Ordoliberalism is often recognized as a powerful ideational source during the Euro crisis; however, there is no pure ordoliberal vision of European integration, and ordoliberal ideas have been used to support both Eurosceptical and Europeanist positions during the crisis. This article reconstructs the ordoliberal theoretical and political debate on European integration and argues that there exist two ordoliberal paradigms of European integration: one bottom-up, whereby the commitment to liberal economic policies at the national level is the precondition for a (...) liberal international order; the other top-down, whereby a liberal international order can help the establishment of a liberal order at the national level. The article compares two ordoliberal visions of the international order: Wilhelm Röpke’s ‘liberalism from below’ (which follows the bottom-up logic) and Viktor Vanberg’s ‘competitive federalism’ (which follows the top-down logic). Then, it explores the ordoliberal political debate on two episodes of the European integration process – the Maastricht Treaty and the Euro crisis – to argue that the bottom-up and the top-down logics underpinned, respectively, Eurosceptical and Europeanist arguments. (shrink)

In the light of several ongoing antitrust investigations in the E.U. and the U.S., the following research paper analyzes whether ‘big tech’ – same as the big banks – need special regulatory (and economic -political) attention and if so, how an updated form of regulatory policy for the digital era could look like. It does so by utilizing – and reviving – the normative and business -ethical ideals of German ‘neoliberalism’, also known as (classical) ordoliberalism. Especially, Walter Eucken’s work (...) has the potential to inform and enrich the current debate concerning the regulation of big tech. The main goal of the paper is to outline a potentially new regulatory framework – one that combines (and revises) Eucken’s ordoliberalism with the competition policy of the European Union. (shrink)

Research background: To a limited extent, modern researchers are interested in ordoliberalism, as a theory of the socio-economic system, which is confirmed by the results of the bibliometric analysis. In conducted studies, the assumptions of ordoliberalism are used partially, for example, for research on: the role of the state in the economy, the antitrust law, the theoretical assumptions of the SME, the determinants of German economic policy after World War II. Purpose of the article: The aim of this (...) article is to present the possibilities offered by the ordoliberal theory that predispose it to determine a socio-economic order which makes it possible to tackle the dysfunctions and crises that afflict today’s economy. Methods: The research methodology involves a critical analysis of the works of the most essential representatives of ordoliberal thought, particularly Walter Eucken and others, from the perspective of the above-mentioned purpose of the study. This requires examining German-, Polish- and English-language publications by authors recognised as representatives of mainstream ordoliberalism. Findings & Value added: As a result of the conducted analysis, the hypothesis about the existence of the elements of ordoliberal theory that allow it to respond to the challenges of the modern world, including economic, social, environmental and climate crises and pandemic threats has been confirmed. Research of this kind implies a return of thinking in terms of economic order, and thus contributes to the theories that seek to overcome the crisis in both the real economy and the theory of economics. (shrink)

This article examines the biopolitical dimension in ordoliberal thought using Wilhelm Röpke and Alexander Rüstow as exemplary figures of this tradition. Based on an explication of various biopolitical themes that can be extracted from Foucault’s writings and lectures the article argues that these biopolitical themes, although rarely touched on in Foucault’s lectures on ordoliberal governmentality, nevertheless constitute an integral aspect of the thought of Röpke and Rüstow. From the regulation of the population through the strategic lever of the family to (...) the organicist concerns over the health of the social body, biopolitical themes pervade the socio-economic theories of ordoliberalism. The article suggests that critical evaluations of the ordoliberal approach to political economy, which has been gaining ground again in the aftermath of the financial crisis, should take into account the biopolitical–and rather illiberal–dimension of this approach as well. (shrink)

The scientific aim of the paper is to juxtapose the views on economic order developed by the leading representatives of two schools of liberal thinking – German ordoliberal Walter Eucken and the Austrian economist Friedrich August von Hayek. The first scholar opted for deliberately constructed competitive economic order, the second one advocates for allowing the social institutions to emerge and evolve spontaneously. The analysis proves the similarity of both theories in regard to the significance of principles of an economic order (...) and the importance of competition for maintaining individual freedom. On the other hand some differences in the areas of sources of rules, institutional change, and the role of the state, induce their complementarity. Developing an intellectual basis for economic policy requires an eclectic approach combining two analysed perspectives. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article shows how Hayek’s understanding of ‘unlimited democracy’ was influenced by the work of Carl Schmitt. It goes on to make the case that ordoliberal ideas informed his suggestions for limiting democracy, made in response to Schmitt’s work. A number of authors have drawn attention to the influence of Schmitt on Hayek’s thought. Similarly, the ordoliberal relationship has been explored. However, these two influences must be read alongside each other in order to arrive at a full understanding of Hayek’s (...) deep ambivalence towards democracy and how that developed from the 1930s through to the 1970s. Finally, the article makes the case that the decisive influence on Hayek’s later authoritarian turn was not the work of Schmitt, as certain authors have argued, but ordoliberal interpretations of dictatorship. It also argues that Hayek’s model constitution is informed by fundamental ordoliberal concerns. (shrink)

National Artificial Intelligence (AI) strategies articulate imaginaries of the integration of AI into society and envision the governing of AI research, development and applications accordingly. To integrate these central aspects of national AI strategies under one coherent perspective, this paper presented an analysis of Germany’s strategy ‘AI made in Germany’ through the conceptual lens of ordoliberal political rationality. The first part of the paper analyses how the guiding vision of a human-centric AI not only adheres to ethical and legal principles (...) consistent with Germany’s liberal democratic constitutional system but also addresses the risks and promises inherent to the ordoliberal problematization of freedom. Second, it is scrutinized how the strategy cultivates the fear of not achieving technological sovereignty in the AI sector. Thereby, it frames the global AI race as a race of competing (national) approaches to governing AI and articulates an ordoliberal approach to governing AI (the ‘third way’), according to which government has to operate between the twin dangers of governing too much and not governing enough. Third, the paper analyses how this ordoliberal proportionality of governing structures Germany’s Science Technology & Innovation Policy. It is shown that the corresponding risk-based approach of regulating AI constitutes a security apparatus as it produces an assessment of fears: weighting the fear of the failure to innovate with the fear of the ramifications of innovation. Finally, two lines of critical engagement based on this analysis are conducted. (shrink)

The past few years have seen the opening of several antitrust investigations against some of the most dominant and powerful companies in the world—e.g., the U.S. Department of Justice, numerous states, and the Federal Trade Commission have sued Google, Facebook, and Amazon, and the E.U. has launched additional proceedings against Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. This paper looks at the latest trends and developments in the E.U. and the USA and analyzes the different regulatory approaches taken from a distinct business (...) ethics, that is, ordoliberal perspective. The paper aims to derive ordoliberal-inspired antitrust principles and apply them to the current antitrust proceedings and investigations, thereby assessing their strengths and weaknesses. It also aims at developing ordoliberal-inspired reform proposals which might help to strengthen and “harden” modern-day antitrust regimes. (shrink)

The E.U. is shortly before implementing the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which aims to regulate digital markets and (ideally) rein in the power of big tech gatekeepers. Several researchers claim that this proposal – and especially its goal to ensure the contestability and fairness of digital markets – is ordoliberal in nature, yet what is missing in the academic literature is a closer look at the parallels (and differences) between the E.U.’s competition policy (and the DMA) and ordoliberalism. This (...) paper tries to close the gap and help answer the question of whether the DMA is indeed standing in an ordoliberal tradition. Furthermore, it evaluates the Act’s institutional strengths and weaknesses – as seen from an ordoliberal perspective – and points out potential ways to strengthen E.U. competition policy (and the DMA) and bring it closer to the ordoliberal ideal. (shrink)

A Political Economy of Power is a comprehensive and contextualized account of ordoliberalism in English. It eliminates a long-standing deficit in the historiography of economics. The book has five...

A Political Economy of Power is a comprehensive and contextualized account of ordoliberalism in English. It eliminates a long-standing deficit in the historiography of economics. The book has five...

Within the Anglo-American world, economic liberalism is generally viewed as having only one progenitor—Adam Smith—and one offspring—neoliberalism. But it actually has two. The work of G. W. F. Hegel was also very influential on the development of economic liberalism, at least in the German-speaking world, and the most powerful contemporary instantiation of economic liberalism within that world is not neoliberlaism, but ordoliberalism, although this is generally unknown and certainly unacknowledged outside of Continental Europe. Accordingly, what I am going to (...) be doing in this piece is trying to bring ordoliberalism more directly into the light—I will argue that by comparing and contrasting the views of Smith and Hegel or at least between how Smith and Hegel tend to be currently (mis)understood, we can better understand both the roots and the nature of these two contemporary incarnations of economic liberalism, and the light this sheds, in turn, brings some interesting and important features of these two contemporary theories into view. From Smith, for example, neoliberals took the idea of the invisible hand, although I am going to argue that contemporary advocates of invisible hand theory have largely misconstrued or at the very least overstated the significance of this metaphor. From Hegel, in contrast, ordoliberals took the idea of the civil society, and I will argue that the civil society is a much better metaphor not only for Hegel's but also for Smith's views. Indeed, I will argue that ordoliberalism, not neoliberalism, is a better and more coherent instantiation of economic liberalism than neoliberalism could ever be. (shrink)

Europe's economic constitution is obviously affected in a very fundamental way. There is every reason to depart from an historical reconstruction of the origins of the economic constitution in the early 1920s, to consider its remarkable renaissance in postwar Germany, and to explore against this background its emigration to the European level of governance as well as its development and metamorphosis in the integration process. This chapter focuses on the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), which, once hailed as the crowning (...) achievement of Europe's market building and the precursor of a more truly political Union, has become the epicenter of the present crisis. Ordoliberalism and the social‐market economy managed to coexist peacefully and dominated public opinion. The chapter also discusses the practices of Europe's crisis management and the specifics of the governance modes that they are generating. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between The Good Society by Walter Lippmann and the ordoliberal ideals. The first part analyses the core elements of a new liberalism – centered on the axiomatic theory of the competition to which the subjects and their jobs must be aligned by the representative government. The second part shows how this approach used by Lippman is in the background of the Colloque Walter Lippmann, that took place in Paris in 1938, and that is often considered (...) as the moment in which the neoliberal discourse emerged. Eventually, the third part focuses on the idea of the neoliberal government of society and on the meaning of the Liberalism Agenda developed during the works of the aforementioned Colloque. (shrink)

The recent crisis of the Eurozone has led scholars and activists to critically consider the ordoliberal tradition of thought, in order to underline the ideological and effective primacy of the German interests within EU’s economic and monetary policies. Starting from this last widespread assertion, the author, after having recalled the differences which exist among the liberalism of the “Freiburg School” and that of the “Vienna School”, analyzes and discusses the principles of Walter Eucken’s economic policy, in particular, the “constitutive principles” (...) and the “regulative principles” of his Wettbewerbsordnung. Nevertheless, if it is true that the ordoliberal concept of competition is based on a Leistungsprinzip which requires a starker Staat, how does the Wettbewerbsordnung coexist with EU’s systems of governance? Actually, says the author, the multilevel European governance seems to be better understood if intended as a “hybrid”, with respect to which not always Ordoliberalism plays a role consistent with its tradition. (shrink)

This introduction analyzes some of the key questions concerning the political variations of the neoliberal economic discourse in today’s Europe. In particular, the relationship between the evanescence of nation-state sovereignty and the rebirth of the “economic nation” is taken into account. In the great transformation imposed by the ongoing economic crisis, the author stresses the importance of grasping not only the German roots of the European Ordoliberalism, but also those of a hybrid politics, based on governance policies, and implicitly (...) imposed by the unfinished character of the great transformation itself. (shrink)

The essay maintains that, despite the significant successive transformations, a ordoliberal moment operates within the neoliberal program. Ordoliberalism establishes a specific political anthropology based on the centrality of economic action and on an a-revolutionary temporality that enhances the normative continuity of the tradition. Even against the specific configurations that the State can assume, especially the democratic one, it also aims at the constant reactivation of a political as a fundamental decision in favor of the economic.

This article deals with ordoliberalism, a school of economics and legal theory that emerged in the 1930s and whose ideas became particularly influential in the shaping of the post-WWII German economic model. Instead of a purely political or economic doctrine, the article approaches ordoliberalism as a philosophical theory that originated as a response to the crisis of economics and scientific reason in general, to the growing dispersion of individual sciences and the loss of their common foundation. By focusing (...) on the relation between Edmund Husserl and Walter Eucken, the founder of ordoliberalism, the article highlights some of the methodological and conceptual innovations that constituted the unique approach of ordoliberalism, namely, its aim to construct economics as a rule-oriented science with a strong emphasis on constitutional choice and institutional issues. According to the main argument, the ordoliberal emphasis on law and executive institutions was a consistent outcome of their theoretical decision to construct economics as a normative science of ideal forms. (shrink)

This article considers Foucault’s analysis of ordoliberal and neoliberal governmental reason and its reorganization of social relations around a notion of enterprise. I focus on the particular idea that the generalization of the enterprise form to social relations was conceptualized in such exhaustive terms that it encompassed subjectivity itself. Self as enterprise highlights, inter alia, dynamics of control in neoliberal regimes which operate through the organized proliferation of individual difference in an economized matrix. It also throws into question conceptions of (...) individual autonomy that underpin much political thought and upon which ideas about political resistance are based. Self as enterprise also problematizes the viability of Foucault’s later work on ethics of the self as a practice of resistance. I go on to argue that Foucault’s discussion of an unresolved clash in civil society between monarchical and governmental power, between law and norm, offers an elliptical but more promising account of opposition to normalizing bio-power. (shrink)

Mainstream nursing history often positions itself in opposition to philosophy and many nursing historians are reticent of theorizing. In the quest to illuminate the lives of nurses and women current historical approaches are driven by reformist aspirations but are based on the conception that nursing or caring is basically good and the timelessness of universal values. This has the effect of essentialising political categories of identity such as class, race and gender. This kind of history is about affirmation rather than (...) friction and about the conservation of memory and musealization. In contrast, we will focus on how we imagine nursing history could be used as a philosophical, critical perspective to challenge the ongoing transformations of our societies. Existing reality must be confronted with strangeness and the historically different can assume the function of this counterpart, meaning present and past must continuously be set in relation to each other. Thus, critical history is always the history of the present but not merely the pre‐history of the present – critique must rather present different realities and different certainties. In this paper, we use this approach to discuss the implementation of the nursing process (NP) in Germany. The nursing process appears to be a technology that helped to set up an infrastructure ‐ or assemblage ‐ to transform nursing interventions into a commodity exchangable between consumers and nurses in a free market. In our theoretical perspective, we argue that NP was a step in the realization of the German ordoliberal program, a specific variety of neoliberalism. In order to implement market‐orientation in the healthcare system it was necessary to transform hospitals into calculable spaces and to make all performances in the hospital calculable. This radically transformed not just the systems, but the ways in which nurses and patients conveived of themselves. (shrink)

What is neoliberalism? -- The state -- Democracy -- Science -- Politics -- European crises, causes, and consequences -- Ideas, uncertainty, and the ordoliberalization of Europe.

Governing Europe is the first book to systematically link Michel Foucault's hypotheses on power and 'governmentality' with the study of European integration. Through a series of empirical encounters that spans the fifty-year history of European integration, it explores both the diverse political dreams that have framed means and ends of integration and the political technologies that have made 'Europe' a calculable, administrable domain. The book illustrates how a genealogy of European integration differs from conventional approaches. By suspending the assumption that (...) we already know what/where Europe is, it opens a space for analysis where we can ask: how did Europe come to be governed as this and not that? The themes covered by this book include: * the different constructions of Europe within discourses of modernization, democratization, insecurity and 'governance' * the imprint of modernism, liberalism, ordoliberalism, neoliberalism and crime on the identity of the European Community/European Union * the historical relationship between European government and specific technologies of power, technologies as diverse as planning, price control, transparency and benchmarking. (shrink)

This article considers the possibility of articulating a renewed understanding of the principle of political idealism on the basis of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology. By taking its point of departure from one of the most interesting political applications of Husserl’s phenomenological method, the ordoliberal tradition of the so-called Freiburg School of Economics, the article raises the question of the normative implications of Husserl’s eidetic method. Contrary to the “static” idealism of the ordoliberal tradition, the article proposes that the phenomenological concept of (...) political idealism ought to be understood as a fundamentally dynamic principle. As opposed to the classical understanding of political idealism as the implementation of a particular normative model—political utopianism—the phenomenological reformulation of this idea denoted a radically critical principle of self-reflection that can only be realized on the basis of perpetual renewal. In order to illustrate this point, the article considers Husserl’s distinction between two types of ideals of perfection, the absolute and the relative, and argues for their relevance for political philosophy. (shrink)

This article has two interrelated purposes, one of historical and one of contemporary significance. It first seeks to challenge the common view in the literature that Article 82EC is a product of ordoliberalism. This is done by directly examining the travaux préparatoires of the competition rules of the EC Treaty to discover the intent of the drafters of Article 82EC. This inquiry is important for a modernized approach to Article 82EC since it must be determined whether Article 82EC can (...) be applied with a ‘consumer welfare’ standard without a Treaty amendment. This is because, if the provision is ‘ordoliberal’, its objective cannot be the enhancement of ‘consumer welfare’. As its second and policy-driven purpose, this article suggests that the intent of the drafters of Article 82EC provides the EC Commission and the courts with the means to apply Article 82EC in a modernized manner with a ‘more economic approach’. The article shows that the drafters of Article 82EC were mainly concerned with increasing ‘efficiency’. Hence, adopting a welfarist objective would not imply a fundamental change in the goals of Article 82EC. On the contrary, including efficiencies in the assessment would be a late but welcome recognition since efficiency is already imbedded in the provision. (shrink)

Scheuerman’s book is one of the handful of significant attempts to rethink Schmitt’s work systematically over the past four decades. In so doing, he raises three key questions for me. First, is Schmitt’s work a sincere contribution to legal and political theory, or an attempt to argue for setting the rule of law aside for authoritarianism, that is, an instrumental critique of indeterminacy? Second, to what extent is Schmitt – critical of the ‘bourgeois’ rule of law, critical of globalization – (...) really a thinker defending capitalism? Can he really be associated with the Ordoliberals? Third, to what extent were Schmitt’s early contributions to National Socialist law aimed at responding to legal indeterminacy, and to what extent did they in fact point towards a radicalism of German law within the Nazi system, especially insofar as they endorsed making decisions based on the principles of justice of the Nazi state – and potentially against the express language of statutes? (shrink)

The paper examines the political ideas of founding figures of West German political science by engaging with formative texts from the post-war period of neo-Aristotelian (Dolf Sternberger and Siegfried Landshut), Critical Theory (Arcadius R.L. Gurland and Franz L. Neumann), ordoliberal (Alexander Rüstow) and catholic (Ferdinand Hermens) perspective. It is argued that these early German political scientists coincided in the diagnosis of living in a thoroughly politicized post-liberal age. They rejected the separation between empirical and normative political science and devised heterogeneous (...) disciplinary approaches that can be classified as republican, power-realist, and expertocratic. Although democracy was an important point of reference for some of them, it is not tenable, contrary to older historiography and contemporary self-image, to describe early West-German political science as a Demokratiewissenschaft (science of democracy) in overall terms. (shrink)

This book provides an overview of two hundred years of German economic thought, from the Staatswissenschaften of the eighteenth century to National Socialism and the Social Market. Whereas classical economics, from Smith through Ricardo to Marx and Mill, emphasised value, distribution and production, German economic thought had a long-running tradition of human need and the varying conditions for order. These ideas are brought together by a conception of rational action and, therefore, a rationalistic appraisal of welfare and order. By taking (...) this perspective, the usual contrast of market and planning approaches to economic organisation is subsumed by an approach which focuses on the construction of order in economic processes. This book highlights the continuity of this practical approach of German economists through the two centuries under consideration - from the Cameralists to the Ordoliberals. (shrink)

The debate surrounding ‘big tech’ and antitrust has dominated public policy discourses over the past few years in many parts of the world. Noteworthy is that several countries and regions, including China, the European Union, and the United States, have launched investigations into the allegedly anticompetitive and exclusionary business practices of companies such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google and their Chinese counterparts, Alibaba and Tencent. This paper builds on the renewed interest in the topic and discusses in detail – (...) and from an ordoliberal perspective – the key characteristics of the digital economy, the business conduct of tech platforms, and the corresponding antitrust concerns, as well as possible reform steps which could help to strengthen modern-day competition law and policy (and antitrust enforcement). (shrink)

The criticism of neoliberalism is omnipresent. The term is seemingly self-explanatory, but its original use in public has been forgotten. Its form originated in the international movement of ordoliberalism in the 1930s, which used neoliberalism to describe its distinction from laissez-faire capitalism. This conceptual confusion has created considerable consequential problems that overlay today’s debate on the future of the market economy. The fact that the neoliberalism of the ordoliberals is today equated by its critics with the capitalism of the (...) libertarians raises questions. Since the economic dogma of Milton Friedman, who was the inspiration for the so-called Chicago Boys in Chile, whose economic policy was first captured by today’s negatively connoted term neoliberalism, this approach needs to be looked at more closely. Should the ideas of the Chicago school of thought substantially distinguish themselves from the other currents of economic liberalism, a solution to the confusion of terms could be possible, giving a new twist to the debate on the market economy. Such a clarifiation would be of fundamental importance for the ethical question of the social orientation of the economic order, since ordoliberalism was in turn the godfather of the social market economy. Furthermore, this would have consequences for applied political ethics in the context of political theories of justice, whose theoretical constructs reflect the existing economic order as a fact of experience. (shrink)

The fast recovery of Germany's economy after World War II—the so‐called “German miracle”—can be explained by the market‐oriented economic policies pursued in the 1950s, based upon the ideas of Ordoliberalism. The slounng growth rates and increasing economic difficulties since the 1970s seem to have resulted from the extension of interventionist and redistributionist policies beyond those sanctioned by Ordoliberalism. The roots of the German economic decline are political: already in the 1950s, a broad consensus existed about the need to (...) integrate market‐oriented economic policy with a highly redistributory welfare state in a “social market economy.”. (shrink)

El objetivo de este ensayo es primero honrar la memoria de Vicent Martínez Guzmán, destacando sus importantes contribuciones a la filosofía. Dada su relación con el autor, ha parecido lo más oportuno centrarse en la relación de su filosofía con la fenomenología puesto que otros colegas desentrañarán otras facetas. Para cumplir ese cometido el ensayo tiene cuatro partes. En la primera se hace una presentación de las etapas de la filosofía de nuestro autor. En la segunda se expone, con bastante (...) amplitud, por la importancia que tiene, la primera concepción de la fenomenología de Vicent Martínez Guzmán. El apartado tercero expone, aunque sea brevemente, por ser más conocido, el sentido fenomenológico de la filosofía para hacer las paces. Por fin, la cuarta comenta la posición de Vicent Martínez Guzmán respecto al ordoliberalismo de la Escuela de Friburgo, considerando la relación de este con la fenomenología husserliana.The aim of this essay is first of all to honor the memory of Vicent Martínez Guzmán, highlighting his important contributions to philosophy. Given its relationship with the author, it has seemed most appropriate to focus on the relationship of his philosophy with phenomenology since other colleagues will unravel other facets. To fulfill this task, the essay has four parts. In the first one, a presentation is made of the stages of our author's philosophy. In the second, the first conception of the phenomenology of Vicent Martínez Guzmán is exposed, quite widely, because of its importance. The third section exposes, even if briefly, for being better known, the phenomenological sense of “philosophy to make peace”. Finally, the fourth section comments on Vicent Martínez Guzmán’s position regarding the ordoliberalism of the Fribourg School, considering its relation to Husserlian phenomenology. (shrink)

Este artículo reconstruye algunas líneas fundamentales que componen el programa filosófico-político del ordoliberalismo y su impacto en el proceso de integración europea. En él, se analizan las consecuencias éticas y políticas de las ideas ordoliberales relativas al papel del Estado y la función del mercado a través de sus figuras y nociones claves. Además, se elabora un diagnóstico de la matriz ordoliberal que inspira la política de la Unión Europea desde la perspectiva de un nuevo constitucionalismo disciplinario cuyo objetivo es (...) desvincular las políticas nacionales del control democrático y social mediante su atribución a marcos jurídicos de carácter supranacionales. (shrink)

The Eurozone’s reaction to the crisis beginning in late 2008 involved not only efforts to mitigate the arbitrarily destructive effects of markets but also vigorous pursuit of policies aimed at austerity and deflation. To explain this paradoxical outcome, I build on Karl Polanyi’s account of a similar deadlock in the 1930s. Polanyi argued that a society-protecting response to malfunctioning markets was limited under the gold standard by the prospect of currency panic, which bankers used to push for austerity, deflationary policies, (...) and labor’s political marginalization. I reconstruct Polanyi’s “governing by panic” theory to explain Eurozone policy during three key episodes of sovereign bond market panic in 2010–12. By threatening to allow financial panics to continue, the European Central Bank promoted policies and institutional changes aimed at austerity and deflation, limiting the protective response. Germany’s Ordoliberalism, and its weight in European affairs, contributed to the credibility of this threat. (shrink)

As recent newspaper headlines show the topic of patents/patent laws is still heavily disputed. In this paper I will approach this topic from a theoretical-historical and history of economic thought-perspective. In this regard I will link the patent controversy of the nineteenth century with Walter Eucken's Ordoliberalism – a German version of neoliberalism. My paper is structured as follows: The second chapter provides the reader with a historical introduction. At the heart of this paragraph are the controversy and discourse (...) on patent laws in nineteenth century Europe as well as the pro and contra arguments presented by the anti-patent/free-trade movement respectively by the advocates of patent protection. The focus of my paper is on the struggle for the protection of inventions and innovations in nineteenth century Germany, since Walter Eucken, main representative of the Freiburg School of Law and Economics, picks up the counter-arguments presented in the national debate and in particular by the Kongress deutscher Volkswirthe. The third chapter deals intensively with the question whether patent laws are just 'nonsense upon stilts' from an ordoliberal perspective. Here, Eucken's arguments against the current patent system are elaborated in great detail. The paper ends with a summary of my main findings. Read the Open Peer Discussion on this paper ». (shrink)

Se tratan algunas de las discusiones vertidas en el coloquio Lippmann de 1938, evento que puede considerarse con los datos actuales como la escena inaugural del neoliberalismo. Se muestra tanto la heterogeneidad de dos grupos de pensadores que marcarán posteriormente la línea alemana y norteamericana de pensadores neoliberales. Al mismo tiempo se muestran algunas de sus coincidencias principales en torno a una idea de democracia para el mercado.

O presente artigo tem por escopo examinar a tensão entre regulamentação e liberdade de mercado na União Europeia, por meio do estudo do Acórdão do TJUE no caso “Champagner Sorbet”, que aborda o mercado interno europeu, sustentáculo instrumental de integração da União, com enfoque na política adotada pelos mercados agrícolas e questões relacionadas às Denominações de origem protegida. O enfoque singe-se à participação ativa no projeto de integração europeia do pensamento ordoliberal e o importante papel do TJUE na salvaguarda da (...) independência da organização do mercado comum. (shrink)