Jenn‘s blogspheric debut reminded me of something that’s puzzled me for a while. (For the rest of this post, please keep in mind that all the folks I mention maintain personal websites that in no way carry the imprimatur of their employers.) Why the huge disparity in blog-distribution among the public policy tanks? You’d think young tank staffers would be natural bloggers—interested in politics and ideas, but also unlikely to have a large number of other regular outlets for their opinion writing.

Now, Cato does have a huge number of staffers or former-staffers who blog (or, in the case of Brink Lindsey, used to). By my count, there are at least 9 bloggers currently on staff there. Jenn’s at Urban. Hannah Metchis is at CEI, Max Sawicky is at the Economic Policy Institute, there’s the RPPI group blog, and our old friend John Lott of the American Enterprise Institute now has one one too.

But that’s all I can think of offhand. No Brookings bloggers, none from Heritage or IPS or the New America Foundation as far as I know. Of course, they might be out there, but I feel like someone I know would’ve noticed ’em by now if they were. So what’s up with that? Any tankers out there from one of these fine places have any theories?

My best guess is that it’s for more or less the same reason that the blogosphere as a whole leans libertarian, viz., we’re probably more temperamentally inclined toward the whole “individual voice in the wilderness”image, while folks on the left are more prone to organized group activism. Conservatives… well, I don’t know: they tend not to be “early adopters” as a rule, but it’s been a while now, hasn’t it?