This volume is devoted to the analysis of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and its role in international and national policy making. On its 50th anniversary, the OECD enjoys widely acknowledged international standing. Despite this, it has so far remained a rarely researched and analyzed organization. This book is thus a pioneering work: it fills a long-overdue gap in presenting a theoretically guided and empirically rich analysis of the OECD as a political actor. It explores its role in political processes through various case studies in a variety of policy fields. By conceptualizing the contributions to this volume around the concept of mechanisms of governance, it explores how and to what extent the OECD provides international incentives for national policy making. The volume collects a set of ten contributions on the OECD and its activities in core fields of its commitment as an 'economic organization', such as economic and labor market policy, tax issues, finance or financial crime, but also in complementary fields in which the organization is active today despite its original economic focus, such as education, biotechnology, health, family issues, and migration. The case studies presented in this volume are an interdisciplinary collection from different academic perspectives, including political science, international relations, law, and organization studies. The book provides a current and wide-ranging analysis of this organization including its constraints and opportunities in policy making.
