished Business–The Scientific Case against the Global Climate Treaty"³⁸. The institute also published a 2003 policy report, "New Perspectives in Climate Science: What the EPA Isn't Telling Us", also co-authored by Singer³⁹, which criticized the Environmental Protection Agency's 2001 Climate Action Report.

Funding

For the fiscal year ending 30 June 2023, the institute had total revenue of $6,920,974⁴⁰. From 2015 to 2021, the independent rating group Charity Navigator rated the institute with a Four-Star rating⁴¹.

Microsoft funding controversy

On 2 June 1999, the institute sponsored a full-page advertisement titled "An Open Letter to President Clinton from 240 Economists on Antitrust Protectionism" in The New York Times and The Washington Post. The ads were signed by 240 economists and claimed "[h]eadline-grabbing cases against Microsoft, Intel, Cisco Systems, Visa and MasterCard, along with a flurry of merger investigations now underway, would appear to demonstrate the need for a vigorously enforced antitrust policy that will create checks and balances to eliminate consumer harm. However, consumers did not ask for these antitrust actions—rival business firms did"⁴².

In September 1999, a controversy arose when New York Times reporter Joel Brinkley stated that the advertisements had been paid for by Microsoft. Based on "internal institute documents" provided to the Times "by a Microsoft adversary associated with the computer industry who refused to be further identified", Brinkley wrote that Microsoft "has secretly served as the institute's largest outside financial benefactor in the last year". The documents showed that Microsoft had contributed $203,217 in 1999, making it the single largest contributor. Brinkley calculated that Microsoft's contribution amounted to approximately 20% of the funds in 1999 from external sources, excluding $304,725 contributed by Theroux⁴³.

The day after Brinkley's article appeared, Theroux stated that "our final year-end records do not agree with the numbers he had been provided by his source" and claimed that at the media conference he had stated that the Microsoft funding amounted to 7%. "It now appears the final figure is about 8%, a statistically insignificant difference, and far less than the 20% figure Mr. Brinkley claimed in his article", said Theroux⁴⁴.

In June 2000, Wall Street Journal staff reporters Glenn Simpson and Ted Bridis revealed that Oracle Corporation had hired Investigative Group International, as well as Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter & Associates, a Washington, D.C. public relations agency, to distribute damaging information about Microsoft's allies to media outlets. Oracle admitted that this was the "Microsoft adversary associated with the computer industry who refused to be further identified", which was the sole source for Brinkley's article⁴⁵.

This article is derived from the English Wikipedia article "Independent Institute" as of 26 Sep 2024, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.