Denkpanzer stören

BARKOW, Ralf, 2013. Denkpanzer stören.

Summary: This work on the topic of Think Tanks aims to circle around the phenomenon of the transfer of an "Anglo-Saxon model" into a Swiss think tank and the reaction to it based on empirical material (newspaper articles or communication events of the period between 1998 and 2012) and through observation of scientific texts.

Ralf Barkow looks at what values, interests, and motives are followed (distinguished) by observers (people, organizations) who represent a market-economic position and orient themselves to a liberal world and societal view (= "right"), or "on the other hand" see the dominance of a capitalist economy (= "left"). To do this, I examine mass media assessments, for example of the growth crisis.

The present text starts from two assumptions: (1) organizations, like the think tanks described by me, "function as the social institutions capable of launching strategic changes in program usage through changes in code usage" (Paetow 2004: 346), and (2) the duplication rule (code) also seems to apply in (neo-) Marxist and systems-theoretical society analyses.

Whether these ever specific "forms of a theory-guided observation of problem-solution constellations" (Scherr 2008: 88) serve as a positive or negative version is of less interest here. The thesis is rather that the think tanks observed for "market radicality" seem to have succeeded or continue to succeed in what the observing others describe as "attaining hegemony," which they in turn want to regain (keyword: power of definition). This has to do with conflict in so far as the communication intensifications arising from the so-called struggle for the power of definition indicate social conflicts, "in which fundamental values, institutions or material resources of a society are up for debate" (Tobler 2002: 267).

By observing such communication intensifications, a kind of "early warning system" for fundamental and routine conflicts (Kurt Imhof) can be constructed. How such an alarm could work is shown by an example of a communication event analysis.

Before that, a usable ideology concept is developed.

Using a list of social addresses, i.e. names of think tanks (organizations) as search terms, contributions in the Swiss media arena are analyzed to see which think tank attracts the most attention and which ideological temporizations can be observed.

The exemplary examination of the ongoing conflict over the Association Complaints Law (Verbandsbeschwerderecht) finally shows a new disruptor: the environment/nature represented by lawyers, which functionally equivalent to the anarchist, seems to operate from the margins of society (Maren Lehmann), joining the previous anarchist vs. engineer difference.