A Political Economy of Power : Ordoliberalism in Context, 1932-1950

This book highlights the crucial, albeit overlooked, role of economic and political power in the making of ordoliberal thought. Raphaël Fèvre explores the roots of contemporary political and economic debates on European governance.

The first English analysis of German ordoliberalism from the perspective of both intellectual history and history of economic thought In comparison with Keynesianism, monetarism, or other economic paradigms of the twentieth century, ordoliberalism has been generally neglected. However, after first emerging in Germany during interwar years, ordoliberalism is now at the center of the ongoing debates about the foundations, the present governance, and the future prospects of the European Union. In A Political Economy of Power, Raphaël Fèvre retraces the intellectual history of ordoliberalism, focusing on the works of its main representatives Walter Eucken and Wilhelm Röpke, together with the contributions of Franz Böhm, Alexander Rüstow, Leonhard Miksch, and Friedrich Lutz. Fèvre provides a clear and comprehensive definition of ordoliberalism, describes in detail its principles, and explains how ordoliberalism came to heavily influence German post-war reconstruction despite its emergence during the Nazi period. He also investigates the reasons for its success in West Germany in the immediate aftermath of the war, and its lasting influence through a partial transformation to a contemporary form of neoliberal orthodoxy. A Political Economy of Power provides a contextualized and interdisciplinary study of ordoliberalism-one of the most influential intellectual projects of the second half of the twentieth century in Europe.