Abstract
Economic nationalism is traditionally seen as the protectionist anti-thesis of economic globalisation. Recent revisionist scholarship has exposed the flaws of this traditional approach but has not been able to challenge the latter’s dominance in the field. The article argues that the root cause of these problems lies in the narrow international political economy focus of the economic nationalism concept, and it advocates replacing the concept with a broader framework for the study of nationalism in political economy. Systematically drawing on nationalism studies, the article first discusses the most commonly adopted approach to nationalism as an ideological programme. Different versions of this approach are mapped, and particular emphasis is placed on the need to pay closer attention to the hitherto neglected domestic community aspect. In a second step, three other, less explored approaches are introduced, namely nationalism as political movement, as political discourse, and as everyday sentiment. These approaches are conceptually demarcated from an ideology-focused paradigm, and their relevance and research potential for political economists are highlighted. While diluting the classic focus on international economic order, the framework embeds scholarship on the nationalism-economy nexus in a broader field of studies at the intersection between constructivist political economy and nationalism studies.
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Notes
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The framework also lacks analytical clarity in its conceptual relationship between ‘discourse’, and ‘ideology/doctrine’ – on the one hand, Pickel emphasises ‘ideology/doctrine’ as a distinct analytical pathway, but, on the other hand, he argues that nationalism ‘should be understood primarily as a generic discursive structure, rather than a substantive doctrine’ (Pickel 2003: 115).
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In the case of cultural nationalism, the argument for a separate concept is made on the grounds that it focuses on moral community building rather than the political demand for territorial self-governance (see Woods 2016).
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This understanding differs from a historically influential pejorative notion of ideology as ‘false consciousness’, as well as from poststructuralist approaches, which conceptualise ideologies holistically as truth regimes underlying taken-for-granted notions of ‘common sense’ (see Norval 2012).
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I do not suggest that nationalist political discourse should be dismissed as ‘cheap talk’ – indeed, its significance will be explored in more detail in a separate section. It is crucial, however, to analytically demarcate this discourse approach from an understanding of nationalism as a purpose-driven ideological programme.
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So far, few economic nationalism scholars have adopted a comparative frame of analysis (Abdelal 2001; Woo-Cumings 1999; D’Costa 2012), and these comparisons are usually grounded in region-specific contextual patterns, rather than systematically related to established comparative frameworks in either political economy or nationalism studies.
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Breuilly (1993: 9) additionally includes ‘unification’ movements as a separate third type. Such movements are left out of consideration here.
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I would like to thank Vera Scepanovic, Niels Oellerich, Jasper Simons, and three anonymous referees for helpful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this manuscript.
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Fetzer, T. Beyond ‘economic nationalism’: towards a new research agenda for the study of nationalism in political economy. J Int Relat Dev 25, 235–259 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-021-00227-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-021-00227-x