ABSTRACT
This chapter ponders the OECD's future, a fate intertwined with wider debates about the destiny of multilateralism and the liberal international economic order. Three different scenarios are considered. The first scenario suggests that the OECD is already in the grips of a self-fulfilling spiral of decline, its death warrant signed by inexorable shifts in the global balance of power. The second scenario envisages the emergence of a successor organization in a world fragmenting into coexisting spheres of influence. The third scenario anticipates the OECD's survival as part of a liberal order that evolves to contain the rising powers. In this view, the OECD's bureaucratic assets and institutional temperament will allow it to adjust to external environmental challenges, thereby sustaining its relevance to twenty-first century global governance.
