As legal theorist David Gerber notes, this notion "turned the core idea of classical liberalism … on its head by arguing that the effectiveness of the economy depended on its relationship to the political and legal systems." Although early ordoliberal work during the Nazi period gave primacy to a strong state as the promoter of such an order, this view changed over time—and circumstance—to the position that economic policy should not be dictated by a strong state, especially one that could be captured. Rather, the state needed to be strong enough only to provide an "order," an Ordo, and a consequent Ordnungspolitik, an "order-based policy," whereby the legal framework governing action both by firms and the state together forms the economic constitution critical, according to the Freiburgers, to any successful economy. Ordnungspolitik therefore restrains both the state that practices it, and the private sector that grows within it, through the indirect regulation of the economic constitution.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 362