Abstract
The essay offers a conceptual-historical analysis of authoritarian liberalism, an expression coined by Hermann Heller in 1933 to indicate a complex of political theories and economic policies whose shared aim was to keep state and society separate by desocialising the economy and imposing a strong state. Starting from the fight against economic and social pluralism as the trait d’union of authoritarian liberalism, the essay identifies differences and similarities between Carl Schmitt’s critique of pluralism and that of the German ordoliberals as the most cited exponents of authoritarian liberalism. The essay then shows how the problem of the former was the economicisation of the state, while that of the ordoliberals was the politicisation of the economy. The last part of the essay analyses the concept of the ordoliberal economic constitution as an economic-legal instrument aimed at ensuring the depoliticisation and desocialisation of the economy and argues that it was a source of political inspiration both with regard to the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany and the process of European integration through the constitutionalisation of the rules of competition. The thesis of the essay is that the common thread linking authoritarian Weimar liberalism to the integration process is the depoliticisation of the economy and a considerable scepticism towards the inclusion of society in decision- making processes concerning the economic order.