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In this paper we contextualize Carl Menger’s work in relation to the transformations of German political economy from the 1860s to the 1890s. We demonstrate that his Grundsätze (1871) was a culmination of the German subjectivist tradition which had started in the early nineteenth century. Menger’s synthesis of this tradition is comparable to Adam Smith’s synthesis of earlier knowledge in the Wealth of Nations (1776). Menger’s contribution was continuous with the intellectual project of leading German economists, such as Wilhelm Roscher, to whom Menger had dedicated his book. Roscher, however, also promoted a historical turn, that was combined with a progressive policy agenda by a new generation of German economists after they founded the Verein für Socialpolitik in 1872. These divergent Roscherian legacies clashed vehemently in the Methodenstreit. During this debate Menger elaborated in his Untersuchungen (1883) an evolutionary and spontaneous theory of institutional change, in line with the legacy of the Scottish Enlightenment and in contrast to a more rationalist and constructivist theory of institutional change expounded by Gustav Schmoller and other Verein economists. The new policy-oriented direction of German political economy carried the day, also due the fundamental socio-economic transformations in the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, and prompted Menger to restate in 1891 the social policy agenda of the classical political economists, most prominently Smith. Menger’s recurrent proximities to Smithian political economy – in the synthetic contribution of 1871, the theoretical innovation of 1883, and the policy agenda of 1891 – suggest that his arguments are best understood as a defense of what Boettke has called the “mainline” in economics.

This article depicts the parallel evolution of the political economies of the “Old Chicago” and Freiburg schools. Both communities within the “laissez-faire within rules” research program and the long-standing “thinking in orders” tradition emerged during the 1930s and culminated in the 1940s, crystallizing around the personalities of Henry C. Simons and Walter Eucken. We show how, in an age of disintegration of national and international orders of economy and society, the political economists at Chicago and Freiburg underwent a double transition: from students of equilibrium to students of order, and from students of various positive orders to defenders of a specific normative order. The vision of the normative order on both sides of the Atlantic was the competitive order and its rules-based framework. Along with shared angst amid disintegrating orders, personal transatlantic connections between the two communities are identified, starting in Berlin during the 1920s. This article highlights the role of Friedrich A. Lutz, who, from the mid-1930s to Eucken's death and beyond, served as a lifeline between the isolated Freiburg school and Anglo-Saxon economists. Lutz's activities are embedded in a narrative of transatlantic conversations around Friedrich A. Hayek and the early meetings of the Mont Pèlerin Society.

A review essay of key works and trends in the political thought of Central and Eastern Europe, before and after 1989. The topics examined include the nature of the 1989 velvet revolutions in the region, debates on civil society, democratization, the relationship between politics, economics, and culture, nationalism, legal reform, feminism, and “illiberal democracy.” The review essay concludes with an assessment of the most recent trends in the region.

This chapter reconstructs the notion of ‘vital policy’ (Vitalpolitik), an approach to the social question whose first and strongest proponent amongst the Ordoliberals was Alexander Rüstow. It is opposed to traditional social policy as a top-down provision of material benefits (welfare). Instead, it aims at enabling those ‘conditions of life’ (Lebenslagen) that provide the prerequisites for human beings and their community to flourish. This humanistic approach attempts to complement the competitive processes in a market society and to provide access and equal opportunity to these processes, focusing on the notion of fair starting conditions for individuals. In its general thrust, Vitalpolitik is well compatible with more recent research programmes, especially the capability approach of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum.

This chapter reconstructs the life and work of Alexander Rüstow (1885–1963), a key member of the first Ordoliberal generation. As a gifted networker in Berlin during the 1920s and early 1930s, he connected political economists of various ideological backgrounds. As a public intellectual, he suggested reforms for the ailing Weimar Republic, a testimony of which is his address to the Verein für Socialpolitik in September 1932. After his emigration to Istanbul in 1933, Rüstow focused on a historical diagnosis of the civilisation which was on the brink of extinction, and Das Versagen des Wirtschaftsliberalismus (The Failure of Economic Liberalism) is a key document in this regard. After returning to Germany in 1949, he finished his monumental Ortsbestimmung der Gegenwart (The Coordinates of the Present Times) and resumed his role as a vocal public intellectual in the young Federal Republic.

Stefan Kolev zeichnet in seinem Beitrag die Geschichte und Bedeutung des schillernden Begriffs »Neoliberalismus« nach, welcher vielfach als Grund allen Übels gegen liberales Denken und Politik in Stellung gebracht wird. Kolev plädiert dafür, dass der Liberalismus sich immer wieder erneuern muss, also stetig neue Neoliberalismen benötigt.

This paper provides a critical reading of Janek Wasserman’s The Marginal Revolutionaries: How Austrian Economists Fought the War of Ideas. Wasserman depicts the evolution of the Austrian School from the 1860s until today, a particularly illuminating narrative for the readers of this journal. The breadth of portrayed economists, their cultural embeddedness in Austrian and US contexts, and the complexity of configurations across the school’s generations create a rich and readable story. The last third of the book suffers from allegations about the ideological agenda and institutional power of the Austrian economists which sometimes lack sufficient substantiation. The paper indicates how both in their theorizing and in their political activities, the Austrian economists can be seen as reformers instead of revolutionaries, and as constitutionalists instead of anti-democrats. Despite these disagreements, Wasserman’s portrayals evoke largely fair and challenging impulses both to scholars working in the Austrian research program and to those interested in the Austrian School’s long history, regardless of one’s ideological positions.

Wilhelm Röpke ist einer der prägenden liberalen Denker des 20. Jahrhunderts und gehört zu den wesentlichen Protagonisten der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft in Deutschland. Gleichwohl ist sein Erbe nicht unumstritten: Fraglos war er ein kompromissloser Verfechter einer freien, offenen und menschenwürdigen Gesellschaft, zugleich sind aber insbesondere seine späten Schriften von einem tiefen Kulturpessimismus und einem Ringen mit der Moderne geprägt, die in der jüngeren sozialwissenschaftlichen Debatte kritisch diskutiert und mit Blick auf das neoliberale Projekt insgesamt skeptisch kommentiert wurden. Der vorliegende Beitrag analysiert Röpkes Kulturverständnis im Lichte seines Gesamtwerks und erläutert die Gründe für seine pessimistische Weltsicht sowie seine provokativen Positionen in den 1950er und 1960er Jahren. Ein Schwerpunkt liegt dabei auf Röpkes entwicklungspolitischen Überlegungen und seine nicht gerade schmeichelhafte Rechtfertigung der Apartheid in Südafrika. Auch wenn Röpkes »dunkle Seite« wenig sympathisch ist, kann sein trüber Kulturpessimismus durchaus eine fruchtbare Provokation für die heutige Debatte um Globalisierung und Digitalisierung sein.

Walter Eucken and ordoliberalism have recently received scholarly attention that is rather unprecedented when compared to the past few decades, especially regarding ordoliberalism’s “long shadow” i...

This paper provides a critical reading of Quinn Slobodian’s “Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism”. Slobodian’s narrative centers around the concept of a “Geneva School” of economists and lawyers who, from the 1930s to the 1990s, shaped the international economic order through activities in Genevan institutions. The paper shows in what ways the book constitutes a highly stimulating challenge for readers who align normatively with the characters portrayed by Slobodian. Despite some weaknesses in its historiographical construction, the Geneva School is interpreted as an innovative contribution to the neoliberalism literature. The critical remarks on the book are embedded in posing an overarching question: In what ways can globalists like the author of the paper and moderate critics of globalism like Slobodian enter a fruitful conversation about improving the deficiencies of the global politico-economic order, especially in light of the far-left and far-right critique of globalism in recent years.

This paper discusses the legacy of Austrian economist and economic sociologist Friedrich von Wieser (1851–1926) and shows a number of reasons why Wieser can be seen as an undeservedly underresearch...

This paper explores Max Weber’s intellectual relationship to the first generations of the Austrian School. Challenging his portrayal as a one-sided historicist, the paper reconstructs Weber’s intense involvement with the Viennese economists from the 1890s to his passing in 1920 and his efforts to overcome the fronts left behind by the Methodenstreit. Section 2 discusses a number of necessary conditions for declaring a scholarly community a “school”. Section 3 systematizes the multiple biographical connections, especially Weber’s nexus to Friedrich von Wieser and Joseph Schumpeter. Section 4 focuses on the research program of Social Economics during the first decades of the twentieth century as the “irenic formula” for the post-Methodenstreit hostilities. Within Social Economics, economic sociology constitutes an “intermediary” layer between economic theory and economic history, addressing the institutional properties of the framework surrounding the processes of human action and exchange. Depending on the relative importance and qualifying power of economic sociology vis-a-vis economic theory, the paper distinguishes two varieties of Social Economics, a “universalist” and an “institutionalist” one.

Das jungst neu erwachte Interesse am Ordoliberalismus im Zuge der Eurokrise sowie der drohende Ordnungszerfall der Weltwirtschaft bieten die Gelegenheit, die Ordnungsokonomik inhaltlich, methodisch und rhetorisch neu aufzustellen. Dieser Beitrag setzt sich kritisch mit dem Erbe des Ordoliberalismus auseinander und zeigt Moglichkeiten auf, wie dieses Erbe an die heutige Okonomik anschlussfahig gemacht werden kann. Historisch lasst sich der Ordoliberalismus den kontextualen Theorieansatzen zuordnen, deren Fokus vor allem auf der Erforschung der Interdependenzen zwischen der Wirtschaftsordnung und den weiteren gesellschaftlichen Ordnungen liegt, wahrend isolierende Ansatze vor allem die Prozesse innerhalb der Wirtschaftsordnung thematisieren. Im Ruckgriff auf eine Vielzahl an kontextualen Denkern von Adam Smith bis James Buchanan und Elinor Ostrom zeigen wir, dass es sich beim Ordoliberalismus keineswegs um einen deutschen Sonderweg handelt. Die Grunde fur seinen Bedeutungsverlust in den letzten Jahrzehnten werden diskutiert. Auserdem weisen wir auf Schnittstellen zu aktuellen Forschungsprogrammen hin, die fur die notwendige Revitalisierung der Ordnungsokonomik genutzt werden konnen.

Walter Eucken is mostly known for his impact on establishing the Social Market Economy in post-war Germany. In this paper we identify how Eucken was highly influential in the formation of the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS), and how German ordoliberalism left a significant footprint on the early history of the MPS. To show this organizational cooperation, we primarily analyze Eucken’s correspondence with F. A. Hayek and Wilhelm Ropke. In a next step, we portray their intellectual debates 1945–1950 and again extensively draw on correspondence, as well as on traces of influences in publications in the fields of methodology and epistemology. Subsequently, we reconstruct the first MPS meetings between 1947 and 1949 and identify notable substantive overlaps, but also a widening gap between a Continental and an Anglo-Saxon understanding of neoliberalism – despite the pronounced personal friendship and esteem between Eucken and Hayek. Finally, we present personal memories of Leonhard Miksch, a student and associate of Eucken who attended the 1949 MPS meeting, recorded in his so far unpublished diary.

Book Review of “F. A. Hayek: Economics, Political Economy and Social Philosophy” by Peter J. Boettke

This chapter reconstructs the formative decades of European integration from the perspective of three German political economists: the ordoliberals Wilhelm Ropke, Ludwig Erhard, and Alfred Muller-Armack. In their multiple roles of theorists, public intellectuals, and policymakers, the ordoliberals shaped the incipient integration process from the immediate postwar years to the mid-1960s. They outlined two potential trajectories for the European project. While both imply a common market, the “large Switzerland” trajectory stands for political decentralization and non-protectionism, while the “large France” trajectory leads to political centralization and protectionism. The ordoliberals openly preferred the former, especially its emphasis on subsidiarity and federalism. The chapter concludes by identifying a movement toward a “large France” since the mid-1980s and discusses the reformability of today’s European Union toward a “large Switzerland.”

This paper addresses the parallel emergence of economic sociology within the Younger Historical School and the Austrian School. It reconstructs biographically the relationship of two key economic sociologists: Max Weber (1864–1920) and Friedrich von Wieser (1851–1926). Reconstructing Weber’s interactions with the Austrian economists and the joint pursuit of the research program “Social Economics” is illuminating for Weber’s attitude to economics and helps to correct clichés about the irreconcilability between the schools. For contextual economics, understanding the “outsourcing” of contextualism into sociology initiated in the age of Weber and Wieser can be decisive for the future “re-import” into economics. JEL Codes: A11, B13, B15, B25, B31, P16, Z13

Notwithstanding the plurality of meanings and connotations in time and space, Socio-Economics clearly was a theoretical endeavor, unlike the common myths about the anti- or -theoretical nature of the Historical School’s research program. In a world of quantitative growth and qualitative transformation of economy and society, many of the economists of the time wondered whether there were any stable social-scientific categories that one could use to analyze the modern market economy as it presented itself to them. Or, to put the same question differently: If historical institutional evolution is so encompassing, how are we to understand a universalist social science? Such questions came to the fore in Germany and its neighboring countries during the 19th century in part because Germany was late to industrialization, and late to form a modern state. But once industrialization set in and the Empire was formed, the country, compared to other dynamic nations, experienced one of the most pronounced growth explosions during the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Broadberry and Burhop 2010, 404–415). This growth coincided with qualitative transformations within society and the political order, while the role of the bourgeoisie, the working class and newly emerging institutions like political parties and trade unions were in constant motion (Wegner 2020, 4–9). In that sense German socio-economists were deeply aware of the depth and revolutionary potential of historical change, as opposed to British economists who prided themselves in the gradual evolution of their history. The methodological debates so formative for German Socio-Economics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, above all the Methodenstreit and the Werturteilsstreit (Glaeser 2014), reflect precisely this deep uncertainty of an ever-changing, “moving target”-like object of inquiry – such as the capitalism of their age. This led to the constant struggle to revisit one’s toolbox, to identify the best methods for capturing socio-economic dynamics, and to clarify the admissible role of the scholar amid such dynamics in the wide spectrum between purely descriptive analysis and propagandist demagoguery.

Focusing on the history of economics, this chapter provides an overview of important theoretical contributions to understanding the processes of transformation. The central claim is that if economists want to regain their ability to theoretically grasp processes of transformation, they have to overcome the idea that the capitalist reality of a distinguishable economic system of society exists at all places and times. Processes of transformation are exactly about the emergence of a (permeable) border between the political and the economic game, about periods when the economic system with its distinguishable logic comes into existence. If economists want to understand these processes, they have to look not at changes of economic relations alone but to focus specifically on the interplay between political and economic factors.

This paper addresses the intellectual relationship between Max Weber and three key proponents of neoliberalism: F.A. Hayek, Walter Eucken and Wilhelm Ropke. This relationship is contextualized in the history of German-language political economy, focusing on the nexus and proximity between early 20th century economic sociology and the emergence and evolution of the various neoliberal political economies from the 1930s onwards. While during his lifetime Weber was a towering scholarly and public figure recognized well beyond the German-language area, after his passing in 1920 he successively fell into oblivion, also for the neoliberal generation at the heart of the paper who started publishing in the immediate aftermath of Weber’s age. The structure of the paper is tripartite. In section 2, traces of Weber in the neoliberal writings are collected, starting with an instrumental digression to Ludwig von Mises’s treatment of Weber. Mises as well as the neoliberals focused on Weber’s legacy in epistemology, methodology and economic history, while references to his sociological contributions are seldom and unsystematic. In section 3, central commonalities between Weber’s economic sociology and the political economies of Hayek, Eucken and Ropke are outlined. In section 4, six hypotheses are formulated to tentatively explain the cursory and declining appreciation of Weber by the neoliberals during their lifetime.

Commun and Kolev provide here as co-editors an introduction to the volume. They refer to the conference in Geneva which has led to this collection of contributions, and embed the volume in the multifaceted literature on neoliberalism. Along the aspects of Wilhelm Ropke’s life and work, Commun and Kolev depict the structure of the volume. The biographical section portrays Ropke as a European public economist involved in manifold international networks and discourses. The section on economics presents Ropke as a pragmatic political economist amid the tensions between Keynes and the Austrian School. The section on social philosophy sheds light on Ropke as an eclectic social philosopher at the intersection of conservatism and liberalism. Finally, some major challenges posed by Ropke’s heritage are outlined.

Kolev provides a reconstruction of the intellectual relationship between Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises and German ordoliberals Walter Eucken and Wilhelm Ropke, aiming at a nuanced understanding of the hostile climate in their relationship. The four decades are separated into five phases: (1) socialization echoing the Methodenstreit, (2) initial debates on business cycles in the 1920s and early 1930s, (3) clashes on political economy and social philosophy at the Colloque Walter Lippmann in 1938 and the early decades of the Mont Pelerin Society after 1947, (4) coexistence during the German “economic miracle,” and (5) exchanges in the 1960s, including new archival materials about Mises’ only honorary doctorate in economics, at Freiburg in 1964. As an overarching element, Kolev offers a specific interpretation of neoliberalism.

This essay pursues one historical and one conceptual task. The historical task is to reconstruct the “thinking-in-orders” tradition in political economy as a contextual approach to socio-economic reality, a tradition in which James Buchanan was socialized and to which he was a life-long contributor. The historical mainline extends from classical political economy to ordoliberalism, and shows how contextual economics has gained relevance in periods of transformation and transition. Living today in a world of fundamental transformation, the essay’s conceptual task is to depict how a recent research program, “New Economics of Order”, revitalizes the ordoliberal tradition by complementing it with Virginia School impulses of James Buchanan and Bloomington School impulses of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom. This new contextual research program conceptualizes the balance between the fragility stemming from the dynamics of globalization and digitalization, and the provision of statics through the state and civil society as demanded by the citizen.