The Social Market Economy. Incipiency and Topicality of an Economic and Social Policy for a European Community

• Author: Christian L. Glossner
• Position: University of Oxford, United Kingdom
• Pages: 53-62

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T EA U R, V. 1 N. 0/2014

The Social Market Economy. Incipiency and Topicality of

an Economic and Social Policy for a European Community

Christian L. Glossner*

Abstract. This contribution on the economic reconstruction of post-war West Germany traces the

development of ideas about economic and socio-political publicity, and their gradual absorption

by mainstream politicians, officials and the general public during the period of transition between

1945 and 1949. In those years, several German think tanks, political parties and individuals gave

impulse to and then shaped the development of a viable socio-political and economic model between

the extremes of laissez-faire capitalism and the collectivist planned economy. In their endeavours to

bring into effect their particular economic ideas – often diametrically opposed to one another – the

parties of left and right stimulated not only academic and political but also public debate about the

political and economic reconstruction of occupied post-war Germany. While all the various neo-

liberal approaches attached to the people sovereign and decisive status in the institutional economic

order, and recognised the interdependence of politics, economics and the public, one particular school

of economic thought outpaced the others in communicating a model of coordinated economic and

social policy, namely the Social Market Economy.

Keywords: Social Market Economy; Germany; European Community

Exactly sixty years after its political implementation and public validation

in post-war West Germany1, the Social Market Economy as the Federal

Republic’s distinctive model of coordinated economic and social policy

was constitutionally anchored as a guiding idea in the Lisbon Treaty of the

European Union entering force on 1 December 2009 (Treaty of Lisbon, art.

2, par. 3). While the German variant of a neo-liberal economic and socio-

* University of Oxford, United Kingdom

1 For a more detailed account, see C.L. Glossner (2010).