Atlas incubated think tanks by identifying and financing local individuals

Evidence

Initially, Atlas fostered diffusion through practical “venturing” actions. Having identified individual foot soldiers, it worked to empower them by helping them materially and coaching them directly. Atlas then made sure to keep in contact, with a double objective—to stabilize the think tank locally and to tighten its integration into the transnational neoliberal community. When the Atlas team met motivated individuals, it was ready to finance exploratory trips. In 1988, it thus financed one trip to India and two to Ghana. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 572

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A single foundation seeded a third of all market-oriented think tanks; The Atlas Network scaled from fifteen think tanks to 457 across ninety-six countries. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 43; Atlas emerged from the IEA as a deliberate global franchising of think tanks — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 542 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• The Atlas Foundation seeded dozens of think tanks globally with small grants #expands (0.85) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 573
• Atlas Foundation exported the neoliberal think-tank model worldwide #expands (0.82) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1943
• The think tank originated as a deliberate instrument of intellectual engineering #corroborates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1910