From Party Tools to Symbolic Engines: Rethinking Think Tanks in Latin America and Beyond

This paper is written with a deliberate commitment to engage with the intellectual contributions of Latin American scholars, researchers, and thinkers. In much of the global academic debate, the dominance of U.S. and European perspectives has created a structural imbalance: since the end of the Second World War, theories and policy frameworks have often emerged from the North while leaving the crises and turning points of the Global South underexplored or misinterpreted. This overreliance on Western paradigms has widened, rather than bridged, the gap between North and South, especially in understanding democracy, legitimacy, and development.