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The current crisis in Europe recalls the theory and practice of authoritarian liberalism, the idea that in order to protect economic liberalism and respect for fiscal discipline, representative democracy must be curtailed. This configuration was first identified by Hermann Heller in late Weimar as a response to the imperative to maintain the ideological separation of state and economy and presented by Karl Polanyi as conditioned by broader geo-political pressure to maintain the gold standard in the inter-war period. Authoritarian liberalism is now conditioned by conflicting imperatives to maintain the project of the single currency, respect ordo-liberal concerns of moral hazard, and protect ‘militant democracy’ but only in one country. Does this reflect a broader geo-political disequilibrium, due to tensions between market integration, constitutionalism and democracy?
