Eurozone crisis leaders invoked Hayek and Röpke directly to justify austerity.

Evidence

New work clarified the importance of the knowledge problem for neoliberals and outlined their project of building a counter-public to the social democratic consensus after 1945. Insights from this literature surfaced during the Eurozone crisis with repeated arguments that the European Union seemed to realize F. A. Hayek’s visions for federation from decades earlier. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble cited Hayek’s warnings against “the pretense of knowledge” as he clung to the precepts of austerian orthodoxy, and Chancellor Angela Merkel repeated a term coined by neoliberal Wilhelm Röpke a half-century earlier when she spoke of the need for a “market-conforming democracy.” Op-ed columns, social media feeds and academic journals were suddenly alive with pronouncements of the “return of ordoliberalism.” — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 18

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Eurozone crisis literature on ordoliberalism as the EU’s operating doctrine and to the broader ‘return of ordoliberalism’ debates discussed elsewhere in the book.