The Mont Pèlerin Society pioneered a novel hierarchy for incubating political theory and action.

Evidence

I would suggest that the Mont Pèlerin Society evolved into an exceptionally successful structure for the incubation of integrated political theory and political action outside of the more conventional structures of academic disciplines and political parties in the second half of the twentieth century. Perhaps, one day, it will come to be studied as something new in the sociology of knowledge in the twentieth century. It was a novel framework that served to confine any tendencies to intellectual dissolution, holding the three subguilds in productive tension. Hayek in 1946 initially promoted a vision of the MPS as “something halfway between a scholarly association and a political society,” but it evolved into something much more than that. The main reason the MPS should serve as our talisman in tracking neoliberalism is because it exists as part of a rather special structure of intellectual discourse, perhaps unprecedented in the 1940s, one I would venture to propose to think of as a “Russian doll” approach to the integration of research and praxis in the modern world. The project was to produce a functional hierarchical elite of regimented political intellectuals … Henceforth, I will use the term “thought collective” to refer to this multilevel, multiphase, multisector approach to the building of political capacity to incubate, critique, and promulgate ideas. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 122

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Fleck’s original ‘thought collective’ concept and the notion of invisible colleges from the sociology of knowledge (e.g., Crane’s work), which the reader’s advanced thought-collective research overlaps with. — connects to: The Haberler method presaged the Mont Pèlerin Society structure — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 247; The Mont Pèlerin Society deliberately networked academia, media, business, and politics from its founding. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 128; Hayek founded the Mont Pèlerin Society believing ideas, not interests, drive change — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 546 (+1 more)
• DEFINE: Introduces Mirowski’s own working definition of ‘thought collective’ as a multilevel, multiphase approach to political capacity building.

Broader Connections

• The Mont Pèlerin Society deliberately networked academia, media, business, and politics from its founding. #expands (0.90) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 128
• Hayek founded the Mont Pèlerin Society believing ideas, not interests, drive change #expands (0.75) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 546