Liberal crisis machine: The Hewlett Foundation in the era of polycrisis philanthropy

This paper shows that the Hewlett Foundation, contra its legal status, its non-political self-concept and conventional scholarly claims to third-sector or technocratic neutrality, acts as a liberal ‘crisis machine’ to manage and moderate radical change, and to strengthen existing power distributions. This occurs through programmes that protect the US elite constitutional processes, promote post-neoliberalism, and address China’s geo-economic challenge. This provides a powerful example of how an under-researched liberal-progressive foundation’s power works and how technocratic-liberalism organizes ruling elites (including extreme and far-right Trumpists) who shape and perpetuate the terrain of political polarization, attacks on democracy and the structural inequities of neoliberalism. The Hewlett Foundation’s ‘performative radicalism’ in managing crises is rooted in its centrality within corporate elite networks and in the mindsets and imperatives of US global hegemony. Using Gramscian concepts of hegemony, organic crisis and passive revolution, the paper presents the Hewlett Foundation as an architect-funder of elite knowledge networks spanning foundations, think tanks, academia and the state. These networks consciously organize elite consensus and disorganize or downplay mass movements’ roles in driving radical change.