Campaigning on expertise: how the OECD framed EU welfare and labour market policies - and why success could trigger failure

Abstract

This article explains how the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) assumed a leadership role in creating and disseminating liberal welfare reform and labour market policy proposals between 1994 and 2001. The article first sketches the increased Europeanization of welfare and labour market policies throughout the 1990s. The second part examines how international organizations such as the OECD influence agenda-setting at different levels of policy-making by providing a controlled environment for the creation, development and dissemination of political discourse. The OECD’s influence on policy-making can be explained through an analysis of the specific features of its 'organizational discourse', dominated by liberal economists, and characterized by the exclusion of interest groups. The third part takes the OECD Jobs Study (1994) as an exemplary case of its organizational discourse and demonstrates how the OECD utilized this study to bridge the gap between abstract liberal economic beliefs and concrete agenda-setting efforts. It underlines the high degree of influence of the Jobs Study on the EU’s subsequent European Employment Strategy (EES). The conclusion poses the question: to what extent could the OECD's 'campaigning on expertise' potentially weaken its long-term institutional interests if the EU chooses to 'take over' OECD discourses wholesale - thereby leaving less organizational space for the OECD in the future?