State-based think tanks have had significant influence on governors in Michigan, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and elsewhere. Once firmly established, these organizations have forged strong working relationships with hundreds of legislators and their staffs, often serving as mentors to policy makers. These organizations have a distinctive theory of social change. After all, the elites in society generally gain from the power relationships and wealth arrangements of the status quo. They have the most to lose from genuine change.
Elites frequently frustrate change, even when the general public strongly wants it.
Mass public opinion, on the other hand, is often diffuse and targeted to specific issues in isolation from other issues. Further, ordinary people will generally mobilize for fundamental change only after suffering a long series of provocations. For example, the anti-tax sentiments that are so strong today among American citizens evolved over a long period of encroaching governmental power. To neutralize the resistance to change that comes naturally to elites, the think tanks publish sober, well-reasoned, academic studies. As mass public opinion shifts toward a new idea, politicians will tend to follow.