An economic ideology that views the the state as an institution that offers an appropriate legal framework for the efficient functioning of the market economy. It emphasises that the state has a crucial role to play in fostering market competition, by preventing the rise of monopolies that can exert harmful economic and political power. At the same time, the state must also avoid distorting the free market. Ordoliberal principles, famously adopted by former German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, played a major role in the miraculous rise of the German economy in the post-Second World War era.
