Stephen McBride

Standardizing and Disseminating Knowledge: The Role of the OECD in Global Governance

If ‘knowledge is power’, it is unsurprising that the production, legitimation, and application of social scientific knowledge, not least that which was designed to harness social organization to economic growth, is a potentially contentious process. Coping with, adapting to, or attempting to shape globalization has emerged as a central concern of policy-makers who are, therefore, interested in knowledge to assist their managerial activities. Thus, an organization that can create, synthesize, legitimate, and disseminate useful knowledge can play a significant role in the emerging global governance system. The OECD operates as one important site for the construction, standardization, and dissemination of transnational policy ideas. OECD staff conducts research and produces a range of background studies and reports, drawing on disciplinary knowledge (typically economics) supplemented by their ‘organizational discourses’. This paper probes the contested nature of knowledge production and attempts to evaluate the impact of the OECD’s efforts to produce globally applicable policy advice. Particular attention is paid to important initiatives in the labour market and social policy fields – the Jobs Study and Babies and Bosses.

Globalization, the Restructuring of Labour Markets and Policy Convergence The OECD ‘Jobs Strategy’

This article investigates the relationship between globalization and labour market reform by examining the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Developments (OECDs) ‘Jobs Strategy’. It has been argued that globalization requires, and the competitive forces unleashed by that process require, the national adoption of more flexible, market-based, or ‘neoliberal’ labour market policies or states will face declining labour market performance. Thus, the globalization thesis posits convergence in labour market policies around an emerging neoliberal norm. Through an examination of the Jobs Strategy and the empirical data collected by the OECD, this article reaches several interrelated conclusions. The evidence suggests little sign of sustained convergence in labour market policies. According to the OECDs analysis, many states have been reticent to adopt neoliberal labour market strategies. Secondly, there is good reason for non-convergence: states that have adopted a liberal strategy, as a group, have not performed particularly well. Despite globalization, there is a range of labour market policy choices available to states. Several welfare state labour market strategies continue to exist.

Devolution and Neoliberalism in the Canadian Welfare State Ideology, National and International Conditioning Frameworks, and Policy Change in British Columbia

The Canadian welfare state has changed significantly in the last decade with the federal devolution of policy responsibilities creating opportunities for some provinces to adopt American social policy ideas. Given the expectations of resilience and non-convergence, in the welfare state literature, this article addresses the issues of policy change by demonstrating that the movement of British Columbias labour and social policy towards international neoliberal norms, including policy examples set in many US jurisdictions, have produced limited convergence. We suggest that this indicates that more change has occurred and is occurring in the Canadian welfare state than the resilience model or comparative public policy literature would indicate.

Continuities and discontinuities : the political economy of social welfare and labour market policy in Canada

Globalization and neoconservatism continue to shape change and require constant evaluation. These thought-provoking and informative essays are an important contribution to the ongoing debate on social welfare and labour market policy in Canada.

Neo-liberalism, state power and global governance

Chapter 1. Introduction: Neo-Liberalism, State Power and global Governance in the Twenty First Century, Simon Lee and Stephen McBride. - Part I. National Differences in the Face of Pressures to Converge. - Chapter 2. European Economic Integration: The Threat to Modell Deutschland, Michael Whittall. - Chapter 3. Stranded on the Common Ground? Global Governance and State Power in England and Canada, Simon Lee. - Chapter 4. Assessing the Globalization-Decentralization Nexus: Patterns of Education and Reform in Mexico, Chile, Argentina and Nicaragua, Michael McNamara. - Part II. Transnational Policy Prescriptions - Chapter 5. Tracking Neo-liberalism: Lbaour Market Policies in the OECD Area, Stephen McBride, Kathleen McNutt and Russell Williams. - Chapter 6. Social Economy Policies As Flanking For Neoliberalism: Transnational Policy Solutions, Emergent Contradictions, Local Alternatives, Peter Greafe. - Chapter 7. Assessing the Convergence Thesis of Legal reforms in Emerging Market Economics, Linda Elmose. - Part III. Labour: A special Case in the Global Economy? - Chapter 8. Governing International Labour Mobility: Past Practice and New Directions, Christina Gabriel. - Chapter 9. Neo-liberal policies and Immigrant Women in Canada, Habiba Zaman. - Part IV. The Need for Reform. - Chapter 10. The Logic of Neoliberalism and the Political Economy of Consumer Debt-led Growth, Johnna Montgomerie. - Chapter 11. World Trade and World Money: The Case for a New World Currency Unit, Duncan Cameron. - Chapter 12. Multilateral Institution-building in a Neoliberal Era: The Case of Competition Policy, Marc Lee. - Chapter 13. The TWO and Global Governance, Theodore H. Cohn. - Chapter 14. The World Trade Organisation and Social Justice, Colin Tyler. - Chapter 15. The OECD: Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century, Richard Woodward. - Chapter 16. Conclusion: The Need to Rebuild the Public Domain, Simon Lee and Stephen McBride.

The Continuing Crisis of Social Democracy: Ontario's Social Contract in Perspective

Conventional views of the choices available to social democrats counterpose the pursuit of power to ideological purity. In Canada such debates have been endemic. Even commentators sympathetic to a radical ideology depict it as an obstacle to achieving power, and hence to acquiring the ability to effect real change.

Constitutionalizing Austerity: Taking the Public out of Public Policy

Nothwithstanding their failure to achieve stated objectives, austerity policies have been pursued with persistence. Rather than failures prompting reconsideration, there is a clear trend to render austerity policies a permanent, constitutionalized response to economic challenges ‘for all seasons’. This article links the drive to austerity with the ‘new constitutionalism’ literature which depicts procedurally the removal of important decisions from the realm of liberal democratic politics and their re-location behind impenetrable and unaccountable barriers; and, in terms of content, embed neoliberal practices and policies, and the power relations that underpin them, as ‘normal’. This takes the public out of public policy making with negative consequences for democratic governance.

Alternatives to austerity? Post-crisis policy advice from global institutions

The 2008 global financial crisis caused major anxiety about the stability of the neoliberal economic regime. This affected the financial and banking systems and also raised the spectre of mass unemployment and social unrest. A ‘post-crisis’ world was widely proclaimed in 2010. This was premature; by 2012 Europe was embroiled in a sovereign debt crisis and the US economy showed few signs of real recovery. A second recession seemed likely and austerity emerged as the standard response. Austerity, ‘the quality or state of being austere’ and ‘enforced or extreme economy’, became a buzzword. In practice, austerity means an economic and social policy based on balanced budgets to be achieved by reduced government spending, especially on employment and social policies, an approach entirely consistent with the neoliberal paradigm that has dominated policy-making for several decades. Yet the depth of the crisis provided an opportunity for rethinking the neoliberal policy package that had replaced the Keynesian welfare state, established after the Second World War. Cognizant of the fact that the development of alternatives to dominant paradigms may have many sources, this article probes the policy advice provided by two global organizations – the OECD and the ILO. As well as tracing the austerity motif, the article seeks to identify the extent to which alternatives were canvassed at the global social policy level.

Global Instability: Uncertainty and New Visions in Political Economy

Unprecedented levels of instability and uncertainty have been generated by the complexity of events and trends in the contemporary global political economy. To a large extent, at the crux of this instability is the growing political salience of various forces and activities that appear to transcend and impinge not only upon existing political boundaries and forms of economic production and distribution, but also on the values that underpin social institutions and existing modes of social and cultural differentiation. These activities include, but are not limited to, the phenomenal growth in global trade and private capital flows, increased pressures for financial liberalization and the growing instability of national currencies, increased cross-border flows of people and ideas, and the growth of transnational social movements as well as in various illicit activities associated with transnational organized crime.

Austerity and constitutionalizing structural reform of labour in the European Union

Abstract This article traces how, within a context of authoritarian neoliberalism, the European Union (EU)’s constitutionalization of key economic policy areas locks in place austerity policies that impose major costs on working people while simultaneously reducing opportunities for the democratic expression of alternative approaches for dealing with the crisis. Structural reform of labour markets (along with fiscal policy) is designed to increase wage and employment flexibility, and is intended to be a set of permanently embedded rules through being constitutionalized.