The Future Direction of the African Human Rights System

Abstract

It was that leading Ordoliberal scholar¹ Wilhelm Ropke who, commenting on why measures to tackle the Great Depression of the 1930s failed, noted that although the problem was cast as a failure of international trade, the solution lay in the opening of markets at the national level. It was only when this was done that the numerous international conferences organized by the leading statesmen and bankers at the time would have any meaningful impact on the lives of people.² Ropke and other Ordoliberals did not mean to denigrate internationalism; what they did set out to achieve however was to underscore the point that international efforts alone to revive the world economy without similar national measures would achieve nothing. The national and international were connected, welded together as one whole and any international measures to end the Depression were bound to fail. Thus liberalism that began from below was the solution to durable liberalism above.