The Proper Scope of Government Viewed from an Ordoliberal Perspective: The Example of Competition Policy

The paper focuses on competition policy, which is at the center of ordoliberal thinking. Important characteristics are the emphasis on individual freedom, from which the goal of economic efficiency is merely derived; the strong role for the state in the preservation of the prerequisites of competition, combined with a reserve towards intervention by government in market prices; the rule of law rather than discretionary decisions; and the embedding in the economic order of a free and open society. Other views (impossibility of competition, uselessness of competition law, selective intervention) are contrasted in order to explain these characteristics.