Did the Freiburg School Deepen the Eurozone Crisis?

ORDO ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2018 (69) ◽  
pp. 510-515
Author(s):  
Lachezar Grudev
Public Choice ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malte Dold ◽  
Tim Krieger

AbstractIn the aftermath of the Eurozone crisis, a battle of ideas emerged over whether ordoliberalism is part of the cause or the solution of economic problems in Europe. While German ordoliberals argued that their policy proposals were largely ignored before, during and after the crisis, critics saw too much ordoliberal influence, especially in form of austerity policies. We argue that neither view is entirely correct. Instead, we observe that the battle of ideas is largely independent of the countries’ actual responses to the Eurozone crisis: pragmatic self-interest on behalf of governments rather than their ideological convictions played a crucial role in political reactions. We explain this dynamic game-theoretically and highlight a number of reasons for the decoupling of the political-pragmatic debate from the ideological-academic discourse. In addition, we argue that ordoliberals themselves contributed to the ideological misuse of their own program: the ordoliberal Freiburg School ceased to be an active research program and instead grew to resemble a tradition which all too often disregarded the international academic discourse, in particular in macroeconomics. As a result, ordoliberal thinking was abused by its proponents and critics alike to emphasize their preconceived Weltanschauung (worldview). We end our paper with some thoughts on how a contemporary ordoliberalism can be constructively used to react to some of the challenges of the ongoing Eurozone crisis.


Author(s):  
K. Horn

AbstractThe German intellectual tradition of ordoliberalism, a variant of neoliberalism particularly committed to a “functional and humane order,” was long ignored in the Anglo-Saxon world. More recently, this has changed to some degree, especially under the impression of the European sovereign-debt crisis, during which Germany’s insistence on rule-abiding behavior was critically attributed to the ordoliberal heritage. In the anthology edited by Malte Dold and Tim Krieger, ordoliberalism is discussed from many different angles, including the historical roots in the Freiburg School, the recent much-disputed strategies for dealing with the eurozone crisis, and a further development of the research program. The editors argue that scholarship in the spirit of ordoliberalism would benefit from being embedded within the interdisciplinary scientific cluster of Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE). The book makes a valuable contribution to a better-informed international discourse across the disciplines.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Alan Granadino ◽  
Eirini Karamouzi ◽  
Rinna Kullaa

Writing and researching Southern Europe as a symbiotic area has always presented a challenging task. Historians and political scientists such as Stanley Payne, Edward Malefakis, Giulio Sapelli, and Roberto Aliboni have studied the concept of Southern Europe and its difficult paths to modernity. They have been joined by sociologists and anthropologists who have debated the existence of a Southern European paradigm in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the arduous transformation of the region's welfare systems, economic development, education and family structures. These scholarly attempts to understand the specificities of Southern Europe date back to the concerns of Western European Cold War strategists in the 1970s, many of whom were worried about the status quo of the region in the aftermath of the fall of the dictatorships. But this geographical and geopolitical definition of the area did not necessarily follow existing cultural, political and economic patterns. Once the Eurozone crisis hit in the 2000s these questions came back with renewed force but with even less conceptual clarity, as journalists and pundits frequently gestured towards vague notions of what they considered to be ‘Southern Europe’.


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