The OECD and Higher Education: The Bureaucratic Politics of Inclusive Liberalism

The role of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in the higher education sector has garnered increasing scholarly attention in recent years. Much of the analysis has focused on the development by the organisation of particular understandings of the roles of higher education (HE) institutions in the development of the ‘knowledge economy’. Such analyses often critically highlight what is presented as a ‘neo-liberal’ project centred on the ‘marketisation’ of the sector, though a significant stream in the literature also points to the emergence of a position of ‘inclusive liberalism’ shaped by a wider agenda concerned with ensuring equitable modes of societal participation. Virtually all such analyses, however, focus only on the ‘outputs’ of policy, drawing essentially on published documentary sources. The present project, based on extensive interviewing within the OECD and the wider HE policy community, is conversely concerned to examine the ‘inputs’ of policymaking in the organisation, seeking to understand how and why it arrives at particular positions. Broadly framed in terms of Barnett and Finnemore’s ‘bureaucratic’ understanding of international organisations, particular attention is paid to both intra- and inter- institutional strategies of positioning (i.e. how do HE specialists seek to position the sector within the organisation, and how does the organisation position itself relative to other IOs active in the sector). The paper further examines the techniques of so-called ‘thematic governance’ and the patterns of relationships developed with the member states.