Following decades of financial liberalisation, the 2008 crisis has resulted in a resurgence of interest in statist industrial policies for climate mitigation and structural transformation amongst policymakers and academics. This is especially so in the area of finance as the benefits of liberalisation and deregulation have come into question, activist policies to direct credit and ‘renationalise’ finance are once again being seen as vital to fixing market failures. Yet little is known about the feasibility of such reforms following over three decades of financial globalisation, which has created a hostile international financial architecture, and strengthened domestic interests opposed to financial interventionism. 

This project develops a novel analytical framework to explain the conditions under which previously liberalised developing countries reassert public control over their financial sectors, for the purposes of industrial policy and climate mitigation, despite domestic and external constraints. This is done through comparative case studies of the use of interventionist financial policies including state-owned development banks, interest rate controls, and credit quotas, in Brazil, South Africa, Bolivia, and Ecuador from the 1980s to the 2010s. 

By incorporating insights from political science, development studies, and development, international, and post-Keynesian economics, the project contributes to the knowledge on the influence of the financial sector on policymaking, and reconsiders the conclusions of the developmental state and industrial policy literature in light of globalisation. The findings should provide valuable insights not only to scholars working on development and financial reform, but also for policymakers in national governments, international organisations, and development banks. 

It fulfils the goals of ISRF through innovative theorisation of the sources of financial sector influence over policymaking, and addressing real world problems of lack of democratic control over national financial policies, and a financial system that hinders rather than helps development, and the limits to reform under globalisation.