The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (Oecd) by Richard Woodward

Author:Richard Woodward [Woodward, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, International Relations, Trade & Tariffs
ISBN: 9780415371988
Google: u1n8nQEACAAJ
Goodreads: 6796337
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2009-01-15T11:53:08+00:00

Conclusion

At a symposium marking the OECD’s thirtieth anniversary Sylvia Ostry, head of the Department of Economics and Statistics from 1979 to 1983, pronounced that “a great advantage of the OECD is that it has no power but great influence.”79 While the OECD has no troops to deploy and does not lend money with menaces, the notion that the organization has influence is prima facie verification that it does wield some power in global governance. Furthermore, states hardly clamor to bankroll otiose institutions, suggesting the OECD does, in modern parlance, “add value” to our ability to manage our common affairs. The OECD spurns the limelight but invisibility does not mean impotence. Throughout the Cold War the OECD and its members upheld capitalism and democracy as the mainstays of global governance. The triumph and continued success of the “OECD world” bolstered these values as the finest foundations for global governance and something to which others should aspire. Because it is the largest international economic organization predicated exclusively on capitalist and democratic principles, belonging to the OECD is a badge of honor bestowed on states that embrace and seek to export values offering the optimum route to peace and prosperity.

The “ongoing process of organized cooperation”80 in OECD bodies, including data production, information exchange, conceptual innovation, policy analysis, and policy learning through surveillance and peer review sounds prosaic. These consultations do not lead to overnight resolutions but over a long period of time the values, ideas, and principles agreed at the OECD become norms which percolate the national and international policymaking circuitry. Occasionally, the members take their consensus one stage further, enacting formal legal agreements whose strictures signatories are duty-bound to implement. Lastly, without the OECD the wider processes of global governance would hurriedly atrophy. As well as being a dustbin for awkward international issues, the normative and legal consensus developed at the OECD regularly becomes the basis for formal treaties negotiated in other global institutions. The OECD has an enviable record of developing, or helping other institutions to develop, ideas, norms and rules to govern a medley of economic and social issues. The next chapter looks in detail at some of the pressing issues presently under the OECD microscope.

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