Anghel Rugina's major contribution to social economics is that he keeps the paradigm of a social market economy evolving by promoting thought‐provoking dialogues. In that role, he is functioning as part of the spiral of the Helgelian dialectical process, where the interaction of thesis and antithesis leads to a new synthesis, by utilising his methodology of the orientation table and his new research programme. In Rugina's words: “I attempted to complete as far as possible the work of Walter Eucken (the Freiburg School) and that of Leon Walras (the Lausanne School)”. Rugina claims that he has discovered a new general paradigm which has the potential of replacing all other paradigms by unifying them in his “new research programme”.