Unblocking Abundance 2: Organizations
A roundup of policy groups
Who is working on US regulatory reform from an “abundance agenda” perspective?
Here’s a preliminary masterpost of political groups I’ve found so far — please feel free to suggest more and I’ll update the post!
I’m categorizing organizational approaches broadly into “research/advocacy”, “legislative”, “executive”, and “judicial.”
Note that I am not endorsing these organizations overall. The purpose of this post is to aggregate organizations that have regulatory reform as a major focus, especially regarding key sectors like energy, housing, healthcare, and manufacturing, and those which have participated in recent discourse around the “abundance” or “progress” movements. I’m not familiar enough with any of them to positively vouch for the effectiveness or trustworthiness of these institutions.
One thing I notice is that, compared to the $14B spent on the 2020 US Senate campaigns, or the $420M of philanthropic donations by Effective Altruists each year, these policy organizations mostly don’t have a lot of funding. Think tanks in general don’t have huge budgets: the largest US think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, only had a 2013 operating revenue of $32M.
For donors newly interested in affecting policy, or potential founders of policy organizations, the relatively small market size may indicate an opportunity.
Arnold Ventures
Category: research/advocacy, legislative
Purpose: “philanthropy dedicated to tackling some of the most pressing problems in the United States.”
Approach: grants, research (including empirical research on policy experiments), advocacy
Political Affiliation: None given
Date founded: 2010
Funding: $716M in 2020 (source)
Sample policy proposals: streamlined FDA approval for biosimilars
News: now hiring a VP to head up a new “infrastructure” policy area
American Legislative Exchange Council
Category: research/advocacy, legislative, judicial
Purpose: association of state legislators for advancing “limited government, free markets, and federalism”
Approach: amicus briefs, reports
Political Affiliation: Officially nonpartisan, Republican-aligned
Date founded: 1977
Funding: $8.0M in 2020 (source)
Sample policy proposals: expanded permitting for home-based businesses; occupational licensing reform; expanded permitting for rare-earth mining; opposing favoritism in tax breaks for businesses
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Category: research/advocacy, legislative, executive, judicial
Purpose: regulatory reform to promote prosperity and property rights
Approach: reports, coalition letters on legislation, comments to federal agencies, litigation
Political Affiliation: Officially nonpartisan, Republican-aligned
Date founded: 1984
Funding: $6.7M in 2020 (source)
Sample policy proposals: enforce rules requiring federal agencies to investigate the cost of regulations; oppose price controls on freight rail; repeal bans on telehealth; allow adaptive clinical trials; streamline federal permitting for infrastructure; repeal the Jones Act
Center for Growth and Opportunity
Category: research/advocacy
Purpose: promote economic growth
Approach: student fellowships, papers
Political Affiliation: None given
Date founded: 2013
Funding: $5.5M in 2019 (source)
Sample policy proposals: reform NEPA to provide faster approvals; sunset provisions on state occupational licensing laws; expanding permitting for home-based businesses
Niskanen Center
Category: research/advocacy, legislative, executive, judicial
Purpose: promoting an “open society”
Approach: persuading Washington insiders such as “legislators and their staff, presidential appointees, career civil servants, mobilized special interests, and…policy specialists” through research, “direct engagement in the policymaking process”, lobbying, and amicus briefs and pro bono representation.
Political affiliation: Nonpartisan; team includes people with experience working under both Democratic and Republican politicians
Date founded: 2014
Funding: $4.6M in 2020 (source)
Notable achievements: designed the SITE Act (currently in the Senate) which gives the federal government authority to permit new interstate transmission construction
Sample policy proposals: permitting reform for clean energy; easing restrictions on medical licensing; repealing Certificate of Need requirements for hospitals; eliminating the mortgage tax reduction; relaxing land-use restrictions; limiting federal student loans for college
Committee for Economic Development
Category: research/advocacy
Purpose: research and advocacy from a pro-business, pro-economic growth perspective.
Approach: publishing reports, briefs, white papers, media articles, etc.
Political affiliation: Nonpartisan; team includes people with experience working under both Republican and Democratic politicians
Date founded: 1942
Funding: $4.1M in 2011 (source)
Notable achievements: crafting the Marshall Plan
Sample policy proposals: faster permitting process for federal infrastructure
Progressive Policy Institute
Category: research/advocacy, legislative, executive
Purpose: generating policy that promotes economic growth and modernizing the public sector
Approach: publishing reports; commissioning polls; working with New Democrats in Congress and some governors and mayors
Political affiliation: Democrat
Date founded: 1989
Funding: $1.9M in 2013 (source)
Notable achievements: policy source for Bill Clinton’s presidential administration
Sample policy proposals: permitting reform for clean energy; a Manufacturing Regulatory Improvement Commission to review and update manufacturing regulations; not banning siloxanes
Institute For Progress
https://progress.institute/
Category: research/advocacy, legislative
Purpose: accelerating scientific, technological, and industrial progress
Approach: publishing reports, drafting legislation, fellowships for early-career policymakers
Political affiliation: not stated
Date founded: 2022
Funding: not yet public
Sample policy proposals: permitting reform for clean energy, streamlining Emergency Use Authorizations for medical devices & diagnostic tests in pandemics
I feel like ALEC and CEI should be more explicitly coded Republican. They may be nominally non partisan but in practice they are very much Red Team in terms of who they work with and who works against them. The Future Now Fund was for instance founded as an explicit counterweight to ALEC; the current iteration of that part of their mission, if I understand correctly, is Lawmaker Network, https://thelawmakernetwork.org/.
This matters if you are trying to broaden an abundance agenda coalition, because much (most?) of the intellectual left sees ALEC and CEI as working corruptly as an arm of the GOP to shield bad corporate actors from liability (e.g. for pollution or mistreating workers), and it is at least possible that they do some of that alongside real abundance-unlocking advocacy work.
Also: Arnold Ventures. Not sure what they've done on “abundance” in the past, but they are hiring now for a VP-level role to focus on this: https://www.arnoldventures.org/careers/vice-president-of-infrastructure