Think tanks are not “member” but “partner” organizations; together they make up a broad transnational network with Atlas as the hub. Atlas was created to institutionalize the process of helping start up new think tanks. And it has played that role, being a catalyst through the years for the setting up and the stabilization of many such organizations. More than half of the think tanks are located in North America and Europe but, as Figure 10.2 shows, the network has a global presence. We identify two distinct but complementary periods in the development of Atlas. During the fledgling years (1981 to 1995), the survival and legitimacy of the organization depended on its capacity to expand the network. The period of expansion and maturity started in earnest in the mid-1990s (1996–2015). Atlas then became an attractor organization and partner organizations needed it more than it needed them.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 546