POLICY ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND THE BATTLE OF IDEAS: 'THE THINK TANKERY' OF THE FABIAN SOCIETY IN THE TURN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
POLICY ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND THE BATTLE OF IDEAS: 'THE THINK TANKERY' OF THE FABIAN SOCIETY IN THE TURN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Summary/Abstract: The Fabian Society is believed to be the first advocacy think tank to have succeeded in putting a foothold in British politics (despite not being called so until much later). This article explores, to some extent, aspects of 'think-tankery' of the British Fabian Society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In fact, the accomplishments credited to the unusual members of the Fabian socialists laid in their evidence-based ideas that proved to secure gradual and general acceptance of the Society's principles. Indeed, the founding fathers of the Fabian Society were the sort of intellectuals who emphasized on the intellectualizing of politics through the strategy of 'permeation' and the influence of the political elite. Permeation, in its turn, has been defined and applied in different terms by Fabian socialists aspiring to political influence the political elite, citizens and institutions to its socialist proposals.

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