Ordoliberals saw the economic constitution as imposed by deliberate political will from above
Evidence
Böhm described it as “a normative order of the national economy” that must come into being through the exercise of a “conscious and aware political will, an authoritative decision of leadership.” He used martial metaphors that are worth quoting at length, declaring that “there is no longer any space for a silent growth, for an orderly formation of things out of the lap of the economy itself, that is, from the bottom up. Social Babels built of such great height and at such an accelerated tempo produce an unholy confusion of languages unless the idea of order that alone can represent the element of unity illuminates the totality down to its last details, unless the idea of order is based on the sentence: everything at my command!” — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 697
Categorization
- DEFINE: Clarifies the ordoliberal concept of the economic constitution as an authoritative, top-down decision rather than an emergent growth.
- XREF: Connects to Carl Schmitt’s constitutional theory and its influence on postwar German ordoliberalism. — connects to: Ordoliberalism inverted classical liberalism by making economic effectiveness depend on political and legal systems — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 362; Austerity reforms embed budget-balancing mandates into constitutions. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 378; Ordoliberal ‘economic constitution’ meant a normative vision, not a founding legal document. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 696 (+7 more)
- ADDENDUM: The top-down imposition of economic order parallels the deliberate institutional design in the Milgrom law-merchant material.
Broader Connections
- Early ordoliberalism demanded a strong independent state to counter organized interests
#corroborates(0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 524 - Ordoliberalism departed from classical liberalism by grounding markets in a constitutional framework
#expands(0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1087 - Ordoliberalism denied an essential capitalist logic and made rival capitalisms inventable
#expands(0.70) — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 940