The paper asks whether Walter Eucken, the founder of German ordoliberalism, should be considered to be a proponent of authoritarian liberalism. That term originally refers to a proposal for economic liberalization advanced by Carl Schmitt in 1932. Authoritarian liberalism also could be taken to mean that Eucken favors the rule of law and economic freedoms, but rejects democratic decision making. Both possible meanings are considered. We show that Eucken is not a representative of authoritarian liberalism in either sense of the term. While Eucken and Schmitt offer similar descriptions of the entanglement of state and economy in Weimar Germany, their proposed solutions are rather different. With regard to the second meaning, we argue that Eucken’s critique of democracy refers to two universally recognized problems of democratic decision making, namely interest group influence and the tyranny of the majority.

该论文提出德国的自由主义的创始人沃尔特·欧肯（Walter Eucken）是否应被视为威权主义的拥护者。该术语最初指的是卡尔·史密特（Carl Schmitt）在1932年提出的经济自由化提案。专制自由主义也可以被认为是欧肯赞成法治和经济自由，但拒绝民主决策。考虑了两种可能的含义。我们表明，无论从哪种意义上来说，欧肯都不是威权自由主义的代表。尽管Eucken和Schmitt对德国魏玛国家与经济的纠缠进行了类似的描述，但他们提出的解决方案却大不相同。关于第二个含义，我们认为，欧肯对民主的批评是指两个普遍公认的民主决策问题，