ABSTRACT
This book has explored the political rationality of neoliberalism as it has been practised within a British context. Clearly, however, neoliberalism has never been just a British phenomenon. As discussed in the introduction, some of the earliest academic attempts to formalize this shared way of thinking and to address questions related to government were international in nature. Before the Second World War, in 1938, the Colloque Walter Lippmann brought together American, British, French and German liberals to discuss how liberalism might be re-engineered and reconceptualized in the face of a wave of Keynesian and progressive liberal economic policies. Likewise, after the war, Hayek was instrumental in bringing together a similar group of intellectuals, known as the Mont Pèlerin Society, to address the same issues. Anthony Fisher, one of the British members of this group, later founded the IEA, and its two directors, Arthur Seldon and Ralph Harris, were long-time members of Mont Pèlerin. Given that many governments were utilizing progressive economic policies in the 1930s to tackle depression and high unemployment, it is not surprising that there was an equally international flavour to those that wanted to problematize this approach to governing the economy.
