ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines Hayek's relationship with the Ordoliberals, and provides some emphasis on the welfare sentiments contained in The Road to Serfdom, which slowly eroded within the neoliberal collective as the Chicago School gained in influence. It also identifies the contradictions between neoliberal theory and practice, setting out that the reality has not necessarily been a smaller state. The neoliberal thinking that originated from interwar Germany, called Ordoliberalism for clarity, has until recently been often omitted from many books on both economic liberalism and Thatcherism. Public Choice theory extended Hayek's critique of the state and was called by the thinkers themselves the 'economics of politics'. The majority of the influential politicians of the time have written memoirs. The Austrian School will be shown to take a qualitative and normative approach that focuses on ideal, but dynamic, market processes.
