Banking on the Nation: How Four Danish Central Bank Governors Used and Reproduced the Logics of National Identity

In this article, I analyse the narratives of four Danish central bank governors from the late nineteenth century until the mid-1990s. By conducting a historical analysis informed by neo-institutional theory, I show how these central bank governors were continuously involved in public debates over the appropriateness and desirability of their decisions and policies. In these debates, interpretations and reproductions of Danish national identity were central to the governors’ claims to legitimacy. I argue that past narratives of the Danish central bank and its governors enabled and framed future legitimacy claims and that the central bank and its governors gradually became embedded in national identity. Thus, the article highlights the historical development of the co-configuring relationship between Danish national identity and the legitimacy of monetary organization.