Neoconservatism is a political philosophy that emerged in the United States of America, and which supports using American economic and military power to bring liberalism, democracy, and human rights to other countries. Consequently the term is chiefly applicable to certain Americans and their strong supporters. In economics, unlike traditionalist conservatives, neoconservatives are generally comfortable with a welfare state; and, while rhetorically supportive of free markets, they are willing to interfere for overriding social purposes.

The term neoconservative was used at one time as a criticism against proponents of American modern liberalism who had "moved to the right". Michael Harrington, a democratic socialist, coined the current sense of the term neoconservative in a 1973 Dissent magazine article concerning welfare policy. According to E. J. Dionne, the nascent neoconservatives were driven by "the notion that liberalism" had failed and "no longer knew what it was talking about." The term "neoconservative" was the subject of increased media coverage during the presidency of George W. Bush. with particular focus on a perceived neoconservative influence on American foreign policy, as part of the Bush Doctrine.

The first major neoconservative to embrace the term, Irving Kristol, was considered a founder of the neoconservative movement. Kristol wrote of his neoconservative views in the 1979 article "Confessions of a True, Self-Confessed 'Neoconservative.'" His ideas have been influential since the 1950s, when he co-founded and edited Encounter magazine. Another source was Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine from 1960 to 1995. By 1982 Podhoretz was calling himself a neoconservative, in a New York Times Magazine article titled "The Neoconservative Anguish over Reagan's Foreign Policy". Kristol's son, William Kristol, founded the neoconservative Project for the New American Century.