National Sovereignty and European Order in Wilhelm Röpke’s Economic Thought

The aim of this article is to learn a historical lesson from Wilhelm Röpke’s attempt to determine the appropriate relationship between national sovereignty and international order, thereby mitigating, if not resolving, the dilemma that still afflicts Europe. Röpke believed that the limitation of national sovereignty should take place through informal international rules that safeguard the market and, in Europe, by means of a light federalism such as that of Switzerland, which transforms powerful nation states into cantons.