Delimiting the ‘Berlin Consensus': Power Politics in Ordoliberal and Neoliberal Frameworks

The ‘Strange non-death of neoliberalism’ (Crouch 2011) may be a matter of puzzlement across the Anglosphere, where neoliberal ideas about the nature of the economy are often taken as axiomatic. But its extrapolation to the European context is more contested by authors who point instead to the importance of ordoliberalism in shaping European outcomes (Nedergaard 2013). Whilst not taking either of these characterisations at face value, this paper explores the intersection between the two. It operates from the starting point of a ‘Berlin consensus’ animating macroeconomic policy within Europe, contrasted with the more conventionally understood Washington consensus. We then use this as a means to consider the way in which both policy discourses are exercised as forms of power politics, and operationalised in order to strengthen the positions of dominant actors. The key differential involves spheres of power – for the ordoliberal Berlin consensus, this tends to be exercised within the EU itself rather than being mobilised towards outside actors. We conclude by arguing that the Berlin consensus may function as a distinctive means of communicating a European normative stance to the world (Manners 2012, Rosamond 2013) and in turn refracting ideas from outside the EU.