Authoritarian liberalism in Europe: a common critique of neoliberalism and ordoliberalism

Wilkinson, Michael ORCID: 0000-0003-1544-1821 (2019) Authoritarian liberalism in Europe: a common critique of neoliberalism and ordoliberalism. Critical Sociology, 45 (7-8). pp. 1023-1034. ISSN 0896-9205

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Abstract

The differences between ordo- and neoliberalism are many and varied. This article suggests, however, that in directing the constitutional dynamic of European integration and postwar reconstruction, ordo- and neoliberalism represent a single movement: a conjunction of political authoritarianism and economic liberalism in opposition to democracy and especially in opposition to democratic constituent power. This dynamic becomes more evident with the Euro-crisis response, but it represents the deeper logic of postwar reconstruction. With a longer historical arc in view, authoritarian liberalism can be traced as a reaction to the interwar breakdown of liberal democracy, based on a narrow diagnosis of democratic collapse. Postwar Europe is thus reconstituted on the basis of a substitution of economic for political freedom as a legitimating device for the new constitutional imagination.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://journals.sagepub.com/home/crs
Additional Information:	© 2019 The Authors
Divisions:	Law School
Date Deposited:	08 Mar 2019 12:15
Last Modified:	27 Oct 2025 17:21
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/100235

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