More than Just a Rich Country Club: Membership
Conditionality and Institutional Reform in the OECD
Speaker: Christina Davis, Professor, Woodrow Wilson School and Department of Politics, Princeton University
Date: Friday, 8th of July, 10:30-12:00
Venue: Room 610, Administration Building #2
This seminar is open to all UTokyo students.
Abstract:
Conditional membership may be one of the most important sources of leverage for IOs. What
underlies the terms of selection and the willingness of applicants to pay the price of entry? The
influence of accession conditions has been studied in the context of EU and NATO, where sizable
benefits motivate major concessions by applicants. This paper examines a much less powerful organization,
the OECD. The organization provides both public goods in the form of policy information
and club goods in the form of status. Through a process of self-selection by applicants and screening
by members, the organization has managed gradual expansion while preserving its value as an elite
club of like-minded states. Informality of accession criteria has allowed flexibility to raise and lower
the bar for entry. Statistical analysis highlights broad conditions related to income, democracy, and
geopolitics that correlate with earlier entry into the OECD relative to other countries while there are
less clear patterns for the role of trade and financial openness. Case studies of Japan, Mexico, Korea,
and the Czech Republic are used to examine how prospective OECD membership motivated reforms
in regulatory policies and trade. These countries sought to benefit from the status of association with
the advanced industrial democracies. On the basis of shared liberal orientation and geopolitical alignment,
these outsiders were accepted into the club. At the same time, a case study of Brazil highlights
how its refusal to seek OECD membership reflects a political preference to remain distant from the
advanced industrial nations even as its economy and policies are more integrated with these states.