Neoliberalism is a term used primarily to refer to a theory of political economy associated with the dominant economic paradigm extensively applied since the early 1980s onward and secondly used as a shorthand name for the theory of neoliberal institutionalism in international relations (IR) and security studies. As such the term neoliberalism which is widely used throughout social sciences has gained two prominent but differing usages in the growing literature of security studies, not to be confused with each other.
As a body of ideas neoliberalism is rooted in the philosophical and economic ideas of a group of influential intellectuals gathered under the so-called Mont Pelerin Society in 1947, from whom Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman are the most noted in articulating free market economic policies as the basis for a free and open society. As such neoliberal ideas rooted in the principles of neoclassical.
