The OECD is a hard organization to define; it is an organization with many hats. It officially fosters economic cooperation with the goal of development in mind. But it is alternatively a referee, a coach, an analyst, a platform, an adviser and an expert. Membership in the OECD can be both a privilege and a responsibility.

The rapid response hat
Steel" was a catchword in the corridors of the OECD the other week, but only one of many. One of the growing priorities of the OECD has been to react quickly to breaking situations. Committees are set up, experts brought in and analysis of the situation is prompt. "You see this," says Donald Johnston, the head of the 30-nation organization, pointing to a headline in that day's International Herald Tribune, "This is what we are about: We are a catalyst for our members to talk, to explore issues like this steel thing." The "steel thing" he was referring to was the decision by US President George W. Bush to slap import tariffs on steel coming into the largest steel market in the world. The move outraged OECD partners like the European Union and Japan, both major steel exporters to the US. In the world of economics, problems such as these are often raised, debated and settled here in the Chateau de la Muette, OECD's world headquarters.

"What we are seeing more of," said Jeanne L. Phillips, the US Ambassador to the OECD, "are examples of really current events that have been addressed here over the past few years. That sends an important signal for the future. For example, the OECD has convened steel meetings to begin discussion of the over-capacity of the steel industry."

While the outcome of the steel talks will not be known for a long time, it is telling that the organization is often dealing with issues ripped from the headlines. "We do what our member governments expect of us," said Robert Ley, Counselor to the Director in Financial, Fiscal and Enterprise Affairs, "but they are responding to what their constituents are concerned about. The electorate wants good government, and they want economic growth, and they want sustainable development, and they want a lot of things. The OECD is a vehicle for these things to be delivered. We are essentially an organization for cooperation."

The analyst hat
Now why is it that countries want to join the OECD?" mused Johnston. "It is basically because they have to pass a pretty high bar. It shows they have attained a certain level in terms of their adoption of fundamentals of open market economics, that they have adhered to a large number of the instruments that the OECD has set high standards for, like market liberalization, trade liberalization. The basic image of the country as a place to invest and as a trading partner becomes substantially enhanced by being a member of the OECD. Perhaps more importantly, the OECD is a group of countries that establish guidelines, international rules of conduct in many, many areas‹in fact there are too many to mention: taxation, environment, trade, competition polices."

Johnston, a former Canadian member of parliament and cabinet member, is talking about one of OECD's hats: that of analysis and guidelines. As on the steel issue, the OECD has many divisions full of researchers and consulting experts of member governments, creating policies that are debated and often adopted by member nations. Essentially, it can be a thought of as a think tank with a kick; it can also be thought of as a pool of representatives of some of the world's most advanced countries comparing notes on everything from problems with social security and aging to how best to deal with drug cartels. "Once a country begins the process of becoming a member it causes that country to look at itself and its objectives and provides goals of membership which usually improve their own governance structures and systems," said Phillips. "For any government official to be able to relate to his or her counterpart from 30 different governments is a real asset, no matter what country you're from."

The referee hat
Like any club, though, the OECD has rules. For members, the negotiations on issues can lead to binding international laws that they must not only honor but can get in trouble for ignoring. In many ways, it is a macroscopic take on peer pressure. Countries are subject to annual or bi-annual peer reviews in every area, and sometimes the findings can be hard. One pending example is that of anti-corruption. The US, one of the countries that pushed for years to negotiate a treaty dealing with corruption of government officials, is scheduled to be reviewed soon by its OECD peers for the first time after passing a new anti-corruption law last year.

Such reviews happen all the time within the OECD, and is an example of how members are held responsible. Peers review each other, not only on individual topics and treaties but also on the overall performance of each other's economies. "What we do when a country is not meeting its obligations is, first of all, we report on it, we make it visible to the other members, and in the anti corruption process there have been two stages of review," said Ley. "The first stage was a report to see whether countries had actually imported anti-corruption language into their laws, and those reports were all made public, they were put on the Web site. We didn't go down the streets and sell them, but when the reports were over the product was put on the Web site for public exposure. And that's quite a serious thing for governments to have to cope with‹especially a government with the kind of sophisticated institutional structure as the US."

Such reports also become a resource for journalists and, at times, opposition parties looking for weak spots in the government in power. The use of the Internet has revolutionized the OECD's transparency in the past few years. "Governments used to consider everything they did confidential, and now many of them have freedom of information acts," said Ley. "People who are citizens are entitled to get hold of lots of information that used to be considered private to government. What has changed is the willingness to publish far more of the materials that we produce. For example, in the past a document that was prepared for a committee would be confidential not only while being prepared and discussed but, after the committee finished discussing it and had go on to something else, it would stay confidential. The only way to de-restrict it would be to go to the council."

One of the catalysts for the change was a scandal a few years ago in which the OECD came under attack by environmental nongovernmental organizations for a Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) that delegates had been working on. The meetings, of course, were confidential at that time.

Headlines accusing the organization of secrecy and opacity took the OECD by surprise. "Secret meetings," mused Ley with a slight smile on his face. "The organization has changed enormously in its way of functioning, I think partly because of the MAI although partly because that was something that was happening anyway and was also a reflection of what was happening in governments."

The OECD has also had to deal with other stigmas, the worst of which is the nickname "the rich man's club." But times have changed, and with it so has the OECD. Its seven newest members cannot by any means be considered "rich" countries: Greece, Slovakia, Korea, Czech, Poland, Hungary and Mexico. "Journalists from this area," said Gabriella Ramos, head of the OECD office in Mexico City, "and I think all over the world, think of the OECD as a rich man's club, and its possible that we have not been able to make them understand that the OECD has changed a lot. Not all the members of the OECD are industrialized economies and rich countries. Mexico is not, but it is a country that wants to follow good practices and to find the best experiences around to improve the economic development of the country."

The top hat
Perhaps one of the images that help to extend the stereotype is that of the Development Assistance Committee, an arm of OECD. It was actually founded before the OECD, but became integrated soon after the organization took off. The DAC, as it is known around the OECD, advises member countries‹who happen to include all of the major donor countries in the world, accounting for more than $53 billion in official development assistance (ODA) in 2000‹on how to best spend their development-aid dollars. But far from functioning like a giant foundation, the DAC has pushed its 23 members (not the full 30) hard to change their giving practices.

After decades of pushing, Jean-Claude Faure, the director of the DAC, finally succeeded last year in "untying" aid‹that is, not requiring recipients to spend the money in the donor countries. Faure is excited to take the new untying of aid out for its first test run. (The treaty came into force in January.) In this case, the test drive will be in Monterrey, Mexico, at the first UN Financing for Development Conference. "Mutual accountability and good strategies by developing partners must be supported," said Faure. "This new concept helps to move partnerships further, but we still have one issue to discuss and that is the question of aid volume. It may well be that we need more aid. What will be important is the post-Monterrey period, when we will be able to decide on volumes. But Monterrey may be important if it gives us a road map for the future."

An expert hat
In an unusual move, the OECD was invited to the Monterrey preparatory conferences as a stakeholder. As the OECD has grown, and grown more open; so too have other international organizations. Where once the topic of aid was argued in terms of jurisdictions and territories, the Monterrey conference marks an almost unprecedented cooperation not only between governments but also between international organizations. "For a long time, the UN has hampered itself by having a very ideological stand on economic and social issues," said Ley. "In my view, they simply disqualified themselves because they were committed to an ideology which was simply not acceptable to the industrial countries. It wasn't going to work. They didn't agree with it and didn't want it. And that is one of the interesting things about the Monterrey consensus because it is a real consensus that ends to a large extent the ideological divide. We're all talking basically the same language: that it is only a market economy that is going to produce development for anybody."

If you ask anyone at the OECD, it is preferably a democratic, open-market economy. It is something that most of the 2,000 staff members seem particularly proud of: that all OECD members are democratic societies. "When we invite nonmember countries that are not democracies to our meetings," said Sandra Wilson, a media relation officer working in OECD's Washington office, "they are always bemused because the OECD doesn't discuss the best policy from an economic point of view. They discuss the best policy from a political point of view. So you might have the delegate from China, and since they're not from a democracy it's a big stumbling block for them to understand that the OECD countries don't pass edicts in our countries." Democratic or not, many here believe that it is only through open trade that the greatest change in development will one day happen. "OECD countries spend about $1 billion per day on agricultural subsidies," said Edda Dohlman, Principal Administrator in the OECD Development Cooperation Directorate, "and that's four times more than development assistance per day. So if you could eliminate a huge chunk of the subsidies, then you could go very far in helping developing countries to gain access to world trade."

A coaching cap
Certainly it is why issues such as the steel dispute catch the particular attention of Johnston. "The question I ask myself is: Will it be different?" said Johnston. "I sincerely hope so, but am a bit skeptical because of the issue of political will, the issue of the capacity of our societies to make some very tough political decisions in terms of lowering tariffs, in terms of allowing these countries to export into our markets, in allowing more migrant workers to come in, and increasing ODA." While he is skeptical, there is no one in a better position than his to turn the industrialized world's attention to such issues. It is yet another one of the OECD's surprising hats.