Manufacturing a German Model of Liberal Capitalism: The Political Economy of the German Cartel Law in the Early Postwar Period

Abstract

This article examines the West German cartel policy process during the early 1950s. Decartelization was one of the top priority agendas of the United States, which was operating as a new stabilizer of bourgeois Europe during this time. The combined efforts of Americans and their German allies to liberalize Germanys organized capitalism met with fierce resistance from both much of the business community and ordinary Germans. It took almost a decade for the Germans to conclude a cartel law, and it was a political process wherein different sectors of industry, Christian Democrats, and U.S. policymakers interacted with each other. A jointed approach that combines two-level games and sectoral analysis is useful to understanding the divergence of decartelization and deconcentration in Germany, which had the effect of watering down the original cartel law. The German experience provides a case of embedding liberalism into an illiberal social purpose that was to maintain cooperation within the markets.