Three Waves of Social Markets: The Ordoliberal Variety of Neoliberalism in the United Kingdom, 1972–97

Abstract

While the history of neoliberalism and Thatcherism in the United Kingdom has been the subject of much analysis, the history of ordoliberalism, a German variety of neoliberalism, in the same country is unexplored. Drawing on grey policy literature and archival material from inside party political discourses, this article examines engagements with the core ordoliberal concept of the social market economy in British political discourse and identifies not isolated incidents but a recurrent and sustained engagement from the 1970s to the 1990s. Across this periodisation, social markets, and with it ordoliberalism, appear in three different policy debates, in the Conservative Party, the Social Democratic Party and the Labour Party. This variety of neoliberalism, and its accompanying social and moral thought, features in the legitimation of neoliberalism and neoliberal policies.