There is a growing awareness of the intimate connection between liberal ideology and what has been called “the European miracle” — that is, the breakthrough to sustained economic growth that has characterized Europe and its offshoots around the world, including America.3 After decades of enormous effort devoted to scrutinizing the history of socialist fantasies, scholars seem to be waking up to the need to examine in greater depth the institutional foundations of our own society and at the same time the ideas that accompanied the evolution of those institutions.
