Toward a global eco-social policy? The OECD and Green Keynesianism

While environmental and social problems transcend national borders, eco-social policy research has predominantly focused on European nation-states and the European Union at the transnational level. Acknowledging the influence of international organizations (IOs) in global policy debates, this article expands empirical eco-social policy research to include the level of IOs, with a particular focus on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). By examining different ideational accounts within the OECD, including the New Approaches to Economic Challenges initiative, the Inequalities-Environment Nexus, and the OECD Better Life Initiative, we explore the position the OECD adopts on eco-social policy and the global repercussions and transformative potential this entails. The organization’s ideational accounts reject a neoclassical economic interpretation of eco-social policy and instead promote a Green Keynesianism paradigm that values government intervention, social protection, and social investment as means to facilitate a green transition. However, these approaches rely on capitalist patterns of productivism and full employment inherent in existing welfare state regimes, which perpetuate processes of externalization, even under supposedly green conditions. Acknowledging ongoing contestation processes, we suggest that this shift toward Green Keynesianism historically follows the dialectical relationship between Keynesianism (embedded liberalism) and the neoliberal monetarist paradigm, yet it also risks reproducing unequal exchange relations between the Global South and the Global North, thereby falling short of eco-social justice claims at the global level.