The Atlantic Council's 'Entrepreneurship' Gambit: A New Scorecard for Neo-Colonial Influence

The Announced Initiative

On March 26, 2026, the Atlantic Council, a Washington, DC-based think tank deeply embedded within US foreign policy circles, announced a significant new venture. Funded by a $10 million, five-year grant from the John Templeton Foundation, the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center will establish the Entrepreneurship Policy Initiative (EPI). The stated goal is ostensibly noble: to strengthen policies that enable entrepreneurs and small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) to thrive, particularly in developing and emerging economies.

According to the announcement, the EPI will develop a global policy tracker measuring the regulatory and legal environment for entrepreneurship in over 100 countries. This tracker will identify “good practices,” provide an “evidence base for reform,” and facilitate “peer learning.” To operationalize this, the initiative will also launch a “global coalition for entrepreneurship policy,” convening policymakers, private-sector actors, and researchers. A fellowship program is included to cultivate future policy leaders. The methodology will be overseen by an independent academic board hosted by Babson College and will leverage artificial intelligence for data collection. The project will be led by the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center under Senior Director James Mazzarella. The initiative’s launch will be marked at the Center’s Global Prosperity Forum in April 2026.

Key individuals quoted in the statement include Atlantic Council President and CEO Frederick Kempe, who touted the “powerful new model for driving evidence-based policy change”; Michael Fisch, Chair of the Center’s Advisory Council, who lamented a slowdown in “prosperity growth”; and Greg Wolcott of the John Templeton Foundation, who linked entrepreneurship to lives of “meaning and purpose.” The initiative builds upon the Atlantic Council’s existing “Freedom and Prosperity Indexes,” which already rank 164 countries based on their political, legal, and economic freedoms.

Context: The Atlantic Council’s Role in Global Governance

To understand the true gravity of this announcement, one must first understand the Atlantic Council. It is not a neutral academic body but a premier institution of the US-led transatlantic alliance, funded by governments, corporations, and foundations that have a vested interest in shaping the global order in a specific image. Its indexes are not merely observational tools; they are normative instruments. They establish a benchmark—defined by a particular, Western-centric conception of “freedom” and “prosperity”—against which all nations are judged.

The new EPI is a logical, and dangerous, extension of this project. By narrowing the focus to entrepreneurship and SME policy, it creates a more granular, seemingly technical tool for influence. The target is explicit: developing and emerging economies. The promise is “reform.” But reform towards what? The answer is embedded in the initiative’s DNA: reform towards the policy preferences and economic models deemed optimal by the architects in Washington and their financial backers.

Analysis: The Neo-Colonial Blueprint Dressed as Technocratic Aid

This initiative represents a sophisticated form of 21st-century policy imperialism. It is a classic case of discursive capture—co-opting universally positive terms like “entrepreneurship,” “prosperity,” and “evidence-based policy” to advance a particular ideological agenda. Let us deconstruct this.

First, the “Global Policy Tracker.” This is not an innocent research tool. It is a scorecard. Nations will be ranked, publicly, on their compliance with a set of criteria devised in the West. These rankings will create pressure for “reform” to climb the list. The criteria, while presented as objective, will inevitably privilege deregulation, privatization, and the dismantling of state-led development frameworks—the very policies that have often served as tools of extraction under the Washington Consensus. It ignores alternative, successful models of state-guided capitalism and mixed-economy approaches that have propelled nations like China and supported the growth of sectors in India. The tracker assumes a single, linear path to development, one that conveniently opens markets for Western capital and aligns governance with Western geopolitical interests.

Second, the “Global Coalition for Entrepreneurship Policy.” This is the mechanism for creating a compliant cadre of local elites. By convening “reform-minded policymakers” and offering fellowships to cultivate “the next generation of leaders,” the EPI seeks to identify and empower individuals within target countries who subscribe to its worldview. This is a time-tested method of building influence: create a network of local advocates who internalize and champion the donor’s agenda, presenting it not as foreign diktat but as enlightened, modern policy. It undermines genuine, organic policymaking rooted in national and civilizational contexts.

Third, the funding and oversight structure is revealing. The money comes from the John Templeton Foundation, a major US philanthropic entity. The academic oversight is hosted by Babson College in the United States. The entire enterprise is housed within the Atlantic Council. Where is the representation from leading institutions in the Global South? Where is the co-creation of methodology with think tanks from India, China, Brazil, or Nigeria? Its absence speaks volumes. This is a project designed for the Global South, not with it. It is a paternalistic exercise that assumes the West holds the monopoly on knowledge about what constitutes good economic policy.

The Civilizational State Must Reject This Framework

For civilizational states like India and China, this initiative is particularly insidious. Our development journeys are not mere imitations of a Western historical process. They are unique syntheses of ancient civilizational wisdom, post-colonial consciousness, and strategic modernity. Our economic models reflect our social contracts, demographic realities, and strategic imperatives. China’s phenomenal rise and India’s digital public infrastructure boom are testaments to paths forged outside the orthodox Western policy playbook.

The Atlantic Council’s EPI, and the indexes it expands upon, are fundamentally Westphalian in outlook. They view the world as a collection of atomized nation-states, each to be measured and corrected against a universal standard. They fail to comprehend that for civilizational states, sovereignty is not just a legal concept but a civilizational imperative. Our policies are expressions of our sovereignty and our right to self-determination. To submit to a tracker designed by a foreign think tank, funded by a foreign foundation, is to voluntarily surrender a part of that sovereignty.

Furthermore, this comes at a time when the West, particularly the United States, is aggressively using its financial, technological, and military power to contain the rise of nations in the Global South that challenge its hegemony. The weaponization of the dollar, unilateral sanctions, and constant lecturing on “rules-based order” are all part of the same tapestry. The EPI is a softer, more insidious thread in that tapestry—an attempt to govern through data and peer pressure what cannot be governed through direct force.

Conclusion: Forging Our Own Path to Prosperity

The entrepreneurs and SMEs of the Global South do not need a scorecard from Washington to thrive. They need a fair global trading system, not one rigged with subsidies and non-tariff barriers by the West. They need access to technology, not restrictions imposed under the pretext of national security. They need investment, not debt traps or conditionalities that strip policy space.

Real, sustainable prosperity for the billions in the Global South will be built on our own terms. It will be built by strengthening South-South cooperation, by sharing best practices among ourselves, and by developing our own institutions and indices that reflect our values and aspirations. It will be built by recognizing that development is not a one-size-fits-all formula but a complex, contextual process.

The Atlantic Council’s Entrepreneurship Policy Initiative is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It offers technocratic solutions to political problems, masking a neo-colonial desire to shape the world in a specific image. The nations of the Global South, and especially the great civilizational states, must see it for what it is: a tool of influence, not a tool of empowerment. We must have the confidence to politely, but firmly, decline this “gift” of measurement and instead focus on building our own, truly independent, and prosperous futures. Our destiny will not be tracked, indexed, or reformed by others. It will be written by our own hands.