2019/02/12 by Troels Krarup · 28 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Global Economic and Social Development #European history and politics #Communism, Protests, Social Movements #German #Ideology #Politics #Political science #Religious studies #Economic history #Political economy #Sociology #Philosophy #Law #History #Linguistics
paper · open access · doi:10.1080/23254823.2018.1559745
published in European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology 6(3), 317-342 (Taylor & Francis)
openalex publication_date 2019/02/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Ordoliberalism is widely considered to be the dominant ideology of the German political elite today and consequently responsible at least in part for its hard ‘austerity’ line during the recent Eurozone crisis. This article presents a genealogy of the main concerns, concepts and problems around which early German ordoliberalism was formed and structured as a political and economic ideology. Early ordoliberalism is shown to be rooted in an interwar Germanophone Lutheran Evangelical tradition of anti-humanist ‘political ethics’. Its specific conceptions of the market, the state, the individual, freedom and duty were developed on a Lutheran Evangelical basis. Analytically, the article considers ideological influences of theology on political and economic theory not so much in terms of consensus and ideational overlap, but rather in terms of shared concerns, concepts and problems across different positions.