Business-funded ideas took about twenty years to become law

Evidence

What transpired during the 1980s was the beginning of the realization of the ambitions of those business leaders who, as described in chapter 5, undertook to influence future national environmental policy by influencing the marketplace of ideas. Those business leaders had understood that it would require a long-term investment strategy to create a generation of scholarship more reflective of their values and priorities. Such a change could not be expected overnight, as it would take “twenty years for a research paper at Harvard to become a law.” Almost exactly twenty years after beginning their efforts, the business leaders of the 1970s had achieved their goal: an intellectualization of the conservative movement favoring reform of the nation’s environmental laws. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 545

Categorization

• SEED: The twenty-year research-paper-to-law lag is a reusable thesis about how policy change actually happens through idea pipelines.
• XREF: connects to: Business funded a two-decade intellectual pipeline to change environmental law — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 439; Conservative foundations funded unorthodox ideas decades before the think tank boom — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 322; Business opposition to environmental law built its own foundation-backed intellectual apparatus — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 437 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Conservative foundations funded unorthodox ideas decades before the think tank boom #exemplifies (0.85) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 322
• Neoliberalism’s doctrine was shaped from its start by business patrons #corroborates (0.75) — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 87
• Business opposition to environmental law built its own foundation-backed intellectual apparatus #exemplifies (0.72) — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 437
• Business patrons funded free market ideas while fearing intellectual disloyalty #qualifies (0.72) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1442