‘Hermann Heller and the E uropean Crisis: Authoritarian Liberalism Redux?’

This essay tentatively buttresses A lexander S omek's view that H ermann H eller's 1933 essay, ‘ A uthoritarian L iberalism’, provides a useful starting point for thinking about the ongoing E uropean crisis, in which E uropean authorities are favouring rigid austerity and pro‐business policies while undermining basic liberal and democratic rights. Heller's unfortunate neglect, especially in Anglophone scholarship, is discussed. N onetheless, Somek and other recent scholars who have turned to Heller to make sense of the E uropean crisis downplay some of the tough questions raised by any attempt to apply H eller's analysis of the W eimar crisis to the contemporary setting. In particular, H eller's theory relied on a robust social democratic statism which has become increasingly unpopular even among theorists on the political left.