Revisiting Ordoliberal Influence in the Process of Early European Integration

This paper aims at a re-appraisal of the relationship between ordoliberalism and early European integration. This will be pursued through a reconceptualisation of the ordoliberal framework – with an emphasis on correcting its misperception as an exclusively German tradition and its re-constitution within a transnational neoliberal framework. Moving beyond nation-centric historiography and building on research of transnational epistemic communities, this paper will examine the role of the neoliberal framework as a mutually shared approach towards markets and regulatory institutions that animated key architects of European integration. Those responsible for designing integration did not meet and negotiate as representatives of particular national interests or nationally distinct political economies. They shared common perspectives and goals framed within a specific liberal orientation with particular views about the economy, the state and the legal/institutional framework necessary for embedding the market orientation of European integration, best captured by the transnational neoliberal framework.