Ko Colijn
General Director, the Clingendael Institute
The Clingendael Institute’s activities in 2014 moved in time with developments in world politics. Some of these developments have a trend component (the themes contained in our annual plan), while others are more urgent and less foreseeable. As always, this dual feature forms a considerable challenge for an institute that at the end of 2014 had 75+ employees, who plainly cannot follow every international event. Moreover, our activities are stretched across three categories: research; training and education; and public outreach.
If we look at international rankings of research institutes, Clingendael has done reasonably well in keeping up with world politics. The University of Pennsylvania’s McGann list of ‘Top Think Tanks Worldwide’ ranked Clingendael 11th within Western Europe (34th worldwide) and 35th in terms of its public outreach. Yet the Clingendael Institute covers more than just research. It also has an Academy (for education and training), which, as far as we know, remains beyond the scope of these rankings. However, Clingendael Academy enjoys a strong position and receives growing international interest in the courses that it offers.
As a think tank, we appreciate assessments based on external benchmarks. However, we also try to improve and strengthen our position and to work as a think tank on the basis of self-criticism and a constant search for ways to improve the services that we provide. This is done not only because of a generally felt necessity to remain relevant for current clients, but also to become more relevant for new ones. Changes in the landscape of clients and the conditions for work encourage such self-assessments, improved efficiency and innovation.
One of the main challenges for the future is a change in the Dutch government’s subsidy climate, in the case of Clingendael amounting to the so-called ‘post-2016 dialogue’, which took up a considerable amount of time and brainpower on the part of Clingendael’s governance board, the management and staff. Even before these changes in long-standing relationships became part of the Clingendael agenda, Clingendael started to shift attention towards the market and a more demand-oriented way of working. Output increasingly shifted towards more modern, policy-relevant products. This means having the ability quickly to tap international knowledge networks to provide policy-makers with relevant input; providing short and crisp analyses; engaging with civil servants as a sounding board or for guidance; as well as providing independent commentaries for the media and the general public. Clingendael must meet these demands, given the growing competition within the think-tank world and clients’ tendencies to be more exacting.
This is also the case in the field of education and training. What is being demanded is more customisation, shorter delivery times for rapidly emerging needs, and more emphasis on the skills that the modern diplomat is expected to master. Apart from standard products, this means a capacity for delivering (at short notice) negotiation training for inexperienced aspiring diplomats from fragile states and/or states in civil war, as well as further training for diplomats in the new fields of science (mediation techniques) or knowledge (cyber).
Public outreach is an important tool of intrinsic value – namely, the ability to inform properly and authoritatively the political world, press and the public about the environment, on which the Netherlands is dependent as almost no other country in the world is. Public outreach is also becoming more important for Clingendael as a marketing tool, in a world where visibility and authoritative presence are taken into consideration in the awarding of contracts.
In addition to changes in financing or research and training, the think-tank landscape in the Netherlands has become more crowded. The introduction of competition is never pleasant, but it has made us aware of the need to become even more relevant and agile as an organisation. Clingendael believes that its most important tasks are to: (a) be alert to profound developments that are convulsing the world order; (b) identify the most relevant consequences of these developments (since covering all the consequences or each confrontation along the new fault lines would be too big a task); and (c) be guided by the direct policy relevance for the Netherlands when determining Clingendael’s agenda.
In terms of a), Clingendael produced its third annual Strategic Monitor report entitled Unstable World Order?, which not only serves as the basis for our own research, but which also has become a key policy document for the Netherlands’ foreign and security policy. In terms of (b), Clingendael reacted to acute ‘fault line’ issues related to Ukraine and the rise of China, as well as the attempts to rescue institutions of global governance and to help them adapt to new circumstances. Regarding (c), Clingendael played a role in issues central to Dutch interests (the euro crisis, our position in the debate on EU integration versus renationalisation) and issues in which the Netherlands has niche interests (such as integrated conflict management in the Sahel; the Nuclear Knowledge Summit; training courses for Syrian diplomats; the Netherlands’ spearheading role in European defence cooperation; and testing non-repressive, rule-of-law-based counter-terrorism strategies).
A new era calls for new diplomacy. The Advisory Committee on the Modernisation of Diplomacy, in which the Director of Clingendael participated intensively, completed its work in 2014. This led in the course of 2014 to a follow-up order for Clingendael to investigate and map out the networks operating within the different departments of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). Another windfall was the Dutch National Postcode Lottery’s substantial monetary grant to Clingendael’s Conflict Research Unit.
Clingendael Academy, which can look back on an excellent year, also merits special mention. The Academy has a long and impressive track record. The Academy’s role in training national and foreign diplomats has been an entrenched and rapidly deployable instrument of foreign policy, also in 2014. In this sense, Clingendael can legitimately hope to avoid any ‘commercialisation’ of its relationship with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The activities mentioned here are merely examples of the many activities conducted by Clingendael in 2014 in the areas of research, training/education, and outreach. These activities were supported by the staff office, which in addition to its regular services has distinguished itself in several respects. For example, it played a crucial role in the smooth relocation operation, which resulted in the return of the Conflict Research Unit to Clingendael’s main building, and it also dealt with the more difficult task of managing operations in order to create a more successful, broader and more internationally oriented Clingendael.
Other statistics also illustrate how the staff office supported a thriving institution: in 2014, over 90 courses were organised for some 2,000 participants. In addition, 40 meetings were held at Clingendael during 2014 for a total of approximately 2,500 guests. And the numbers of visitors to Clingendael’s new website have grown significantly since its launch. In 2014, there were 262,000 unique visitors counted, with 780,000 pages clicked. The number of ‘consults’ by Clingendael staff varied between three and four per day. This number even reached ten on a daily base following the crash of flight MH17. Clingendael staff output resulted in 284 registered publications online and in print in 2014. The weekly Clingendael Newsletter has more than 4,000 subscribers, while the print edition of Clingendael’s magazine, Internationale Spectator, prepared for its discontinuation by the year’s end. Since 2013, the monthly newsletter reaches over 2,000 subscribers.
2014 was a favourable year in financial terms: Clingendael ended the year with a positive balance of approximately € 1,000,000. Resulting in part from incidental benefits and prudence, this – as was the case in 2013 – was significantly better than had been budgeted. On the one hand, this is welcome news, because it allows Clingendael to increase its reserves — a situation that the institute has always pursued with a view to possible future obligations related to (statutory) payments in less prosperous times. The positive result was caused by a combination of factors: the budget is calculated with prudence, while the final net results in 2014 were higher than estimated (+11 per cent) and the cost for personnel and organisation were roughly according to budget. Actual costs of staff tend to lag behind portfolio income growth because of a ‘recruitment gap’.
In a world that is increasingly characterised as ‘uncertain’ and in which planning for the future is increasingly being displaced by the prudent drafting of scenarios, no other objective can be given to the navigation of Clingendael. Dialogue with the Dutch government on the post-2016 relationship is proceeding slowly, and even execution of the 2015 policy plan (within the already approved 2013–2015 planning cycle) is still pending. That Clingendael nevertheless is managing to deliver a compelling sample of activities can be seen on our website: www.clingendael.nl. Clingendael is determined to defend its status as ‘the leading Dutch foreign policy think tank’ (according to The Economist, summer 2014) in 2015 and, where possible, to improve upon this position.