Röpke and Rüstow crossed disciplinary lines to supply market economies with sociocultural foundations

Evidence

It turned out to be of signal importance for neoliberalism that Wilhelm Röpke and Walter Rüstow (both exiled from Germany by the Nazis) violated disciplinary boundaries in an effort to provide the sociocultural foundations necessary for a liberal economic order. They argued persuasively that a regulatory order comprised of legal and state institutions was not sufficient to properly embed the market economy in society. In order to give such an order further stability, a more comprehensive complement of sociopolitical concepts was needed. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 506

Categorization

• XREF: The claim that legal-institutional regulation cannot by itself embed markets in society resonates with Polanyi’s embeddedness argument, a natural counterpoint for this reader. — connects to: Röpke’s circle required deliberate cultural regulation alongside markets — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 293; For Röpke, the market economy needs an extra-economic sociological framework to be defensible — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 507; Neoliberals framed the spread of markets as dependent on moral and religious foundations — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 120 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• For Röpke, the market economy needs an extra-economic sociological framework to be defensible #expands (0.92) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 507
• Early neoliberals framed market competition as dependent on prior moral virtues. #expands (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 70
• Neoliberals framed the spread of markets as dependent on moral and religious foundations #expands (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 120
• Neoliberal Röpke framed freedom and the market as heirs of Catholic personalist philosophy #expands (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 355
• Neoliberals traced market morality back to eighteenth-century liberal philosophy #expands (0.72) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 205
• Economists have begun importing sociological insights about social organization into exchange theory #expands (0.72) — Coleman, SocialCapitalCreation-1988, 21