The MPS and Heritage favored contrasting strategies for spreading neoliberal influence

Evidence

Although Feulner reported that MPS was the inspiration for the Philadelphia Society, it was the IEA’s tactical and organizational model that Feulner embraced for the Heritage Foundation. In Hayek’s vision, MPS was a long-term project: a loose but focused network of individuals dedicated to the development and debate of neoliberal ideas and their advancement in different spheres of society, including academe, the media and the private sector, as well as government. Despite internal disagreements about the extent to which MPS should intervene in a more public way in policy debates, the Society has remained a relatively low-profile organization, albeit with a considerable number of high-profile members. Instead of promoting its agenda via direct participation in the political process, MPS opts for a patient strategy of continually reexamining and renewing neoliberalism in thought and practice (Plehwe, Walpen, and Neunhoffer 2006). … The Heritage Foundation, on the other hand, seeks a more immediate form of influence, paying paramount attention to the marketing of its ideas, chiefly to members of the media in a position to disseminate them, and to public officials, for whom Heritage prepares concise and unsophisticated summaries of key issues that can be digested en route to congressional votes-what Feulner refers to as the organization’s “pioneering use of shorter policy papers for busy policy makers” (Feulner 2002, 73). — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1806

Categorization

• XREF: Contrasts the MPS’s patient intellectual project with the IEA/Heritage model of direct policy influence — echoes the tension in Milgrom’s work on institutions versus practitioner knowledge. — connects to: MPS efficacy lay in internal debate preceding unified public mobilization — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 449; The MPS represented the first peacetime-directed mobilization of the neoliberal thought collective. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 99; Ordoliberal ideas reached the MPS through Swiss journalistic and academic intermediaries. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 995
• DEFINE: Sharpens what MPS actually is as an organization — a low-profile ideas network rather than a political lobby — against the common conflation of MPS with Heritage-style think tanks.