Page 27 - The Making of the German Post-war Economy

xxvi THE MAKNG OF THE GERMAN POST-WAR ECONOMY

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 alternative 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. This
research investigates whether or not it was primarily the subtlety of the
political campaign for this model that led to its implementation by the
then Economic Council and eventual validation by the German electorate.
In this connection, the programmes published by the principal academic
and political groups of the time and the practical day-to-day decisions of
the first parliament in post-war Germany are analysed with reference to
popular preferences. By examining both the constitutive involvement of
German parties in post-war reconstruction and the role of the public
during the process of economic liberalisation, this study provides
alternative explanations for why the Social Market Economy prevailed as
the socio-political and economic model for the Federal Republic of
Germany.

Christian L. Glossner