The OECD: A Classic Sunset Organisation
| Author | Kishore Mahbubani |
| Date | 01 February 2012 |
| Published date | 01 February 2012 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-5899.2011.00130.x |
The OECD: A Classic Sunset
Organisation
Kishore Mahbubani
Dean, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore
A Response to ‘From ‘‘Club of the Rich’’ to ‘‘Globalisation à la Carte’’? Evaluating Reform at the OECD’
Judith Clifton and Daniel Díaz-Fuentes
*
Yes, there was a time when the OECD was proud to
have been described as ‘The Rich Man’s Club’. This prob-
ably coincided with the zeitgeist of the ‘Greed is Good’
era, captured so well in the famous Wall Street movie. Of
course, no OECD official would have admitted that his or
her work was to be the defender of the rich. But during
three decades of interaction with OECD representatives, I
constantly sensed that they viewed with condescension
all the views expressed by ‘Third World’ representatives.
They were confident that they were the real custodians
of the ‘holy grail’ of economic development.
This arrogance and condescension would have been
understandable if the ‘Organisation for Economic Coop-
eration and Development’ had developed a sterling
record of promoting either economic cooperation or
development. Sadly, the OECD has never fulfilled the mis-
sion suggested by its name. Its predecessor, the OEEC,
as documented by Clifton and Díaz-Fuentes, may have
fulfilled its role of managing and implementing the Mar-
shall Plan for Europe. But the OECD has no success story
to speak of.
Clifton and Díaz-Fuentes have done the OECD and the
world a favour by documenting what the organisation
has and has not achieved. They describe well the histori-
cal context in which the role of the OECD evolved. As
they write, ‘Contemporary scholars understood that the
purpose of the OECD was to help consolidate the trans-
atlantic military and economic alliance between North
America and Europe in a context of the Cold War and of
increased interdependence’ (p. 303). But the Cold War
ended over 20 years ago. The OECD should have rein-
vented itself to stay relevant. It failed to do so and
thereby confirmed that it was destined to become a
‘sunset organisation’.
The tragedy here is that the OECD could have played
a valuable role globally. Each year, the OECD countries
dispense billions of dollars in aid. If these billions of dol-
lars had been well spent, billions of people could have
been rescued from poverty. Instead, most official devel-
opment assistance (ODA) was wasted. Countries like Tan-
zania and Zambia, which received more aid per capita
than most countries, had little to show for it. What hap-
pened? Why did billions of dollars fail to foster economic
cooperation and development? Institutionally there was
no better global organisation than the OECD to solve
this mystery. But it failed.
Clifton and Díaz-Fuentes explain the institutional fac-
tors that prevented the OECD from providing indepen-
dent and objective analysis. It was funded by donor
countries. It was also staffed by donor countries. Indeed,
as the article documents, for a long time, three coun-
tries, France, the US and the UK, provided most of the
staff. No organisation bites the hand that feeds it. Hence,
instead of reviewing objectively the failures of the donor
countries, OECD officials assumed that all the flaws were
the fault of the recipient countries. The following telling
line from the Clifton ⁄Díaz-Fuentes article captures well
the attitudes of the OECD analysts: ‘OECD reports on
nonmembers took the form of ‘‘unidirectional’’ recom-
mendations, since it was assumed that its members and
staff enjoyed superior policy ‘‘know-how’’ based on the
assumption of the superior functioning of their econo-
mies’(p. 305).
In short, despite its name and ostensible mission, the
role of the OECD was not to serve the interests of aid
recipient countries. This is why it kept its deliberations
as secret as possible. As Clifton and Díaz-Fuentes write,
The tradition of holding ‘secretive’ meetings
dates back to the OEEC’s organisation of meet-
ings to discuss the sensitive topic of Marshall
Plan aid allocation. But their opaque nature has
aroused suspicion and criticism from observers,
who have claimed that they served as places
where the richest member countries could forge
common postures with their allies before taking
*Clifton, J. and Díaz-Fuentes, D. (2011)‘From ‘‘Club of the Rich’’
to ‘‘Globalisation à la Carte’’? Evaluating Reform at the OECD’,
Global Policy, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 300–311.
DOI: 10.1111 ⁄j.1758-5899.2011.00103.x
Global Policy Volume 3 . Issue 1 . February 2012
Global Policy (2012) 3:1 doi: 10.1111/j.1758-5899.2011.00130.x ª2012 London School of Economics and Political Science and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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