Fundamental differences exist between the Cato Institute and Stanford University’s Hoover Institution?

Differences are of the following types:

1. Location and goal of influence on active policy: the Cato Institute, located in Washington, DC, aims to influence the policy debates. They circulate materials to Congress members and their staffers and have their own scholars go regularly on media programs and write news articles. The Hoover Institution, located in Palo Alto (Stanford University) is not directly involved with policy.

1. Ideology: Cato is a Libertarian think tank, and the institute and its members consistently take positions that are “libertarian”, loosely translated as “fiscally conservative and socially liberal” — so for instance, they support expanded immigration, legalization of drugs, withdrawal from wars, separation of church and state, a humble foreign policy, and gay marriage, while also supporting lower taxes, lower government spending, greater voucherization/privatization of medical and education spending, etc. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nol…to see the relation between libertarianism and the left-right spectrum in US politics. Hoover is generally on the “right” of the political spectrum but does not take policy positions at the institutional level, so its members and fellows often take different positions on specific issues (it has some libertarians working for it, and some of their guest fellows are progressives). On average, though, their opinions would tend to the “conservative” side both on social and economic issues. The key differences with Cato would be that many Hoover scholars are more likely to support wars under certain circumstances, the war on drugs, immigration restrictions, and traditional marriage.
2. Ideological variation: Already covered in (2) — Cato is more ideologically consistent/rigid than Hoover. Occasionally, Cato scholars express views (on specific topics) different from their colleagues, but it’s unlikely they would remain at Cato if they became full-blooded neoconservatives or progressives.
3. Funding: Cato has no significant endowment so it meets expenses through annual donations. Hoover uses a mix of donations and an endowment.
4. Independent scholarship: My impression is that it is easier for an academic at Hoover to spend several years working on an independent project. For instance, Thomas Sowell undertook multi-year book projects while at Hoover. My guess is that at Cato, scholars do work on books and projects (many published by Cato), but these are generally narrowly focused on things that align with Cato’s goals and mission. [I may be mistaken about this.]