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This article offers an analysis of neoliberalism's diffusion in mainstream politics in democratic countries between 1945 and 1998, focusing on Europe and the United States. Political neoliberalism is defined as the historically specific expression in politics of a particularly anti-democratic and anti-welfarist strain of liberal thought. Using a novel summary index built from the 'manifestos data' I show that by the end of the 20th Century neoliberalism had become a political commonsense, though one expressed in different ways across regions and political contexts. Since American political parties have always been 'neoliberal' relative to their non-American peers, the most significant historical shift took root within Europe's leftist parties: by the end of the 20th century the European left ceased to exist as a historically meaningful political category. This marks a historical turn that is at least as significant as, and likely causally prior to, the spread of neoliberal policy. Using data on the rise of neoliberal policies from the Fraser Institute (a free market think tank), I offer evidence that the lefts' neoliberal turn since the 1970s—in particular, their embrace of the market as the rightful locus of political authority—was more important than the rise of a 'new right' for the emergence of neoliberal policies, particularly in non-Anglo European countries. The central argument is that due to a tendency to analyze neoliberalism in terms of policy rather than politics, the historical collapse of leftism remains an important missing link in our understanding of neoliberalism's institutionalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]