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Manhattan Institute for Policy Research

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The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research is a conservative think tank established in New York City in 1978 by Antony Fisher and William J. Casey, with its headquarters on Vanderbilt Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. They describe their mission as to "develop and disseminate new ideas that foster greater economic choice and individual responsibility." The Institute, known for its advocacy of free market-based solutions to policy problems, supports and publicizes research on taxes, welfare, crime, the legal system, urban life, race, education and immigration among others.Their message is communicated through books, articles, interviews, speeches, op-ed’s and through the institute's quarterly publication City Journal, targeted at policymakers, politicians, scholars and journalists.

Law Enforcement

The Manhattan Institute is perhaps best known for its influence on law enforcement methods. In particular, the Institute is widely credited with pioneering community policing methods and more specifically quality of life policing, sometimes known as "Broken Windows Policing" after the landmark 1982 Atlantic Monthly article "Broken Windows" by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling. Kelling remains a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute's Center for Civic Innovation. Broken Windows posited that dealing more effectively and comprehensively with low-level quality of life crime that might have previously been ignored by over-stretched police forces would pay dividends in combatting more high-profile violent crime by combatting the general lawlessness that had overrun inner city areas in many American cities in the 1970's. Broken Windows policing was put to its first major large-scale test in the mid-1990's after the election of Rudolph Giuliani as mayor of New York City. Giuliani was an outspoken advocate of community policing, and has frequently cited the influence "Broken Windows" had on his thinking as mayor. A follow-up book by Kelling and Catherine Coles published by the Manhattan Institute in 1996 led to further interest in community policing methods, and many municipalities have since adopted quality-of-life and community policing as official policy. Former Giuliani-era New York City Police Chief Bill Bratton took these methods to the West coast on being appointed commissioner of the LAPD, and Newark Mayor Cory Booker has been lauded for his Broken Windows-based approach to crime since taking office in 2006.

Legal Policy

Institute scholars Walter Olson and Peter Huber were two of the first public policy experts to advocate for tort and litigation reform. Huber's books Liability: The Legal Revolution and its Consequences (1988) and Galileo's Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom (1991) and Olson's book The Litigation Explosion: What Happened When America Unleashed the Lawsuit (1991) are credited by many with framing the initial political debate over frivolous litigation, and raising the profile of this previously obscure political issue in the early 1990's. Both have published extensively since, and both continue to hold senior fellowships with the Institute's Center for Legal Policy.

Welfare Reform

The Manhattan Institute was one of the key institutions that successfully pressed for reform of the Welfare system in the mid-1990's. Charles Murray's Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980 (1984) was one of the first books to argue that the welfare state had fostered a culture and cycle of dependency that was to the detriment of both welfare recipients and the United States as a whole.

Myron Magnet's The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass (1993) laid much of the intellectual foundation for the welfare reform movement, and was cited by President George W. Bush as the book that has influenced his thinking the most after the Bible. Karl Rove has stated that Dream underlies the entire compassionate conservatism movement.

Health policy

Benjamin Zycher, Senior Fellow at Manhattan Institute's Center for Medical Progress, opposes allowing the federal government to negotiate prices in the Medicare Part D prescription drug program, and argues that patients and their doctors should make their own decisions to choose drugs like Vioxx, rather than having the U.S. Food and Drug Administration decide on the basis of "bureaucratized ... scientific study."

The Manhattan Instititute issued a report by Frank Lichtenberg, a business professor at Columbia University, on the adverse effects of drug price negotiating in the Veterans Administration. Lichtenberg said that the VA National Formulary excludes many new drugs. Only 38% of drugs approved in the 1990s and 19% of the drugs approved since 2000 are on the formulary. He also argues that the life expectancy of veterans "may have declined" as a result.

Funding sources

The Manhattan Institute received $19,470,416 in grants from 1985-2005, from foundations such as the Koch Family Foundations, the John M. Olin Foundation, Inc., the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Scaife Foundations, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. The Manhattan Institute does not disclose its corporate funding, but the Capital Research Center listed its contributors as Bristol-Myers Squibb, Exxon Mobil, Chase Manhattan, Cigna, Sprint, Reliant Energy, Lincoln Financial Group Foundation, and Merill Lynch.

People

People affiliated with the Manhattan Institute include:

Notable members of the board of trustees include: William Kristol, The Weekly Standard; Peggy Noonan, of The Wall Street Journal; Robert Rosenkranz, CEO, Delphi Financial Group, Inc; and Andrew Saul, Chairman of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board.

References

  1. Gottlieb, Martin (1986). "Conservative Policy Unit Takes Aim at New York". The New York Times: p. B4. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
    DeParle, Jason (1990). "An Architect of the Reagan Vision Plunges Into Inquiry on Race and I.Q." The New York Times: p. A22. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
    Redburn, Tom (1993). "Conservative Thinkers Are Insiders; It's Now Their City Hall, and Manhattan Institute Is Uneasy". The New York Times: p. B1. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
    Scott, Janny (1997). "Turning Intellect Into Influence; Promoting Its Ideas, the Manhattan Institute Has Nudged New York Rightward". The New York Times: p. B1. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
    Kaplan, Fred (1998). "Conservatives plant a seed in NYC; Think tank helps Giuliani set his agenda". The Boston Globe: p. A4. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
    Confessore, Nicholas (2005). "Giuliani Guide Is Bloomberg Gadfly; Manhattan Institute Has More Influence Outside New York". The New York Times: p. B1. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  7. One-Size-Fits-All Rules Will Hurt Drug Quality, Wall Street Journal, April 4, 2007
  8. Older Drugs, Shorter Lives?: An Examination of the Health Effects of the Veterans Health Administration Formulary

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