In short order, his ideas took root. At the University of Chicago, Stigler opened the Center for the Study of the Economy and the State, which dedicated itself to pursuing the plan he outlined in his 1971 memo to achieve “decisive influence” over the conduct of government. Outside of Chicago, Stigler, his students, and those in their close orbit developed relationships with scientists, resulting in a variety of interlinked and coordinated research institutes spanning economics, politics, and even the biomedical sciences. These efforts were significant enough to draw the attention of Michel Foucault who, in his Birth of Biopolitics, not only mentions Stigler’s research by name, but also singles out the work of the American Enterprise Institute’s Center for Health Policy Research as an exemplary instance of the “permanent criticism of governmental policy” so characteristic of neoliberalism.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 156