The talk presents a critical review of current political economy scholarship on (economic) nationalism. In the first part, it discusses the traditional understanding of economic nationalism as protectionism, which has dominated in the discipline to this day. After outlining the weaknesses of this traditional approach, the second part of the talk addresses the recent constructivist turn in political economy scholarship on nationalism. While not without merits, this new constructivist approach has so far had little impact. I will argue that in order to make stronger ‘inroads’ in the discipline, the constructivist research agenda needs a much more thorough conceptual grounding and needs to widen its analytical focus through engagement with the work of historians, sociologists and scholars of nationalism studies.