The Return of Economic Nationalism to East Central Europe - a Model in Crisis?

The East Central European states owe much of their successful post-socialist recovery to an unprecedented level of economic internationalization. From their exposure to foreign investment and markets to their dependence on the EU funding, their economies had become deeply enmeshed with the transnational economic and regulatory networks. And yet in some of these economies the recent years have seen the return of strongly nationalist rhetoric in the economic sphere, with calls for greater control of the multinationals and attempts to revive a domestic capitalist class. This paper investigates the sources of this backlash, the actors involved in the drive for renationalization, and the strategies implemented by the national governments to balance their autonomist rhetoric with their dependence on external capital.