The social market economy: birth of an economic style

This paper relates the political decision-process which allowed Germany to transform its planned economic system into a Social Market Economy after the Second WorldWar. The central problem of the paper is to understand how the Social MarketEconomy emerged in Germany. Was it primarily an imported model of organization of the society and of the economy, or did it evolve mainly from the political and economical history of Germany. The argument of the paper is that the choice for aliberal market economy did not come naturally to Germany: the industrialization of Germany and the economical and political constraints that Germany faced after the war shaped a critical juncture which allowed a "liberal revolution.