Transforming Economic Knowledge from the Side Lane? The New Economy Space and its Think Tanks

This paper analyses the New Economy Space (NES) as an emerging constellation of German-speaking think tanks that operate between science, policy, media, and civil society. Drawing on Social Studies of Economics and STS, the study treats economic knowledge as mediated and translated across institutional boundaries rather than linearly transferred. The empirical basis is a qualitative case design comprising semi-structured interviews, document analysis, and materials from networking and strategy events. The analysis identifies three recurrent operations that structure the NES as an intermediary space. First, organisations continuously establish “agile addresses” that enable visibility, credibility, and engagement without relying on conventional field positions; these combine lean organisational forms, explicit normative signalling, and strategic location. Second, NES actors are impact-orientated: they formulate theories of change, design user-centred outputs, and operate largely within outcome-driven funding arrangements, with success assessed by policy uptake, timeliness, and public resonance rather than academic recognition. Third, they organise transversally, creating connectivity across fields through convening; targeted communication (including digital channels); co-creation with stakeholders; and tailored knowledge products. Personnel arrangements (e.g., hybrid careers, fellows, advisory boards) support these linking functions. Science is consistently referenced, but primarily as a source of evidential authority that is selectively assembled, formatted for specific audiences, and evaluated by practical influence rather than peer-based metrics. In these respects, the NES differs from Germany’s technocratic advisory infrastructure and from paradigmatically orientated neoliberal networks. Conceptually, the NES is described as an intermediary configuration with fluid boundaries and a recognisable organisational logic. The findings indicate alternative modes of organising and circulating economic ideas under conditions of uncertainty and contestation.