Introduction : Which Enlightenment, Whose Liberalism? Hayek's Research Program for Understanding the Liberal Society

In this introduction I outline a logical continuity in Hayek's research program from technical economics to his political economy and social philosophy. By taking the starting point of economics as the question of the coordination of plans, Hayek's emphasis as an economist on how economic actors must utilize their knowledge of time and place in making decisions, and how the market system is able to achieve such a high degree of order in the absence of command, leads Hayek as a political economist to emphasize generality in the law and politics and the requisite constraints on discretion, for it is only against this backdrop that agents are able to exploit their local knowledge for the mutual reinforcement and coordination of plans