Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is a policy approach that favours free markets, open trade and capital flows, privatisation, deregulation and fiscal discipline. The state's role is to secure the conditions for markets to work, including sound money and enforceable contracts.
- Markets allocate resources more efficiently than governments.
- Trade and capital should flow freely across borders.
- Low inflation, balanced budgets and independent central banks provide stability.
The term was coined in the 1930s by economists seeking a new liberalism, and the Mont Pelerin Society, founded by Friedrich Hayek in 1947, kept the ideas alive. They became policy in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and later through the "Washington Consensus" of the IMF and World Bank. Today the word is used mostly by its critics.
Critics associate it with rising inequality, financial crises and weakened public services and unions. Supporters credit open markets with lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty.
No country or historical regime in our data has Neoliberalism as its closest ideology.
Neoliberalism is also the second-closest ideology for: Estonia.
Method: each ideology is placed at a typical position on the 12 axes, scored from 0 to 100 toward the first pole. Ranks compare it with the other 45 ideologies; matches are 100 minus the average distance across all axes. The positions are our own calibration, not taken from any third-party source.