ABSTRACT
The OECD operates across a battery of policy areas and employs a variety of policy processes. However, the “kind of influence the organization exerts and the way it does so are little discussed and there is little scholarly literature about it.”1 This chapter elaborates a fourdimensional framework for understanding the OECD’s place in, and influence over, global governance. The model expounds upon what the OECD stands for, the objects that alter as a consequence of deliberations at the OECD, and how the organization promotes international cooperation to swell our capacity to manage our global affairs. The first dimension, cognitive governance, refers to the OECD as the
personification of a community of nations grounded in the belief that capitalist and democratic modes of governance are the optimum means of managing our collective affairs. The second dimension, normative governance, refers to the generation of shared knowledge and expected standards of behavior amongst those involved in OECD bodies and the bearing this has upon national and international policymaking. Evaluating the organization’s impact in this regard is something of a minefield as the purpose of OECD meetings is to consult and advise rather than issue directives. The parsimonious language of international diplomacy produces guidance and commitments susceptible to differing interpretations, making precise correlations between the OECD’s counsel and national economic policies difficult to ascertain. Moreover, disentangling the OECD’s influence from the many other drivers of norms and ideas would require a forensic examination of individual policy areas over a number of years. Nevertheless, this chapter will suggest there is some evidence to support assertions that the OECD’s ideas leach over a long period into national and international policymaking. The majority of OECD work remains consultative, but occasionally OECD members sanctify their consensus to give it additional moral force. The third, legal, dimension of OECD
governance refers to the passage of international law through the OECDCouncil. Predominantly the OECD produces “soft law” enforced through surveillance and peer review. The final dimension, palliative governance, sees the OECD as the masseur in global governance, dealing with difficult or neglected problems and drawing the sting from conflicts in other global institutions.
