OECD, NATION STATES AND CIVIL SOCIETY: CHANGING GOVERNMENTALITY PRACTICES ON INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT POLICY

The Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) was to be the OECD's first international and judicially binding treaty. By creating the MAI, the OECD's 29 member countries of the time tried to create a consensus that would provide a broad multilateral framework for international investment with high standards for the liberalization of investment regimes, investment protection and effective dispute settlement procedures. The MAI negotiations were held in secret from May 1995 until February 1997, when a draft of the agreement leaked to a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) Public Citizen. Soon a large number of NGOs, as well as various labour and consumer organisations, raised strong criticism toward the agreement. Finally, France torpedoed the agreement, which caused a severe legitimacy crisis for the OECD.

The MAI events made the OECD change its strategy as an international governmental organization (IGO). For instance, it adopted a more open communications strategy, and a director of public affairs and communications was appointed. The OECD has also established links to, and started an on-going dialogue with, several NGOs. In general, when the OECD's original mission was to advocate the market economy, its new goals also include the will to shape globalisation, promote sustainable development, bridge the digital divide and promote policy coherence. That is why one of the key questions asked in this study is how this policy change was done. Secondly, what is the new strategic role that the OECD plays and how do different actors (the OECD officials, national politicians and state officials, NGOs and the media) perceive it? What are the subject positions that these emerging networks of power provide for politicians, state officials and NGOs? If actions and strategies of actors are seen as a reactive response to the power used by other actors, in what ways can human capabilities and actions NGOs be integrated with organizational objectives of IGOs?

In this study, we analyze how non-sovereign actors such as ministries, IGOs and NGOs shaped the trajectory of the nation states and power relations of the ever more interdependent world. In addition, this study analyzes what kind of subject positions different actors have to take in order to participate in the public discussion. How do they reflect underlying social structures and how they affect the concepts and legitimising vocabularies of policy discussion? The data used in this study are published and unpublished OECD-documents, documents of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, articles from Kauppapolitiikka and OECD Observer, and NGO’s documents and publications that deal with their relations toward the OECD. In addition, key people both in the OECD, the Finnish state administration and several NGOs are interviewed. These data are analysed within Michel Foucault’s ‘governmentality framework’, which defines governmentality broadly as “the conduct of conduct”, “an ensemble formed by the institutions, analyses and reflections, the calculations and tactics, that allow the exercise of this very special albeit complex form of power”. As Foucault stresses in his essay Subject and Power, power equates to the modification of action-by-action. This being so, power is designated with a creative function in structuring the field of possible actions of free agents. By using this framework and Foucauldian discourse analysis, which emphasizes the role of language in organizing and constructing the social reality; we are able to observe changing networks of governance.