Morphet, JR; (2015) The EU and the OECD: combining interests to rescale the state. In: Proceedings of the Global Governance Transformed: Explaining the Nexus between the EU and International Organizations 2015. Queen Mary University of London: London,UK.

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Abstract

The OECD is a soft power membership organization that supports policy change in its membership through a variety of means including economic comparisons, policy reviews and benchmarking between its members. As an organization with a primarily economic focus, the OECD has developing its policy range into associated areas including education, through the PISA rankings and through LEED – local economic and employment development. The role of OECD LEED policy has gained in prominence as it has espoused Krugman’s new economic policies and the new economic geography (Krugman 1991; 2011) has focussed on the social, sustainable and efficiency arguments of functional economic areas. This has been further enhanced through a drive towards rescaling states to align governance to FEAs rather than traditional administrative boundaries (Ahrend, R. et al 2014). In policy terms this is being encouraged through the better life Index for FEAs launched in 2013 (Brezzi et al 2013), on the 50th anniversary of the OECD and has now been used for similar governance scales by the World Bank (2010). The EU has also been enrolled in this policy delivery. It has engaged in development of FEAs policies with the OECD (2013) and implementation of FEA special and economic policies through the revision of the Cohesion Regulation 1303 2013. The president of the OECD, Angel Gurria announced at the EU’s regional open week in 2014 that over 50% of OECD member states had now espoused this policy and that alignment between EU state economic and governance boundaries was well underway. It is a significant policy objective for any international organization to attempt to influence governments to change their sub-state governance systems although there is evidence in the US, Canada, Australia and NZ that this approach is being adopted (Schakel et al 2015; Rompuy 2015; Kortt et al 2015). Within the EU, the close convergence between OECD and EU policies for FEAS and governance reform have been little discussed although can be evidenced though published reports and policy objectives (Dijksra and Poelman. 2012; Charbit, 2011). The purpose of this paper is to examine further the relationship between the OECD and EU, to identify the key drivers for common working and the relative success of the use of soft power in transforming sub-state government across 28 member states.

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