Organizational power struggles shaped which factions of the Mont Pèlerin network rose

Evidence

A vicious circle emerged: Hunold’s contentious behavior led him to be stripped of administrative powers, and his diminished authority in turn provoked further resentment and rage. The problem was conspicuous at the society’s 1959 meeting in Oxford. Antony Fisher of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) hosted the event, and Hunold was appalled to learn that the IEA was in charge of all the arrangements that he had typically managed in previous years. He attached great signifi cance to a letter from the IEA insinuating that there was no need for him to bring his customary two assistants to the meeting, and he concluded that IEA affi liates were plotting to replace him as the society’s secretary. After the meeting he wrote an irate letter to the directors of the society in which he complained that the IEA had stolen his prerogatives “like a thief at night,” leveraged the Mont Pèlerin Society to produce “propaganda” for itself, and engaged in a “conspiracy” to replace him with the IEA affi liate and nonmember Ralph Harris. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 335

Categorization

• XREF: The IEA (Antony Fisher’s think tank) displacing Hunold prefigures the institutionalization of neoliberal policy advocacy — echoes the scholar-practitioner tension in the wider neoliberal network literature. — connects to: Founding Mont Pèlerin members became alienated by the society’s later trajectory — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 562; Bitter internal factionalism nearly destroyed the Mont Pèlerin Society. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 345; The Mont Pèlerin Society’s growth threatened its philosophical unity — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 325 (+2 more)