Moreover, the relationship between the MPS and business conservatives suggests the important and often unrecognized role that international thinkers played in the rise of the American right. The conservative movement in the United States is often thought to reflect a distinctly American set of individualistic values and a uniquely American antipathy to powerful central governments. But the history of the MPS and its interactions with the business right indicates that the ascendance of free market ideology cannot be understood solely as an American phenomenon, for it grew in tandem with the development of an international community of economists, political scientists, and other academics committed to the vision of dismantling the welfare state and reconfiguring society to allow the market greater freedom.

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 1443