The Diversity of Economic Nationalism

The growing political salience of economic nationalism after the 2008 financial crisis has strengthened arguments made in pre-crisis political economy (PE) scholarship about the enduring importance of this ideology and the need for more study of the economic significance of nationalism and national identities. Scholarship on this topic suffers, however, from some blindspots that inhibit understanding of the two most systemically important strands of this ideology in recent years: those associated with American populist conservatism and Chinese developmentalism. Both can be described as neomercantilist forms of economic nationalism, a form most commonly identified with the ideas of Friedrich List. But List’s ideas are much less useful for understanding them than the distinctive ideas of two other historical thinkers – Henry Carey and Sun Yat-sen – who have been quite neglected in PE scholarship on economic nationalism. These empirical blindspots are related to two deeper conceptual ones: insufficient recognition of the diverse origins and content of neomercantilist economic nationalism and, in the case of Sun’s neglect, the Western-centric nature of PE’s intellectual history. If these blindspots can be overcome, PE scholars will be better positioned to interpret these – and other – diverse varieties of contemporary economic nationalism.