Social Market Economy and Human Rights: A Global Perspective

The question of a regulatory model’s normative alignment of the social market economy has been posed at regular intervals for a good 70 years. It has always reflected the effort to find a compromise, to reconcile the constant opposition between a free market and rigorous state counteraction. At the core is to weigh the exact degree to which an individual’s negative freedoms must recede in relation to a guarantee of social standards. The extent of response has varied with the structural challenges and social issues of its time. And the answer is usually based on a certain normative concept, a set of values or ethical catalogues for the sake of which and according to which the market economy is to be contained – a necessity, as will become apparent. In this chapter, the idea of human rights and its manifestations will be examined to see to what extent they are suitable as such a normative concept to guide the model of a social market economy. As a result, three main arguments will be put forward that can support such an approach. First, the supranational consensus character that underlies human rights, then the unique integration of law and morality that I call the dialectic of human rights and, finally, the idea of a third way between liberalism and social participation that is as integral to human rights as it is to the concept of the social market economy.