The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known simply as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a center-right think tank based in Washington, D.C., that researches government, politics, economics, and social welfare. AEI is an independent nonprofit organization supported primarily by contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals.
Founded in 1938, the organization is aligned with conservatism. AEI advocates in favor of private enterprise, limited government, and liberal democracy. It is governed by a 29-member Board of Trustees. Approximately 185 authors are associated with AEI. Arthur C. Brooks served as president of AEI from 2009 to 2019. He was succeeded by Robert Doar.
History Beginnings (1938–1954) AEI grew out of the American Enterprise Association (AEA), which was founded in 1938 by a group of New York businessmen led by Lewis H. Brown. AEI's founders included executives from Bristol-Myers, Chemical Bank, Chrysler, Eli Lilly, General Mills, and Paine Webber.
AEA's early work in Washington, D.C. involved commissioning and distributing legislative analyses to Congress, which developed AEA's relationships with Melvin Laird and Gerald Ford. Brown eventually shifted AEA's focus to commissioning studies of government policies. These subjects ranged from fiscal to monetary policy and including health care and energy policy, and authors such as Earl Butz, John Lintner, former New Dealer Raymond Moley, and Felix Morley. Brown died in 1951, and AEA languished as a result. In 1952, a group of young policymakers and public intellectuals including Laird, William J. Baroody Sr., Paul McCracken, and Murray Weidenbaum, met to discuss resurrecting AEA.
William J. Baroody Sr. (1954–1980) Baroody was executive vice president from 1954 to 1962 and president from 1962 to 1978. Baroody raised money for AEA to expand its financial base beyond the business leaders on the board. During the 1950s and 1960s, AEA's work became more pointed and focused, including monographs by Edward Banfield, James M. Buchanan, P. T. Bauer, Alfred de Grazia, Rose Friedman, and Gottfried Haberler.
In 1962, AEA changed its name to the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) to avoid any confusion with a trade association representing business interests attempting to influence politicians. In 1964, William J. Baroody Sr., and several of his top staff at AEI, including Karl Hess, moonlighted as policy advisers and speechwriters for presidential nominee Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election. "Even though Baroody and his staff sought to support Goldwater on their own time without using the institution's resources, AEI came under scrutiny of the IRS in the years following the campaign," author Andrew Rich wrote in 2004. Representative Wright Patman subpoenaed the institute's tax papers, and the IRS initiated a two-year investigation of AEI. After this, AEI's officers attempted to avoid the appearance of partisan political advocacy.
Baroody recruited a resident research faculty; Harvard University economist Gottfried Haberler was the first to join in 1972. In 1977, former president Gerald Ford joined AEI as a "distinguished fellow." Ford brought several of his administration officials with him, including Robert Bork, Arthur Burns, David Gergen, James C. Miller III, Laurence Silberman, and Antonin Scalia. Ford also founded the AEI World Forum, which he hosted until 2005. Other staff hired during this time included Walter Berns and Herbert Stein. Baroody's son, William J. Baroody Jr., a Ford White House official, also joined AEI, and later became president of AEI, succeeding his father in that role in 1978.
The elder Baroody made an effort to recruit neoconservatives who had supported the New Deal and Great Society but were disaffected by what they perceived as the failure of the welfare state. This also included Cold War hawks who rejected the peace agenda of 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern. Baroody brought Jeane Kirkpatrick, Irving Kristol, Michael Novak, and Ben Wattenberg to AEI.
While at AEI, Kirkpatrick authored "Dictatorships and Double Standards", which brought her to the attention of Ronald Reagan, and Kirkpatrick was later named U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations. AEI also became a home for supply-side economists during the late 1970s and early 1980s. By 1980, AEI had grown from a budget of $1 million and a staff of ten to a budget of $8 million and a staff of 125.
William J. Baroody Jr. (1980–1986) Baroody Sr. retired in 1978, and was replaced by his son, William J. Baroody Jr. Baroody Sr. died in 1980, shortly before Reagan took office as U.S. president in January 1981. According to Politico, the think tank "rose to prominence" in this period "as the primary intellectual home of supply-side economics and neoconservatism."
During the Reagan administration, several AEI staff were hired by the administration.See AEI's Annual Reports, 1980–1985.
Christopher DeMuth (1986–2008)
In December 1986, AEI hired Christopher DeMuth as its new president, and DeMuth served in the role for 22 years.
In 1990, AEI hired Charles Murray (and received his Bradley Foundation support for The Bell Curve) after the Manhattan Institute dropped him. During DeMuth's tenure, the organization turned further to the political right.
AEI had severe financial problems when DeMuth began his presidency. During the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations, AEI's revenues grew from $10 million to $18.9 million.See AEI Annual Reports, 1988–89 and 2000. Academic David M. Lampton writes that DeMuth was responsive to the financial power of "America's hard right".
The institute's publications Public Opinion and The AEI Economist were merged into The American Enterprise, edited by Karlyn Bowman from 1990 to 1995 and by Karl Zinsmeister from 1995 to 2006, when Glassman created The American.
AEI was closely tied to the George W. Bush administration.Arin, Kubilay Yado (2013): Think Tanks, the Brain Trusts of US Foreign Policy. Wiesbaden: VS Springer. More than 20 staff members served either in a Bush administration policy post or on one of the government's many panels and commissions, including Dick Cheney and John R. Bolton. In an address to the institute, Bush said "I admire AEI a lot—I'm sure you know that", Bush said. "After all, I have been consistently borrowing some of your best people." In 2002, Danielle Pletka joined AEI to promote the foreign policy department. AEI and several of its staff—including Michael Ledeen and Richard Perle—became associated with the start of the Iraq War. Bush used a February 2003 AEI dinner to advocate for a democratized Iraq, which he said would inspire the remainder of the Mideast. In 2006–07, AEI staff, including Frederick W. Kagan, provided a strategic framework for the 2007 surge in Iraq. The Bush administration also drew on AEI scholars Leon Kass, who was appointed as the first chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics and Norman J. Ornstein, who headed a campaign finance reform working group that helped draft the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.
Arthur C. Brooks (2008–2019) When DeMuth retired as president at the end of 2008, AEI's staff numbered 185, with 70 scholars and several dozen adjuncts, and revenues of $31.3 million. Arthur C. Brooks succeeded him as president at the start of the Late-2000s recession. In a 2009 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Brooks positioned AEI to be much more aggressive in responding to the policies of the Barack Obama administration. Under his leadership, AEI identified itself with "compassionate conservativism" and the maximisation of happiness. Politico said that Brooks "helped elevate [AEI] into a bastion of free-market orthodoxy and center-right policy wonkery during the Obama years", before leaving to become a "happiness expert" and self-help guru. In 2018, Brooks announced that he would step down effective July 1, 2019.
Termination of David Frum's residency On March 25, 2010, AEI resident fellow David Frum announced that his position at the organization had been "terminated." Following this announcement, media outlets speculated that Frum had been "forced out" for writing a post to his FrumForum blog called "Waterloo", in which he criticized the Republican Party's unwillingness to bargain with Democrats on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In the editorial, Frum claimed that his party's failure to reach a deal "led us to abject and irreversible defeat."
After his termination, Frum clarified that his article had been "welcomed and celebrated" by AEI President Arthur Brooks, and that he had been asked to leave because "these are hard times." Brooks had offered Frum the opportunity to write for AEI on a nonsalaried basis, but Frum declined. The following day, journalist Mike Allen published a conversation with Frum, in which Frum expressed a belief that his termination was the result of pressure from donors. According to Frum, "AEI represents the best of the conservative world... But the elite isn't leading any more... I think Arthur [Brooks] took no pleasure in this. I think he was embarrassed."
Robert Doar (2019–present) In January 2019, Robert Doar was selected by AEI's board of trustees to be AEI's 12th president, succeeding Arthur Brooks on July 1, 2019. In October 2023, Doar led an AEI delegation (including Kori Schake, Dan Blumenthal, Zack Cooper, and Nicholas Eberstadt, among others) to visit Taiwan to meet with President Tsai Ing-wen.
Personnel
As of 2026, AEI's officers include Robert Doar, Jason Bertsch, Kazuki Ko, Kori Schake, Yuval Levin, Michael R. Strain, and Matthew Continetti.
AEI has a Council of Academic Advisers, which includes Alan J. Auerbach, Eliot A. Cohen, Eugene Fama, Aaron Friedberg, Robert P. George, Eric A. Hanushek, Walter Russell Mead, Mark V. Pauly, R. Glenn Hubbard, Sam Peltzman, Harvey S. Rosen, Jeremy A. Rabkin, and Richard Zeckhauser. The Council of Academic Advisers selects the annual winner of the Irving Kristol Award.
Board of trustees AEI's board is chaired by Daniel A. D'Aniello. As of 2026, notable trustees include: Cliff Asness, hedge fund manager and the co-founder of AQR Capital Management Pete Coors, vice chairman of the board of Molson Coors Brewing Company Harlan Crow, chairman and CEO, Crow Holdings, the Trammell Crow family's investment company Ravenel B. Curry III, president, Eagle Capital Management Dick DeVos, president, Windquest Group Robert Doar, president, American Enterprise Institute Behdad Eghbali, managing partner and cofounder, Clearlake Capital Tully Friedman, chairman and CEO, Friedman Fleischer & Lowe Christopher Galvin, former CEO and chairman, Motorola Harvey Golub, retired chairman and CEO, American Express Company Frank Hanna III, CEO, Hanna Capital Raymond J. Harbert, executive chairman, Harbert Management Corporation Bill Haslam, former Governor of Tennessee Pat Neal, chairman of the executive committee, Neal Communities Ross Perot Jr., chairman, Hillwood Development Company Matthew K. Rose, executive chairman, BNSF Railway Edward B. Rust Jr., chairman and CEO, State Farm (former AEI chairman) Will Weatherford, managing partner, Weatherford Capital
Political stance and impact
AEI is a member of Atlas Network's group of free-market think tanks and is an associate member of the State Policy Network of conservative and libertarian think tanks.
In the 2000s, AEI was the most prominent think tank associated with American neoconservatism. Irving Kristol, widely considered to be one of the founding fathers of neoconservatism, was a senior fellow at AEI and the AEI issues an 'Irving Kristol Award' in his honour.Saunders, Frances Stonor: The Cultural Cold War The New Press, 1999. Paul Ryan has described the AEI as "one of the beachheads of the modern conservative movement".