Renationalizing Finance in the Global South

Why do some global south governments rein in private finance and renationalize their financial sectors, while others cede control over resource allocation to private financial actors? Following decades of financial liberalization, the state has made a comeback. Yet little is known about the feasibility of statist financial policies after thirty years of globalization, which has created a hostile international financial system and strengthened domestic interests opposed to state activism. Renationalizing Finance in the Global South traces developmentalist governments' successful and unsuccessful attempts to renationalize finance, arguing that important shifts in international finance, including the global financial and commodity boom and the rise of new official creditors such as China, temporarily relaxed external constraints and expanded developmental possibilities during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Whether governments exploit these favourable conditions depends on the balance of power between the state and private financial actors. Developmentalist policymakers are likely to ignore disinvestment threats and increase state control of finance when the national economy is resilient to capital flight and external financial resources are readily available, and vice versa. Drawing on over 150 interviews used for process tracing in structured comparisons of Brazil, South Africa, Bolivia, and Ecuador, this book challenges conventional wisdom about how globalization and the structural power of finance limit policy autonomy, and it sheds fresh light on the prospects for state-led development in the twenty-first century.