Since the financial crisis of 2008, ordoliberalism emerged from relative obscurity to become one of the crucial terms of analysis across a wide range of academic literatures and public discussion. In fact, it became the main reference for a number of issues, including assessments of the attempted resolution of the Eurozone crisis, arguments about German hegemony in Europe, debates over the future of economic liberalism and controversies about authoritarian liberalism. What is striking about ordoliberalism is its pronounced ambiguity, as some view it as a more refined and potentially progressive variant of neoliberalism, while others cast it as a blueprint for a regime of austerity reigning over a society of competition with only rudimentary democratic institutions. And while ordoliberalism is often portrayed as a quintessentially German tradition, its impact has not been confined to the German context, extending all the way to the unlikely case of China. In short, ordoliberalism is a phenomenon of arguably considerable influence that remains poorly understood, as it is mystified by its proponents and vilified by its critics. The Oxford Handbook of Ordoliberalism contains a selection of chapters written by an international cast of experts on ordoliberalism that aim to elucidate and analyze the latter in all of its many facets. From the intellectual origins and prime exemplars to its main theoretical themes and practical applications up to the most recent debates taking place across a range of disciplines, this volume offers the first comprehensive account of ordoliberalism for the English-speaking world.

This book develops a theoretical and empirical argument about the disintegration of security communities, and the subsequent breakdown of stable peace among nations, through a process of norm degeneration. It draws together two key bodies of contemporary IR literature – norms and security communities – and brings their combined insights to bear on the empirical phenomenon of disintegration. The investigation of normative change in IR is becoming increasingly popular. Most studies, however, focus on its progressive connotation. The possibility of a weakening or even disappearance of an established peaceful normative order, by contrast, tends to be often either neglected or implicitly assumed. Normative Change and Security Community Disintegration: Undoing Peace advances the contemporary body of research on the important role of norms and ideas by analytically extending recent Constructivist arguments about international norm degeneration to the regional level and by applying them to a particular type of regional order – a security community.