Perceiving the academic establishment to be arrayed on a spectrum from left-liberal to socialist, the Conservative government now turned for advice to individuals associated with the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute. Think tanks and external advisers became a fixture in public administration, cutting out academic economists and diminishing their authority. … Neoliberal “economism” increasingly dominated the public domain, a discourse of markets and liberty whose lack of intellectual credibility was no obstacle to its propagation and execution.

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 425