The rise of neoliberal nationalism

In the IPE literature, neoliberalism and nationalism have generally been portrayed as anti-thetical to one another. More recently, scholars have sought to challenge this binary view by examining how nationalists have employed neoliberal policies for nationalist reasons. However, while showing how neoliberal policies can be compatible with nationalist values, these approaches have not examined whether the reverse might also be true, whether certain nationalist policies (and discourses) might be genuinely compatible with neoliberal values. To address this gap in the literature, this paper makes two arguments. The first is that certain nationalist policies are not only compatible with neoliberal values, but that these values may actually be dependent on certain nationalist policies. The second argument made is that neoliberal nationalism may be on the rise due to a shift among social democratic forces from a broad strategy of economic nationalism to one of social democratic multilateralism. To demonstrate these points, the paper challenges the equation of neoliberalism with internationalism as well as showing why neoliberal nationalism is distinct from the nationalism of both populist and neoconservatives.