Neoliberalism appeared in France at the end of the 1930s. Its development was facilitated by (1) the contestation of the liberal creed in the field of public policy (a consequence of World War I and of the Great Depression); and (2) the economic and political defeat of the Front Populaire, a left-wing government coalition that had failed to radically transform France's economic structures. At the beginning of 1938, in the view of the elites both classical liberalism and socialist planning had been discredited. In this context, a discourse seeking to reconcile not only opponents to the 1936 experiment but disillusioned socialists as well could find support. Faced with growing state intervention and the development of economic ideas that sought to enforce this tendency, neoliberalism seemed to offer an alternative. It promised the building of a liberal state protecting free enterprise and free competition and the retreat of the state away from the economy.

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 274