BCSP reacts to being listed as a ‘party affiliated think-tank’

We see this as an honour and proof that our work is valued. However, in the list, BCSP was presented as 25th among “party affiliated think tanks”. Now this we found as arbitrary and untrue. To remedy the situation, BCSP has sent a letter to James G. McGann, Director of Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program of the University of Pennsylvania. Excerpts from the letter, signed by our President of Managerial Board and Director are posted below:

“During fourteen years of work, BCSP (formerly Centre for Civil-Military Relations, CCMR) has never been affiliated with any political party in Serbia. Not during the 1990s when we strongly opposed to Milosevic’s regime, together with the rest of civil society in Serbia, nor in the years that followed the change of the regime. All this time we remained strongly committed to conducting unbiased research and advocacy activities, based on hard data and facts. As a result, on numerous occasions we have confronted in public domain parties from all sides of the political specter, ruling parties most frequently. And it is for that reason that we are recognized both by the domestic public, local and foreign partners and donors as a non-partisan and independent organization.

BCSP has recently been recognized as an increasingly prominent think tank in Serbia, and support provided to BCSP is marked as one of the greatest success of Norwegian support to the Western Balkans (please see attached Results of BCSP’s Evaluation, also available online at: http://www.norad.no/en/Tools+and+publications/Publications/Publication+Page?key=201313). Also, in the past three years we have been providing the Delegation of the European Commission in Serbia with expert input on the state of affairs in Serbia’s security sector, for the annual Progress Report.

However, classifying BCSP as party affiliated think tank can have harmful effects on the organization’s reputation in broader international circles and diminish the results of our work in the eyes of potential foreign partners and donors.

We understand that in this kind of research it is sometimes difficult to eliminate all bias from the selection process, or possible mistakes during collecting and processing data. Therefore it is neccessary to have a set of clear and unambiguous criteria, based on which the nominations are made. Besides the general set of criteria for ranking think tanks (listed on page 58 of the survey), there is no information based on which criteria and indicators were think tanks nominated and ranked as 'party affiliated'. Hence, we would like to kindly ask you to send us an explanation on the set of criteria used for listing BCSP, or any other think tank, as party affiliated.

We hope you will take into consideration the information we have provided you with, and update your data base, in order to have accurate and complete information on the work of BCSP. We are also inviting you to check your findings with our donors and partners (please see annexes List of BCSP donors and List of BCSP partners). After doing this, we would like to kindly ask you to publish a correction of the report (at your website and the report itself), and state that the BCSP has been listed as a party affiliated think tank by mistake.”

These facts are supported by an overview of our sources of financing, list of BCSP donors, and results of evaluation, all sent to Mr. McGann on 3 February 2011.

We welcome Mr. McGann's response and are willing to post it on our web site as well.

Belgrade Centre for Security Policy