Initially, Atlas and its few associated think tanks were marginal organizations. They had no chance of recognition from better-established producers and diffusors of knowledge like universities. Their strategy was to play up the position of the outcast and insist on their own singularity. Over time, however, Atlas gained centrality and legitimacy in the transnational neoliberal community, and think tanks became locally institutionalized. As a consequence, a significant evolution took place. Instead of scorning academia, Atlas and the think tanks aspired to and embraced academic legitimacy. This happened first through the co-optation of academics sympathetic to the cause as well as through think tank leaders acquiring academic credentials, usually a PhD in economics.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 603