Early neoliberalism’s core ideas emerged inside League of Nations institutions.

Evidence

It is important to emphasize that the main ideas of the Agenda of Liberalism were not originally worked out just at the WLC. The WLC was part of a large, transnational institutional landscape that was erected by and for the League of Nations after the First World War. The workshop itself took place at the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (IIIC), a transnational organization and League of Nations consultative body bringing together leading researchers and research institutions dealing with questions of global order and peace. Within the IIIC’s permanent International Studies Conference (ISC), the relation between state and economy in view of its global function was the central topic of the 1930s. The groundwork for the Agenda of Liberalism was prepared within the universe of the IIIC/ISC. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 366

Categorization

• XREF: Challenges the association of neoliberalism’s origins with the Mont Pelerin Society as sui generis; connects to Slobodian’s ‘globalists’ argument about League-era governance institutions as neoliberal prehistory. — connects to: Neoliberals rejected European integration because the League’s voluntary model had already failed — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 604; Neoliberalism’s core concepts formed in the 1930s through networked institutions — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 352; Early neoliberalism grew out of League of Nations institutional networks — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 403 (+4 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: the degree to which the League’s transnational-institutional fabric — not just anti-Keynes economics — was the actual seedbed of mid-century neoliberal thought.

Broader Connections

• Early neoliberalism grew out of League of Nations institutional networks #corroborates (1.00) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 403
• League of Nations fostered an early global social science network ahead of neoliberalism. #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 29
• Early neoliberalism emerged partly from a critique of laissez-faire and naturalist philosophies of history #expands (0.75) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 379