Ordoliberalism reframes the state as rule setter, not demand manager

Evidence

Taken on its own terms, ordoliberalism is a peculiar form of liberalism. It does not suffer from the “can’t live with it, can’t live without it, don’t want to pay for it” problem that lies at the heart of Anglo-American liberalism. In the same way that Keynes solved the austerity problem for the New Liberals in Britain, ordoliberalism solved the problem of the state in Germany by transcending it, but in an entirely different manner. Ordoliberals see the role of the state as setting the framework conditions necessary for markets to operate effectively in the first instance. The state they are happy to live with is not, however, the macroeconomic manager focused on the demand side of the economy that emerged out of British New Liberalism. Rather, the ordoliberal state is a rule setter that enables competition and aids market adjustments through the development of specific economy-wide mechanisms and institutions. — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 355

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precisely distinguishes the ordoliberal ‘state as rule setter’ from the Keynesian demand-management state — core definitional distinction for the book’s whole argument.
• XREF: Directly builds the intellectual-history scaffolding Mattei’s austerity critique rests on; also connects to the ‘regulatory vs managerial state’ debates in the contemporary EU. — connects to: German ordoliberalism favors state framework provision over neoliberal state withdrawal. — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 164; Ordoliberalism governs market rules but forbids steering market outcomes — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 613; Ordoliberalism makes state policy the guardian of fragile market mechanisms — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 1258 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Ordoliberalism governs market rules but forbids steering market outcomes #qualifies (0.95) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 613
• Ordoliberalism seeks maximum legal interventionism and minimal economic interventionism #expands (0.90) — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 904
• Ordoliberalism makes state policy the guardian of fragile market mechanisms #qualifies (0.85) — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 1258