Why Neoliberals Build Think Tanks

Neoliberalism, strictly understood, is an ideological tradition that emerged in the interwar period and remained intellectually marginal until, in the 1980s, it achieved something approaching hegemony.

One important feature of the neoliberal tradition is that it was always organised as a movement. Neoliberalism was (and remains) a highly activist project pursued by a network of intellectuals whose express aim was to etch their ideas into ruling-class consciousness. Elites were its privileged target, ideas its weapon of choice.

From the start, the neoliberal movement had a high degree of what I would call movement consciousness, that is, a clear assessment of its own ideological position within the academic, political, and media landscape. What’s more, the neoliberal project was organised around a distinct knowledge strategy, a philosophy of social change that reserved a crucial role not just for ideas themselves but for the institutions, organisations, and networks responsible for disseminating them.

Crucially, this strategy required its own knowledge ecology, one not subject to the pressures of university research. Over time, however, the neoliberals’ wariness of the university sector morphed into active hostility as their own knowledge structure came into tension with that of higher education.

In this post and the next, I discuss the neoliberal politics of knowledge. I explore, here, why neoliberals build their own knowledge spaces and, in a future post, why they so often end up seeking to destroy universities.

Markets, Knowledge, Ideas

It is well known that neoliberalism is much more than a free-market creed. Though an economic philosophy of market order, free enterprise, and competition certainly forms its beating heart, neoliberal ideology has always had a remarkably broad intellectual remit. Over its hundred-year history, its thinkers have formulated more or less systematic philosophies of law, morality, history, crime, family life, race and racism, and many other themes besides. One key building block of neoliberal ideology, however, is a formal theory of knowledge.

This theory, key to the work of early neoliberals like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, speaks to what we may call epistemic economy, that is, the production, distribution, and consumption of knowledge. It does so in two ways.

First, this theory addresses what Hayek called the use of knowledge in society. It teaches that whereas humans are inherently incapable of accurately computing large amounts of dispersed information because the mind’s processing power is limited, free markets are, in essence, knowledge processing systems that do not share those limits. For Hayek, markets are much better than any individual or government at marshalling in an efficient manner all the epistemic resources latent in the population. This means that the free-market order is not just materially but epistemically superior to any planned order.

Second, it speaks to the political power of ideas. Riffing off his intellectual rival John Maynard Keynes, Hayek argued that ideas have the ability to shape society in the long run: As per the famous Keynes quote, ‘the world is ruled by little else.’ Hayek made this adage the founding principle of his theory of social change. If you want to change society, the argument went, you have to win the war of ideas. This philosophy quickly became an organising principle of the neoliberal movement and the Keynes quote became an article of faith of its think tanks and intellectuals: The IEA went so far as to frame it and display it prominently in their London office.

The Neoliberal Knowledge Ecosystem

Though theirs was a notably crude theory of social change, it proved an effective foundation for the neoliberals’ political project. Embarking on a long-term campaign of ideological warfare, they built themselves a comprehensive ecosystem of think tanks, institutes, and publishing presses, all oriented towards articulating and disseminating their economic and social philosophy.

At the heart of this ecosystem sat the Mont Pèlerin Society, established in 1947 by Hayek, around which was erected a network of free-market think tanks by men like Anthony Fisher. Though it began small, from the 1980s onward the neoliberal think-tank industry grew into a sprawling, globe-spanning network of many hundreds of think tanks and research institutes. These were all rooted in the same theory of social change, a topic they addressed routinely and systematically. (The concept of the Overton Window was developed by, and named after, a neoliberal think tanker.)

The neoliberal knowledge ecosystem had a number of defining features. First, it was vertically integrated, meaning that neoliberal think tanks had direct control of every step of the ideological production process: They decided what books, reports, and papers to commission and also kept the editing, production, printing, and dissemination in-house. This gave them control of their own agenda even as it shielded their ideas from censure or critique, through peer review or otherwise, by the academic establishment they knew to be predominantly hostile to their vision.

Second, it was firmly elitist in orientation: It chiefly targeted the intellectual and journalistic classes, motivated by the belief that these constitute the major agents of historical change. Some neoliberals, like Milton Friedman, also had a more popular appeal and believed in the direct persuasion of the masses, for instance through traditional print or broadcasting media. They were few and far between, however: Rhetorically gifted neoliberals have typically been in short supply. Limited resources, meanwhile, prevented most think tanks from widening their focus beyond small-scale publishing efforts.

Third, it was largely funded by corporate donors, private funding bodies, and subscription models. In later years, when the first generation of think tanks had made a name for themselves, the ecosystem became partly self-funding, with umbrella organizations like the Atlas Network (another Antony Fisher initiative) distributing money, advice, and support to smaller think tanks and institutes.

Fourth, it was never insular. Over the course of its history, the neoliberal knowledge ecosystem established close connections with other ideological movements, especially on the conservative right. The neoliberal movement was closely allied with the National Review, for instance: William F. Buckley Jr. was a member of the MPS and commissioned many prominent neoliberals to write for his journal. Some neoliberal think tanks had links to eugenics networks, while others worked closely with conservative institutes on the anti-abortion right. From the 1990s onwards, the neoliberal movement began to forge lasting links with organised climate change denial (a topic I’ll be addressing in future posts).

The Contradictions of Neoliberal Knowledge

At a deeper level, however, the neoliberal politics of knowledge is structured around a glaring contradiction. Though philosophically committed to the principle that free competition spontaneously selects out the best products, practices, and indeed knowledges, the neoliberal movement laboured carefully to insulate its own knowledge ecosystem from competitive pressures. Rather than submit their ideas to compete in the marketplace of ideas, the neoliberals set their own intellectual agenda, curated their own publications, and jealously guarded their knowledge spaces from outside interference.

Indeed, to the neoliberals the appeal of think tanks lay in their independence and nimbleness: Their ability to produce and distribute ideas was not restricted by the cumbersome and time-consuming processes that traditionally accompany academic research, such as peer review, competitive funding, and hiring committees. While academic knowledge moves slowly, the neoliberals prized agility. While scholarly research aims for new findings, they valued repetition. While universities nurture free inquiry, they saw their ideas as weapons in an enduring battle for influence.

The irony, then, is that their project to impose competition onto society in the name of liberty was itself free from either. Although they called for much of the social order to be subjected to market discipline, they jealously guarded their own knowledge ecology not just from external control but from competitive pressure.

If this seems at first glance to signal rank hypocrisy, in fact things are little more complicated. As I’ll discuss in my next post, the neoliberals actually had not only a theory for why their own philosophy wasn’t getting much traction in the universities but also a plan for what to do about it.