Ordoliberalism

Ordoliberalism is a German tradition of liberal economic thought that calls for a strong legal framework to preserve competition and limit concentrated private and state power.

Economic constitution: A framework of legal and institutional rules that structures economic activity and constrains economic power. Ordoliberals treat foundational rules as necessary conditions for markets, not as corrections added afterward.
Freiburg School: A group of German economists and legal scholars associated with the development of ordoliberal thought at Freiburg University. Its scholars supplied the tradition's central theories of economic order and competition.
Alfred Müller-Armack: A German economist who coined the term social market economy and helped shape postwar economic policy. He helped carry ideas associated with ordoliberalism into the language of West German policy.
Laissez-faire: An economic doctrine favoring minimal government intervention in private exchange and production. Ordoliberalism rejects the idea that competition reliably survives without a strong legal framework.
West Germany: The Federal Republic of Germany established in 1949 and reunited with East Germany in 1990. Ordoliberal ideas informed influential postwar debates and institutions in the Federal Republic.
Competition law: Laws that prevent anticompetitive conduct and preserve the competitive process. It gives practical form to the ordoliberal demand that private power must not disable competition.
Walter Eucken: A German economist and leading theorist of ordoliberalism and the Freiburg School. His principles of economic policy set out a systematic ordoliberal framework.
Ludwig Erhard: A German economist and politician who served as West Germany's first economics minister and later chancellor. His economic reforms and public advocacy helped establish the social market economy.
Keynesian economics: An economic theory emphasizing aggregate demand and the role of fiscal policy in stabilizing output and employment. It foregrounds macroeconomic management, while ordoliberalism centers on the rules that structure markets.
Bundeskartellamt: Germany's federal authority responsible for enforcing competition law. Its role in policing anticompetitive conduct reflects the tradition's institutional emphasis on competition.

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