Changes and continuities in the roles and identities of international organizations: The OECD's strategy between a universal actor and a western club

Current debates on established clubs and the impact of new club formats formed by emerging powers on the practice of multilateralism have largely focused both on their role in diplomacy, networking and decision-making processes in global governance, and on the issues of complexity, creating alternatives to formal international organisations (IOs) and reducing inclusiveness and legitimacy of the formal IOs. The literature predominantly targeting these issues have paid limited attention to the rather rigid maintenance of like-minded clubs with a strong sense of shared identity among their members, such as the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In recent years, with changing patterns of global economic governance, the OECD has broadened its membership composition to include some emerging economies such as Indonesia and Brazil, while the DAC, which has historically represented the “club of the rich,” seems to have remained rather rigid in its profile broadly composed of Western countries. It is puzzling that the OECD as an international institution seems to encompass two identities: The internal club with a strong political weight within the organisation, the DAC, remains largely unchanged and “Western”, whereas the OECD itself has a strategy to expand to include new members. What explains the disjunction within the OECD in the sense that there are multiple notions of like-mindedness within a single international institution? We select three emerging middle powers with distinct relationships to the OECD as country cases for the analysis: South Korea, which recently joined the DAC, and Mexico and Turkey as OECD members with an observer status to the committee. The project seeks to understand how the reciprocal dynamics of club interests in admitting new members into their clubs and potential member interests in joining a club work in the case of DAC and their implications for the OECD’s role and identity.