Authoritarian Liberalism and the Transformation of Modern Europe

Michael A. Wilkinson is Associate Professor of Law at LSE. He has held visiting professorships at Cornell University, Paris II, the National University of Singapore, and the University of Keio. He teaches and researches in the areas of legal theory, constitutional theory and European integration. His recent publications include Questioning the Foundations of Public Law (Hart, 2018), Constitutionalism Beyond Liberalism (CUP, 2017), 'Beyond the Post-Sovereign State? On the Past, Present and Future of Constitutional Pluralism' (2019) Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies, and 'The Material Constitution' (2018) Modern Law Review. His work has been translated into Portuguese, Italian, Spanish and Turkish.

• Introduction Part I - Interwar: A Pre-History of Authoritarian Liberalism 1: Authoritarian Liberalism in Late Weimar 2: Beyond Weimar: The Long Crisis of Liberalism, the Political Economy of the Interwar Conjuncture and the Foundations of Neo-Liberalism Part II - Postwar Europe: The Reconstitution of Inter-State, State-Society, and Social Relations 3: Restraining State Sovereignty: Imagining a 'European Germany' 4: De-Democratization of the Political Constitution 5: The Economic Constitution: Ordoliberalism, Neo-liberalism, and the De-Radicalization of Political Opposition Part III - The Road from Maastricht to Lisbon: Constitutional Movements and Counter-Movements 6: Restraining State Sovereignty or the Return of the German Question? 7: The Post-Sovereign Constitution or the Return of Sovereignty? 8: The Material Constitution: There is No Alternative...Or is There? Part IV - Euro-crisis: The Unfinished Conjuncture 9: Authoritarian Liberalism Writ Large: The Spectre of a 'German Europe' 10: The New Constitutionalism and its Discontents 11: The Material Constitution in Crisis: Telos, Nomos, and Demos Conclusion

There has been much criticism of the EU's response to the euro crisis and the flawed architecture of the single currency itself. But Wilkinson demonstrates how the foundations for these problems were laid in the depoliticization that took place in the immediate postwar period, and have even deeper roots in the 'constitutional imagination' of the interwar period.