During the 1980s conservative U.S. policies were shaped by the prior work of a well-funded network of private policy-planning organizations, notably the American Enterprise Institute. During the 1970s the AEI became a favored recipient of policy-oriented business funding, recruited prominent neo-conservative intellectuals, and reformulated conservative ideology to make critics of capitalism appear undemocratic. It is argued that widespread business support for conservative policy organizations like the AEI were consistent with capitalist drives to attack labor, regulation, and social welfare programs in the specific context of the economic crisis of the 1970s.
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