Nationalist in Motivation

Financial nationalism is first and foremost a nationalist project, which creates a different palette of likely policies and a different pattern of politics than other approaches do (Helleiner Reference Helleiner2002; Nakano Reference Nakano2004; Crane Reference Crane1998; Shulman Reference Shulman2000). Nationalism is a political ideology that places the collective interest of the home nation above that of the individual, other groups, and other nations. Nationalists draw contrasts between national insiders as opposed to “foreign” outsiders and identify both groups through collective rather than individual characteristics. Nationalists also typically identify a particular state or territory as the nation’s homeland and believe that members of the nation should exercise political sovereignty over that geographic region. The perceived geographic boundaries of the nation may encompass territories larger or smaller than existing state boundaries.

Furthermore, nationalists who identify with a particular state rarely consider all residents of that state to be members of the nation as well. Nationalists will typically identify specific individuals and groups as outsiders—that is, not legitimate members of the nation—because of transnational, ideological, ethnic, religious, or linguistic identities, relationships, or behaviors that nationalist elites perceive as antithetical to the nation. Similarly, external groups (such as coethnic diasporas) may be defined as national insiders and thus as potential beneficiaries of nationalist policies despite their physical location. Although nationalists may also be populists who express distrust of elites and expertise and claim to elevate “the people,” the two should not be conflated (Mudde Reference Mudde2004). Nationalism and populism coexist only to the extent that a particular nationalist ideology draws an insider/outsider distinction based on elite status.

The nationalist conception of the international political economy, therefore, differs from both the liberal and the developmentalist ones. Whereas liberalism views individuals and firms as the primary actors in the global economy, conceives of the economic arena as one of exchanges among those actors, and argues that voluntary exchange can make all participants better off, nationalists see nations as the primary actors and the rightful beneficiaries of government policies. Likewise, where developmentalism argues that each government needs to promote its own economy or leading sectors, nationalism argues that the nation rather than the state or any segment of it is the most relevant actor in the system and that economic policy should be in its service.

A nationalist approach to policy thus focuses on achieving relative gains for national insiders vis-à-vis outsiders and casts its criticism of alternative economic policies in the same language. Economic nationalists seek to align the economic position of the nation and its insiders with what they perceive to be the nation’s identity and rightful status. Economic nationalists might, for example, seek to reorient a country’s international economic relationships more toward regions, countries, and groups that they believe share broader identities, values, histories, and/or cultural attributes with their nation and away from those that do not (Abdelal Reference Abdelal2001; Köstem Reference Köstem2018a). Second, and related, economic nationalists believe in using economic institutions and policies to build national unity and to serve the nationalist cause (Nakano Reference Nakano2004). For example, economic nationalists might support the expropriation of foreign-owned companies in favor of national insiders, who in turn would be expected to use these companies not just to make money for themselves but to work collaboratively with other national insiders to advance the collective cause.

Clift and Woll (Reference Clift and Woll2012) have more broadly described the post-GFC reemergence of interventionism in economic policy making as economic patriotism, a term embraced by politicians as diverse as Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán and US Senator and former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren (see also Clift Reference Clift and Pickel2022). For Clift and Woll, economic patriotism “is agnostic about the precise nature of the unit claimed as patrie: it can also refer to supranational or sub-national economic citizenship” (307). It is therefore a more encompassing concept than economic nationalism. Both concepts, however, have at their core the ideological commitment to distinguish in-group from out-group members based on collective rather than individual characteristics and to pursue economic policies to privilege the in-group.

Orbán began using the term “economic patriotism” to describe his government’s policies as early as 2012, and he has called the 2008 global financial crisis a system-breaking event comparable in scale to World War I, World War II, and the collapse of the Soviet bloc (Orban Reference Orbán2014a). He boasted in his February 2014 State of the Nation address that “we have had enough of the politics that is forever concerned with how we might satisfy the West, the bankers, big capital and the foreign press…. Over the past four years we have overcome that … subservient mentality…. Hungary will not succumb again!” (Orban Reference Orbán2014b). More ominously, as he noted in 2016 in a special forum on economic patriotism, “People say that money doesn’t smell, but the owner of the money does” (Strzelecki Reference Strzelecki2016).

Such a nationalist (or patriotic) conception of political economy can inspire different measures of policy success and failure than other approaches, which may help sustain a nationalist leadership in times of trouble. Whereas developmentalist programs evaluate themselves based on economic growth or the success of particular industrial sectors, economic nationalism’s fundamental goal is to promote “the nation.” All economic programs eventually face downturns, which make them susceptible to political challenge. Economic nationalists reject such challenges on nationalist grounds; not only does the national purpose justify economic sacrifice, but downturns can be blamed on disloyal actors or on the calumny of other nations or international institutions.

Financial in Emphasis

Financial nationalism, as a subset of economic nationalism, intentionally leverages financial systems, institutions, and rules to pursue nationalist ends. Financial nationalists identify the use and control of central and commercial banks, state-owned and development banks, national currencies, monetary policy and exchange rates, portfolio and FDI flows, taxation, sovereign debt and lending, international reserves, financial regulation, and international financial institutions as tools through which to advance their goals. The approach thus differs from traditional models of developmentalism or state capitalism, as it does not inherently demand trade protectionism or require the state to own or fund large production enterprises.

Although financial nationalism has clear intellectual precedents in early nationalist debates over creating territorial currencies, building national public debt, dealing with foreign banks, and the strategic use of foreign borrowing (Helleiner and Wang Reference Helleiner and Wang2019), it has become increasingly salient as a response to financialization and financial globalization. Financialization, as explored in Krippner’s (Reference Krippner2005, Reference Krippner2012) now classic work, began in earnest in the 1980s in the United States and is the domestic process by which financial profit-making achieves increasing dominance over the “real” economy that produces and trades goods and services. Financial globalization, meanwhile, is the parallel international process by which countries have opened their financial systems to each other through mechanisms such as capital account liberalization, often through the encouragement of international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund. This went hand in hand with the US dollar’s increasing dominance in international accounting and transactions as well as the creation or further empowerment of an expansive range of international institutions, standards, and systems for facilitating cross-border financial flows. Financialization and financial globalization fed on and reinforced each other, profoundly transforming domestic and international economic relationships (Mader, Mertens, and Van Der Zwan Reference Mader, Mertens, Van Der Zwan, Mader, Mertens and Van Der Zwan2020).

This reciprocal process underwent a qualitative change in the 2000s as market-based banking (for example, shadow banking and direct financing through capital markets) took off and increasingly supplanted traditional bank-based lending, challenging domestic regulators and making the international financial system more vulnerable to crises (Hardie et al. Reference Hardie, Howarth, Maxfield and Verdun2013; Braun and Deeg Reference Braun and Deeg2020). In their influential work on the infrastructural power of finance, Braun and Gabor (Reference Braun, Gabor, Mader, Mertens and van der Zwan2020) argue that the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank worked with private actors to facilitate the rise of market-based banking, not only deeply entangling the state with international financial markets but also engendering central bank dependence on shadow banking for implementing and transmitting monetary policy. The active worldwide diffusion of the model of the independent central bank focused on price stability and inflation targeting reinforced such dynamics, as central bankers became less responsive to their own governments and more embedded in international financial networks (Johnson Reference Johnson2016). The global payments and clearing infrastructure that these international financial flows depend on is primarily provided by a handful of private companies (Brandl and Dieterich Reference Brandl and Dieterich2023). Financialization and financial globalization not only transformed economic relationships and deepened cross-border connections but also transferred power away from state institutions and actors while reinforcing the structural power of finance. As international financial flows became more intense and less connected to the real economy, they also became less likely to enhance economic growth and increased the likelihood of financial crises (Dafe et al. Reference Dafe, Hager, Naqvi and Wansleben2022).

For these reasons, although financialization and financial globalization have profoundly affected governance everywhere, these effects have been different and more challenging for developing and emerging economies (DEEs). Alami et al. (Reference Alami, Alves, Bonizzi, Kaltenbrunner, Koddenbrock, Kvangraven and Powell2023) identify DEEs as victims of international financial subordination, meaning “a spatial relation of domination, inferiority, and subjugation between different spaces across the world market, expressed in and through money and finance, which penalizes actors in DEEs disproportionately” (1379). International financial subordination, sometimes also referred to as dependent financialization, renders DEEs increasingly reliant on external capital markets and foreign financial institutions to finance domestic investment needs for everything from large companies to household mortgages. It complicates the ability of DEEs to conduct independent macroeconomic policies and to maintain financial stability. This financial dependence, openness, and integration easily transmits financial shocks to DEEs from the core and puts the burden of adjustment on DEEs (Bortz and Kaltenbrunner Reference Bortz and Kaltenbrunner2018), whereas global wealth chains transfer financial resources from DEEs to the core (Bonizzi, Kaltenbrunner, and Powell Reference Bonizzi, Kaltenbrunner and Powell2022).

The 2008 global financial crisis and its aftermath sparked nationalist challenges to this financial dominance and vulnerability in advanced industrial economies and DEEs alike, as the fact that a massive crisis could begin within the USA’s nearly unregulated shadow-banking realm and spread worldwide within a matter of months, destroying lives and wealth, undermined the legitimacy of the international financial system and put “apolitical” finance back on the political agenda. At the same time, the GFC provided opportunities and political cover for governments in DEEs to reorient their financial relationships and practices, as financial institutions from the wealthier economies pulled resources out of DEEs and leading central banks embraced “unorthodox” quantitative easing and financial stability policies. Although Gabor (Reference Gabor2021) and others have shown the persistence and evolution of financial globalization after the GFC, attempts to challenge it politically have evolved as well. Central and East European states have, for example, actively used macroprudential policy to manage the uneven effects of financial globalization and European integration (Piroska, Gorelkina, and Johnson Reference Piroska, Gorelkina and Johnson2021). As Dafe and Rethel (Reference Dafe and Rethel2022) observe, the contemporary centrality of finance in domestic and international political economies has made standard industry-focused development strategies relatively ineffective, forcing developmentalists to turn their focus to the financial sector.Footnote ¹ We argue that the same is true for economic nationalists, who have increasingly seen finance as the key economic sector that should reflect the nation’s identity and advance the nationalist cause.

Illiberal in Conception

Although nationalist ideas have historically inspired economic policies across the ideological spectrum (Mikecz Reference Mikecz2019; Abdelal Reference Abdelal2001; Helleiner Reference Helleiner2002; Pickel Reference Pickel2003) and economic nationalism itself has diverse roots and forms (Helleiner Reference Helleiner2021), the dominant form of financial nationalism today is self-consciously illiberal. That is, contemporary financial nationalism is an expression not only of support for “the nation” but also of opposition to the international liberal order. As such, it received a strong political boost from the global financial crisis and first emerged as a leading political contender in Central and Eastern Europe, where externally driven financialization had progressed the farthest (Karwowski Reference Karwowski2022) and the idea that the allegedly unbiased rules of market economies were actually tools of Western dominance had historical resonance. Financial nationalism’s latest illiberal iteration arose as a reaction to the perceived failure of the post-1945 Western-led “coalition for economic openness” (Fioretos Reference Fioretos2019) and its financial institutions, norms, and practices that spurred unprecedented levels of financial globalization. The global financial crisis and its aftermath provided fertile soil for criticism of the dominant international liberal order and made challenging or even overturning it newly “thinkable” and attractive.

Contemporary financial nationalists view with deep skepticism the claims of transnational expert communities that open financial policies benefit all players and reward innovation and efficiency. Indeed, these politicians express doubt that economic liberalism truly motivates any governments or technocrats in practice. They argue that these actors are cynical, knowing that their allegedly universalist policies benefit their own countries at the expense of others. As a Polish politician put it, “Rich countries have already reached the peak of their development, and now they are defending deregulation, a liberal approach and globalization because it is good for them” (Foy Reference Foy2016). Advocates of today’s illiberal version of financial nationalism see it as a way to circumvent the unjust constraints of the international liberal order. Illiberal financial nationalism is an ideology of challenge and of change, which is why it is often imbued with populism and is especially attractive to DEEs in positions of international financial subordination.

When speaking to external audiences, illiberal financial nationalists may argue that their policies are fundamentally no different from those of so-called liberal states that regularly intervene in markets. Virtually every government engages in at least some financially “heterodox” policies. Few currencies float entirely freely, and most states pursue domestic monetary sovereignty. Furthermore, states often try to insulate their economies, firms, and citizens from the periodic shocks inherent in global capitalism. Indeed, the major reactions to each financial crisis since the Great Depression can be seen as attempts to protect market participants and the liberal system itself from catastrophic meltdowns: bank recapitalization, deposit insurance, laws on financial prudence, and the adoption or abandonment of currency pegs are just a few examples. The introduction of these policies may even include some us-versus-them language, and leaders may speak about their domestic economies as if they were competing with similar units around the world.

It is important to recognize, however, that such “ordinary illiberalism” is not framed in terms of nationality or national purpose. Illiberal financial nationalism, in contrast, is justified as protecting “the nation,” not just the domestic economy, and goes well beyond pursuing monetary sovereignty or providing insurance for those caught in a financial crash (Varga Reference Varga2021). Advocates of illiberal financial nationalism replace the Marxist argument that the international liberal order serves capitalists with the nationalist argument that the international liberal order serves unworthy nations, often the United States, those in “the West,” or particular ethnic or religious groups (see Lockwood Reference Lockwood2021).

Domestic Political Power

A foundational requirement for carrying out illiberal financial nationalist policies is gaining political control over the domestic levers necessary to enact and execute those policies. In the policy-making arena, this means dominating the legislature (or its equivalent) as well as marginalizing any liberal opposition. In the executive branch, the most important agencies are the central bank and such ministries as finance and economics, which enable financial nationalists to shape banking and currency policy. In addition, some illiberal financial nationalists must influence the judiciary to stave off challenges to their policies. As Karas (Reference Karas2022) demonstrates, in Hungary this process involved the Orbán government’s creation of a “financial vertical” that consolidated state control over the central bank, credit provision, and domestic financial institutions. Persuasively arguing that having a subordinate position in the international financial system does not mean that domestic actors lack agency in confronting it, he shows that Orbán was able to turn Hungary’s financialized system to his own political and economic ends.

In practice, the pursuit of this political efficacy has led to creeping authoritarianism wherever it has been attempted, even where financial nationalists originally came to power in democratic elections including in Hungary (Piroska Reference Piroska and Pickel2022), Poland (Jasiecki Reference Jasiecki, Bluhm and Varga2018), and Turkey (Apaydin and Çoban Reference Apaydin and Çoban2023). Illiberal financial nationalist policies are based on an exclusionary version of nationalism and frequently entail major changes in privileges and practices within the financial sector. This means that the nationalists are challenging significant vested interests and they regularly seek ways to circumvent those interests. Importantly, opposition to financial nationalist policies is not likely to come from a broad alliance of citizens, who may be indifferent to or supportive of them. Instead, resistance is more likely to come from technocrats, bureaucrats, foreigners, and established financial actors who stand to lose from the changes. In Poland, for example, domestic banks were able to block forced forex loan exchange programs at least temporarily. Generally, however, financial nationalism often benefits important domestic interests and politicians’ nationalist rhetoric can be a powerful political tool for staving off challenges.

Sources of Financing

Like any other government, one that hopes to pursue illiberal financial nationalist policies needs reliable sources of financing. In today’s world, that requires interacting in meaningful ways with the existing global financial system, even as these governments deride, deflect, or try to change that system. Thus, although illiberal financial nationalism positions itself in opposition to the universalist claims of the international liberal order, it is also fundamentally shaped by its emergence from within that order. Just as financialization makes it possible to create a domestic “financial vertical” (Karas Reference Karas2022), financial globalization and its institutions not only constrain the policy options of illiberal financial nationalists but also provide opportunities for them to draw on transnational financial resources and institutions to advance their nationalist cause. Illiberal financial nationalists must strategically deploy international relationships to benefit national insiders and their allies, and in fact successful financial nationalist strategies are often actively enabled by the liberal international institutions.

The most general source of external funding for governments is the international bond market. It may seem counterintuitive that international lenders would tolerate financial nationalist policies and the undemocratic politics they often entail, but in practice those lenders appear to be concerned almost entirely about borrowers’ ability and willingness to make bond payments on time. That is, as a group, bond traders behave as if they have a single-minded commitment to returns relative to risk, without much regard for political openness, nationalist policy goals, or even negative treatment of foreign-owned financial institutions (Mosley Reference Mosley2003; Johnson and Barnes Reference Johnson and Barnes2015; Barta and Johnston Reference Barta and Johnston2023). This does place constraints on DEE governments in particular—they must maintain a manageable level of inflation and enough fiscal discipline to ensure timely payments on sovereign debt—but otherwise, practical restrictions are few. Access to the international bond market requires that the government’s fiscal and monetary policies be seen as at least minimally “credible” (Grittersová Reference Grittersová2017). Moreover, in a world with permeable financial borders, monetary instability would invite the informal replacement of domestic currency with foreign, undermining monetary sovereignty. Successful contemporary financial nationalist governments can therefore be expected to pursue baseline orthodox goals, even if by unorthodox means. Financial nationalist governments may reject the logic of austerity and the self-imposed chains of conservative central banking, but successfully achieving monetary sovereignty, privileging national financial institutions, and promoting one’s own financial institutions or currency abroad requires a certain restraint, predictability, and stability in critical monetary and fiscal indicators. Thus, the internal goal of monetary sovereignty in an external environment of financial globalization creates pressure to achieve relatively orthodox outcomes in terms of controlling inflation as well as public debt and deficits.Footnote ⁴ Indeed, Hungary’s failure to do so after the 2020 COVID shock and subsequent election-related spending made the Orbán government’s economic model vulnerable for the first time since its consolidation over a decade ago.

A more geographically limited source of finance is direct support from an economic bloc. Countries in the European Union, for example, can take advantage of the Structural and Cohesion Funds to bridge budget deficits, even if leading members of the bloc oppose financial nationalist policies (Bozóki and Hegedűs Reference Bozóki and Hegedűs2018). The process for gaining access to such funds, and even the ability to do so, is determined by individual blocs’ rules of governance and their internal distributions of political power, but to date, no state has been effectively excluded from these resources because of its economic policy choices. Hungary and Poland remained net recipients of funding from the EU even as the union finally began to impose sanctions in response to corruption and violations of democratic principles. Governments need only meet the macroeconomic standards of the bloc, reinforcing the pressure to keep inflation, debt, and deficits under control to pursue financial nationalism successfully.

A third source of external finance is trade and selective permission for foreign direct investment. This too seems to depend much more on investors’ perception of risk and return than on the broader policy environment, including questions of civil liberties. Even international efforts to sanction particular countries do not effectively shut off access to external investments if the lure of returns is sufficient. The key for the financial nationalist government is to actively guide the terms and timing of these financial inflows and outflows such that foreign investment cannot lead to outsider control over major domestic financial institutions or corporations, establish major foreign-owned competitors to them, or become so dominant that unexpected outflows would lead to financial crisis. In this way, contemporary financial nationalist governments can leverage international capital to suit their own strategic purposes.

Finally, select countries may have the internal resources to self-finance. This is easiest in countries with large domestic economies and/or significant natural resources, such as Russia or China. As with the other options, a successful financial nationalist government will need to participate in the international financial system sufficiently reliably to exchange payments with international buyers and their banks, but as long as it meets those minimum requirements, it will have significant leeway in structuring its domestic financial sector.

Position in the International System

Even if domestic political power and sources of financing are secured, a government’s ability to pursue or even sensibly contemplate illiberal financial nationalist policies is affected by its position in the international financial system. Murau and van’t Klooster (Reference Murau and van’t Klooster2023) have introduced the concept of “effective monetary sovereignty” to capture what states under conditions of financial globalization are actually able to do. They define effective monetary sovereignty as “the state’s ability to use its tools for monetary governance to achieve its economic policy objectives” (1328), which involves state monetary governance over “not only the issuance of public money forms, but also governance of regulated banks and unregulated money forms, onshore and offshore” (1320). States with more privileged positions in the international hierarchy of money simply have more policy space. For example, the government of a small DEE state cannot realistically consider external revisionist policies, regardless of how consolidated its power is at home. The options open to a regional or global financial powerhouse, in contrast, are more considerable, as they can try to insist that certain trades be conducted in their own currency, that bank transactions take place through their preferred payment systems, and so on. The concerns of financial nationalists in these countries may be thought of in terms of two ideal types. The first, as in Russia, see their nation as disadvantaged by the Western-dominated international financial order and seek to create an alternative that at least puts them on an even footing with other powerful states. The second, more paradoxically, are financial nationalists in core countries of the international financial system like the United States, whose predecessors helped create the current international order and whose citizens benefitted from it for many decades but who nonetheless believe that the system at present disadvantages their nation. Regardless of the nature of the grievance, weakening or destroying the current order is easier than constructing a new one, which only the revisionists in China, discussed in more detail below, currently seem to appreciate.

Combination and Directionality

These resources and constraints combine to produce a certain directionality to illiberal financial nationalist approaches. Having first established a modicum of political control, politicians can be expected to begin their efforts in the upper-left quadrant of Table 2: internal insulating policies are the cornerstone of illiberal financial nationalism. Not only are they often the easiest to implement, but they create the preconditions for successfully pursuing the other three approaches. In Hungary, for example, among the Orbán government’s early targets was the National Bank of Hungary, and the Law and Justice government in Poland likewise used its initial electoral victory to begin taking de facto control over key financial-sector institutions, including the National Bank, the Financial Supervision Authority, and the Finance Ministry (Johnson and Barnes Reference Johnson and Barnes2015).

If they have enough practical power to implement internal insulating policies, illiberal financial nationalist governments may also try to move toward internal revisionist policies and/or toward external insulating ones. The types of policies a particular state emphasizes will depend on the content of its nationalism as well as on the political and economic resources available to it.

To pursue internal revisionist policies, illiberal financial nationalists need a domestic governing coalition that can overcome the objections of holders of foreign currency assets as well as the advocates of such principles as central bank independence. In an era of nationalist ascendency and antiliberal sentiment, it may be relatively easy to garner support for forcing existing foreign-owned banks out of the country, transitioning from majority foreign to majority insider control, and applying new discriminatory financial and access policies. A central bank might be portrayed as an agent of foreign ideas, making bringing it under state control widely palatable at home. Somewhat more difficult may be the mandatory conversion of existing foreign-currency instruments to domestic currency, which multinationals may resist, even if they are domestically owned. There are multiple ways to overcome opposition to such policies, however, including beginning with foreign holders of assets, focusing on politically unpopular actors such as oligarchs or natural-resource exporters, and/or buying off domestic opponents.

If the government can secure the financial wherewithal to support it, it may be possible to increase state ownership of banks or create national development banks that can be used to fund their preferred projects. The government may also privilege national as opposed to international regulatory, clearing, settlement, audit, ratings, or accounting bodies when it believes that doing so will not undermine insider financial institutions. The Reserve Bank of India, for example, has taken this approach by requiring that payment-system data be stored in India, an obvious hurdle for international companies like GooglePay and a boon for such Indian companies as JioMoney (Chacko Reference Chacko2021). Similarly, the Russian government established its own National Card Payment System in June 2014 and began processing payments through it in February 2015 (Krivobok Reference Krivobok2014). Advertisements for the new “MIR” bank card associated with the National Card Payment System assured users, “Your card is free from external factors. Created in Russia” (RFE/RL 2017). In addition, the Central Bank of Russia created a new, Russian-controlled credit-rating agency, the Analytical Credit Rating Agency, in November 2015 (see Analytical Credit Rating Agency 2024). These kinds of policies all depend on access to capital, and, ironically, the institutions and practices of the liberal international financial order help make them available.

External insulating policies require slightly different capacities, beginning with the ability to influence the decision making of external actors. No leader of a small economy, at least without a globally important sector, can hope to persuade international actors to abide by significant restrictions on currency use and investment flows. In contrast, a regional hegemon with an enormous hydrocarbons export sector like Russia can pursue external insulating financial policies far more effectively than a Poland or a Hungary. The Russian government, for example, used the money it raised during the oil boom of the early 2000s to pay off nearly all of its public foreign-currency debt (Johnson and Köstem Reference Johnson and Köstem2016). Another prong of the Russian government’s external insulating financial nationalism has been its concerted effort to promote rubles rather than US dollars in export contract quotation and settlement, an effort that began to bear fruit beginning in 2018 (Central Bank of Russia 2021). The changes have varied across regions, but Russia is steadily reducing its dollar-based trade. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the ensuing international sanctions have only reinforced these earlier trends.

External revisionism is no mean feat. To even consider pursuing it, a government must already have successfully implemented policies from the other three quadrants. Furthermore, an external revisionist state needs the domestic power and international influence that can only reasonably be expected of a regional or global hegemon. Would-be external revisionists believe that because the global liberal financial order does not benefit the nation, it should be upended and transformed everywhere. Doing so, however, requires resources beyond the reach of most countries. In terms of the domestic political economy, these governments need the political strength and acumen to take on potential opponents directly as well as the macroeconomic conditions and tools to discourage or block rapid financial outflows.Footnote ⁵ Creating an international development bank, for example, requires start-up capital, multiple members, a good reason to join, and a credible pledge to exist for the long term. A system for verifying interstate banking transactions requires analogous capacities. A single state with the initial investment, a large domestic market, and the ability to monitor and enforce compliance has an enormous head start toward creating such an institution that others might join, and if it can also punish them for not joining, so much the better. As discussed in the next section, Russia is the country currently pursuing external revisionist financial nationalism most insistently, although China has the capacity to do so, and nationalist-driven sentiment for an overhaul is a significant political force in the United States, as well.