Think tanks, defined as organizations that produce policy research for political purposes (McGann, 2007; Medvetz, 2008),are an increasingly ubiquitous type of policy actor world-wide. In Sweden, the last 20 years’ sharp increase in think tanknumbers (Åberg, Einarsson, & Reuter, 2019) has coincided with the decline of the traditional Swedish corporatist modelbased on the intimate involvement of the so-called ‘popular movements’ in policy-making (Lundberg, 2014; Micheletti,1995). Contrary to the large, mass-membership based and democratically organized movement organizations, think tanksare small, professionalized, expert-based, and seldom represent any larger membership base. Their increasingly important role as the ideological greenhouses in Swedish civil society might, therefore, be interpreted as an indication of anincreasingly elitist and professionalized character of the latter. But what is a think tank? The article explores how a sharedunderstanding of what constitutes a think tank is constructed by think-tankers themselves. In the study, interviewed thinktank executives and top-level staff reflect upon their own organizations’ missions and place in the Swedish policy system.