Röpke blamed failed industrialization on missing liberal cultural traditions

Evidence

Industrialization strategies were doomed to fail, according to Röpke, owing to the lack of a “liberal tradition” required to succeed in manufacturing. Throughout the Third World, with the exception of some Latin American countries, Röpke thought he observed a lack of punctuality, reliability, the inclination to save and to create—entrepreneurship for short. A successful approach, he believed, would require recognizing the “subtle and complicated process” of development, “flexible adaptation,” “smart connections to the existing,” and “slowly growing”—just the opposite of the goals of planners (all quotes from Röpke 1953, 77). — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1286

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader Mont Pèlerin historiography and later cultural explanations for development (e.g., Fukuyama’s cultural arguments); also echoes the liberal-tradition-as-prerequisite claim found in other foundational-neoliberalism sources. — connects to: 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; Modernization theory blamed underdevelopment on internal cultural flaws within societies; Economics alone cannot override culture in reshaping a nation’s identity — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 412 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: The claim that Latin America had the liberal tradition but the rest of the Third World did not is odd — worth chasing why Röpke made that exception.

Broader Connections

• Economics alone cannot override culture in reshaping a nation’s identity #qualifies (0.75) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 412
• Modernization theory blamed underdevelopment on internal cultural flaws within societies #complicates (0.72)
• Modernization theory pathologized non-Western societies as internally deficient #complicates (0.70) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 248