Fourth, the postwar political party system was a mess, and the center parties, particularly the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) were looking for a new set of ideas that spoke to their (predominantly) Catholic members' conceptions of their interests. With its appeal to community, its distrust of private as well as public power, and its somewhat reluctant—but necessary given the conditions of the times—acceptance of welfare state redistribution through the family, ordoliberalism found both a willing audience and a launch vehicle in the CDU.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 369