Neoliberalism is fast becoming the dominant ideology of our age, yet politicians, businessmen and academics rarely identify themselves with it and even political forces critical of it continue to carry out neoliberal policies around the globe. How can we make sense of this paradox? Who actually are "the neoliberals"?
This is the first explanation of neoliberal hegemony, which systematically considers and analyzes the networks and organizations of around 1.000 self conscious neoliberal intellectuals organized in the Mont Pelerin Society.
This book challenges simplistic understandings of neoliberalism. It underlines the variety of neoliberal schools of thought, the various approaches of its proponents in the fight for hegemony in research and policy development, political and communication efforts, and the well funded, well coordinated, and highly effective new types of knowledge organizations generated by the neoliberal movement: partisan think tanks.
It also closes an important gap in the growing literature on "private authority', presenting new perspectives on transnational civil society formation processes.
This fascinating new book will be of great interest to students of international relations, political economy, globalization and politics.

Neoliberalism is fast becoming the dominant ideology of our age, yet politicians, businessmen and academics rarely identify themselves with it and even political forces critical of it continue to carry out neoliberal policies around the globe. How can we make sense of this paradox? Who actually are "the neoliberals"? This is the first explanation of neoliberal hegemony, which systematically considers and analyzes the networks and organizations of around 1.000 self conscious neoliberal intellectuals organized in the Mont Pelerin Society. This book challenges simplistic understandings of neoliberalism. It underlines the variety of neoliberal schools of thought, the various approaches of its proponents in the fight for hegemony in research and policy development, political and communication efforts, and the well funded, well coordinated, and highly effective new types of knowledge organizations generated by the neoliberal movement: partisan think tanks. It also closes an important gap in the growing literature on "private authority'', presenting new perspectives on transnational civil society formation processes. This fascinating new book will be of great interest to students of international relations, political economy, globalization and politics.

Although modern neoliberalism was born at the "Colloque Walter Lippmann" in 1938, it only came into its own with the founding of the Mont Pelerin Society, a partisan "thought collective," in Vevey, Switzerland, in 1947. Its original membership was made up of transnational economists and intellectuals, including Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Karl Popper, Michael Polanyi, and Luigi Einaudi. From this small beginning, their ideas spread throughout the world, fostering, among other things, the political platforms of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and the Washington Consensus. The Road from Mont Pelerin presents the key debates and conflicts that occurred among neoliberal scholars and their political and corporate allies regarding trade unions, development economics, antitrust policies, and the influence of philanthropy. The book captures the depth and complexity of the neoliberal "thought collective" while examining the numerous ways that neoliberal discourse has come to shape the global economy. "The Road from Mont Pelerin is indispensable for anyone wishing to gain an understanding of neoliberalism, whether as an end in itself or as a means for constructing alternative, non-neoliberal futures." -Daniel Kinderman, Critical Policy Studies "If you work on post-war history of economics, there is almost no reason not to read this book." -Ross B. Emmett, Journal of the History of Economic Thought