The OECD and the world market: antecedents of deep marketization

ABSTRACT

This paper documents the commitment of the OECD from its creation in 1961 to the continuous development of the world market along liberal lines. In doing so, it details a significant effort to promote what might be called proto-strategies of deep marketization across its ‘Northern’ advanced economy membership. These were articulated at key junctures: in its earliest years, then in response to the rise of the NICs (Newly Industrialized Countries) in the 1970s, again in the context of what it diagnosed as the crisis of the welfare state in the 1980s, and in a clutch of studies in the mid-1990s that anticipated and welcome the rise of China and other emerging economies. The argument made was always that sustainable growth in the advanced countries and the continued development of the world market as a whole could best be achieved if OECD members would abstain from protectionism, embrace competition and reform labour markets and social welfare in order to maintain and enhance their competitiveness in the global economy. Particular attention is drawn to the 1994 Jobs Study, which addressed the need for welfare and labour market reform in terms that foreshadowed the universal policies of deep marketization in evidence today.

KEYWORDS:

• OECD
• emerging economies
• capitalist hegemony
• competitiveness
• world market

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Paul Cammack http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4549-5636

Notes

1 In the PDF versions of the Observer available online at the OECD ilibrary, the articles listed as appearing in No. 1 (November 1962) and No. 3 (March 1963) have been transposed in error. So this article is found online attached to No. 3 (and vice versa for those below).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul Cammack

Paul Cammack retired from the Department of Asian and International Studies, City University of Hong Kong, in 2015, and is currently Honorary Professorial Research Fellow, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester. He is currently completing a book on the politics of global competitiveness. His most recent article is ‘Situating the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in the Context of Global Economic Governance’, Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies. He reviews books at https://whatsworthreading.weebly.com