The OECD enlargement in Latin America and the Brazilian candidacy

Flavia De Campos Mello

doi:10.1590/0034-7329202000211

Abstract

This article examines the OECD’s enlargement process as an important dimension for understanding global economic governance. It focuses on the Brazilian candidacy, stemming first from the OECD’s strategies towards the BRICS countries, but also towards Latin America, where the organization’s enlargement has expanded its members in a matching process with the incorporation of European countries. The OECD became a high priority for Brazil in the context of a significant change of orientations on economic reforms and foreign policy choices. By looking at the experience of Latin American countries regarding their accession processes to the OECD, the article concludes referring to the organization as an expanding Western-led institution aimed at promoting a liberal economic agenda through enhanced global governance mechanisms.

Highlights

Among the initiatives that have expressed the reorientation of Brazilian foreign policy since the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, the country’s decision to become a member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) might appear, in symbolic terms, as the most evident indication of an international project directed towards the acceptance of global governance mechanisms promoted by developed countries
This article reviews the previous history and stages of the enlargement process in the OECD, in order to understand its contemporary features and its extent in Latin America, focusing on the Brazilian candidacy. It examines how membership accession in the OECD reflects a specific configuration of multilateralism, which, since the first decade of the XXI century, has tried to boost participation from emerging and developing countries by having the compromise to the most consolidated agenda of liberalizing economic reforms embodied in contemporary global governance
Reflecting uncertainties at the global level, the OECD has acquired new institutional purposes and geographical outreach as an expression of what was once depicted as some expanded version of a liberal Greater West in which some of the emerging states might have been absorbed - highly unlikely in the case of most BRICS members

Summary

Introduction

Among the initiatives that have expressed the reorientation of Brazilian foreign policy since the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, the country’s decision to become a member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) might appear, in symbolic terms, as the most evident indication of an international project directed towards the acceptance of global governance mechanisms promoted by developed countries. There was an important previous step taken while President Dilma Rousseff was still in office, when the Brazil-OECD Cooperation Agreement was signed in 2015 It had resulted from an intense mobilization on the part of the Ministry of Finance, under an administration already more committed to a liberal economic agenda than its predecessors, revealing that a reorientation of the country’s foreign economic relations was underway even before the change of government which took place after the impeachment process in 2016. This article reviews the previous history and stages of the enlargement process in the OECD, in order to understand its contemporary features and its extent in Latin America, focusing on the Brazilian candidacy It examines how membership accession in the OECD reflects a specific configuration of multilateralism, which, since the first decade of the XXI century, has tried to boost participation from emerging and developing countries by having the compromise to the most consolidated agenda of liberalizing economic reforms embodied in contemporary global governance. The final section concludes by referring to the OECD as an expanding Western-led institution aimed at promoting a liberal economic agenda through enhanced global governance mechanisms

The origins of the OECD and the enlargement process

International agreement

Recent Members and new candidacies

The Brazilian candidacy

Conclusion