4 The Adam Smith Institute: The Free Market’s Praetorian Guard
The Adam Smith Institute (ASI) is one of the most recognisable think tanks in Britain. Established in 1977 by three St. Andrews University graduates—Madsen Pirie and brothers Stuart and Eamonn Butler— its name honours the bicentennial of The Wealth of Nations (1776), the Scottish heritage of its founders and the classical-liberal outlook they believed Britain desperately needed. Since then, the ASI can arguably be counted among the most famous and influential free market policy institutes in British history, without ever employing more than ten fulltime members of staff. After four decades, the heads of the Institute are still two of its founders, President Madsen Pirie and Director Eamonn Butler.1 Both Pirie and Butler are part of the Mont-Pèlerin Society (since 1976 and 1984 respectively, and the latter is also its Vice-President at the time of writing), a free market organisation counting among its former members Friedrich Hayek, Karl Popper, George Stigler, James Buchanan,
1Stuart
Butler left the ASI to join the Heritage Foundation in 1979, the most important think tank linked to the US Republican Party.
© The Author(s) 2019 M. González Hernando, British Think Tanks After the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, Palgrave Studies in Science, Knowledge and Policy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20370-2_4
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