Conservative Liberalism as a Disciplinary Revolution

This chapter examines economic and monetary discipline. It notes that conservative liberals accorded great importance to law as the source of discipline, as exemplified by Franz Böhm, Louis Brandeis, and Maurice Hauriou. The chapter considers discipline in the history of liberalism, noting that it is not the exclusive property of conservative liberalism—though it is its predominant characteristic. It considers the social, economic, and political functions of rules, notably the work of Friedrich Hayek; the Currency and Banking Schools; the difficulties that arise in the choice, design, and use of rules; the reinforcement provided by credibility and time-consistency literature since the 1970s; the legitimacy and accountability problems of unelected power; the question of when discipline becomes the enemy of democracy and liberty; and the respective roles of the state and the market as sources of destabilizing shocks. The chapter stresses the rich and revealing use of metaphor by conservative liberals: their rejection of engineering metaphors for those of gardening, architecture, health and medicine, and religion. Ordo-liberalism is characterized as an open-ended tradition, with internal fragmentation and porous boundaries, its membership including migrants as well as natives. The notion of a mainstream is defined by a social process of selecting key texts as essential references and citations.

Conservative Liberalism, Ordo-liberalism, and the State

This book uses extensive original archival and elite interview research to examine the attempt to rejuvenate liberalism as a means of disciplining democracy and the market through a new rule-based economic and political order. This rebirth took the form of conservative liberalism and, in its most developed form, Ordo-liberalism. It occurred against the historical background of the great transformational crisis of liberalism in the first part of the twentieth century. Conservative liberalism evolved as a cross-national phenomenon. It included such eminent and cultured liberal economists as James Buchanan, Frank Knight, Henry Simons, Ralph Hawtrey, Jacques Rueff, Luigi Einaudi, Walter Eucken, Friedrich Hayek, Alfred Müller-Armack, Wilhelm Röpke, Alexander Rüstow, and Paul van Zeeland, as well as leading lawyers like Louis Brandeis, Franz Böhm, and Maurice Hauriou. It also played a formative role in establishing new international networks, notably the Mont Pèlerin Society. The book investigates the rich intellectual inheritance of this variant of new liberalism from aristocratic liberalism, ethical philosophy, and religious thought. It also locates the social basis of conservative liberalism and Ordo-liberalism in the cultivated bourgeois intelligentsia. The book goes on to examine the attempts to embed this new disciplinary form of liberalism in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States, and to consider the determinants of its varying significance across space and over time. It concludes by assessing the historical significance and contemporary relevance of conservative liberalism and Ordo-liberalism as liberalism confronts a new transformational crisis at the beginning of the new millennium. Is their promise of disciplining democracy and the market a hollow one?

ZNACZENIE DOROBKU PRAWNEGO FRANZA BÖHMA W INTERDYSCYPLINARNYCH BADANIACH NAD ORDOLIBERALIZMEM

Ordoliberalizm jako nurt w teorii ekonomii nie jest kierunkiem jednolitym, co wynika z faktu, że nad jego rozwojem pracowali przedstawiciele nie tylko nauk ekonomicznych, ale także innych nauk społecznych, prawnych i humanistycznych. Pozwoliło to wypracować w praktyce niezwykle efektywną gospodarczo i sprawiedliwą społecznie koncepcję społecznej gospodarki rynkowej. Obok licznych przedstawicieli szkoły ordoliberalnej, którzy mili znaczący wpływ na rozwój tej teorii, na szczególną uwagę zasługuje Franz Böhm. Jako prawnik rozwinął on tą część szkoły ordoliberalnej, która koncentrowała się na współzależności ładu ekonomicznego i prawnego. Dlatego celem artykułu jest prezentacja dorobku i myśli Franza Böhma oraz jego wpływu na rozwój interdyscyplinarnych badań nad ordoliberalizmem.

An Austrian School View on Eucken’s Ordoliberalism. Analyzing the Roots and Concept of German Ordoliberalism from the Perspective of Austrian School Economics

This paper explains the origins and the theoretical concept of Ordo- liberalism, focusing in particular on one of its founders, Walter Eucken. We will focus on the political and economic concepts of Ordoliberalism in regards to interventionism, competition, monopolies, democracy and property rights. For a better understanding, we will compare its main positions and rationale with both, the concept of a social market economy, as well as with the theoretical background of the Austrian School of economics. We pretend to define how much State is necessary to assure a long-term maximization of human rights and individual liberty, while also evaluating at what stage a State becomes too big, potentially turning into a totalitarian autocracy. Keywords: democracy, Private Property Order, Hoppe, Hayek, Wilhelm Röpke, Walter Eucken, Franz Böhm, Müller-Armack, Ludwig Erhard, Ordoliberalism, Ordo, Mont Pèlerin Society, human rights, liberalism, libertarianism, Austrian school of economics, anarcho-capitalism JEL Classification: A12, B10, B13, B25, H10, H40, K11, P10, P14, P16, P26, P48, P51 Resumen: Este artículo explica los orígenes y el concepto teórico del Ordolibe- ralismo, centrándose en particular en uno de sus fundadores, Walter Eucken. Nos centraremos en los conceptos políticos y económicos del Ordoliberalismo con respecto al intervencionismo, la competencia, los monopolios, la democra- cia y los derechos de propiedad. Para una mejor comprensión, compararemos sus principales posiciones y razones con el concepto de economía social de mercado, así como con los antecedentes teóricos de la Escuela Austriaca de economía. Pretendemos definir cuánto Estado es necesario para asegurar a largo plazo una maximización de los derechos humanos y de la libertad indi- vidual. Palabras clave: democracia, propiedad privada, Hoppe, Hayek, Wilhelm Röpke, Walter Eucken, Franz Böhm, Müller-Armack, Ludwig Erhard, ordoliber- alismo, Ordo, Mont Pèlerin Society, derechos humanos, liberalismo, liber- tarismo, Escuela Austriaca de economía, anarco-capitalismo Clasificación JEL: A12, B10, B13, B25, H10, H40, K11, P10, P14, P16, P26, P48, P51

Ludwig Erhards Konzept der sozialen Marktwirtschaft und seine wettbewerbstheoretischen Grundlagen

Erhards Konzeption einer sozialen Marktwirtschaft durch marktwirtschaftlichen Wettbewerb ist auch heute noch wegweisend. Doch wurde die Idee des Sozialen im Programm der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft mit der Zeit verfälscht. Zudem beruht Erhards Konzept auf einer wettbewerbstheoretischen Grundlage – dem neoklassischen Modell der vollständigen Konkurrenz –, die seinen wohlstandsfördernden Intentionen zuwiderläuft. Erhards Position stimmte mit derjenigen der Freiburger Schule (Walter Eucken, Franz Böhm) nur teilweise überein, unterscheidet sich aber ebenso in wesentlichen Punkten vom Denken der Österreichischen Schule der National-ökonomie (Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich August Hayek) und deren dynamisch-evolutionärem Verständnis von Wettbewerb. Gerade für eine im Sinne Erhards wettbewerbsorientierte Konzeption der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft erscheint das Österreichische Verständnis von Wettbewerb als das realitätsnähere und adäquatere.

Neoliberalism and Law: The Case of the Constitutional Balanced-Budget Amendment

This Article discusses the significance of law in neoliberal theory and practice. Prefaced by a brief look at the role that law plays in the theories of the ordo- and neoliberal thinkers Franz Böhm and Friedrich August von Hayek, the subsequent chapters focus on the work of James Buchanan and his brand of neoliberalism, which combines constitutional economics public choice theory. Buchanan's core demand is a balanced-budget amendment to the constitution. The following Sections examine this measure in its various aspects before the final section switches to the world of “actually existing neoliberalism” with a discussion of the various reforms of the economic governance structure of the European Union in recent years, particularly the “Fiscal Compact”, which amounts to the real world equivalent of a balanced-budget amendment.