Packaging OECD policy advice: universal policy models and domestication of recommendations

ABSTRACT The dynamics between international organisations’ activity of scriptwriting universalised models and theorising the local effects of such models has been a little studied aspect of world society research. In this paper, we seek to bridge this gap in the existing research. We examine one prominent IO, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and its flagship reports, and how the policy proposals promoted therein have changed from the 1960s to the 2010s. Our analysis reveals that from the 1990s onwards the themes addressed proliferate and the language becomes more abstract, while references to other countries’ policies also increase. In parallel, the actual policy proposals aimed at the countries evaluated expand and become more detailed, containing explicit links to national contexts and conditions. We suggest that these changes in the issuing of policy recommendations reflect strategic decisions by the OECD to facilitate the domestication of its reform ideas.


Introduction
Social scientists have recently become increasingly interested in the mounting policy advice tendered by international organisations (IOs). It has been argued that modern IOs, despite their distinct core missions, are increasingly active in influencing national policies through information dissemination or policy consultancy. As emphasised by Fang and Stone, even organisations endowed with other powers on paper, 'find them difficult to deploy, and exercise more influence as referees than as a police force' (Fang & Stone, 2012, pp. 540-541). They invest in policy advice by crafting, codifying and promoting policy models and other behavioural scripts for nation-states (Bromley & Meyer, 2015, p. 57;Djelic & Sahlin-Andersson, 2006;Park & Vetterlein, 2010). Intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) have become particularly well-known for the policy advice they tender to national governments. Although throughout their existence they have functioned as 'teachers of norms' (Finnemore, 1993), many of them having been established specifically to promote certain cultural models and principles, the increase in their production of actual policy recommendations in recent decades is truly remarkable (Rautalin et al., 2021).
Earlier studies have recognised the vast increase in the production of policy recommendations promoted by IOs, but the actual formulation of these has attracted little attention. This lack of research is surprising, especially since IOs are considered decisive actors in the process in which global policy ideas and ideals arise and spread (Barnett & Finnemore, 2004). However, some explanations have been evinced in this regard. One prominent approach, neoinstitutionalist world society theory, points to the scientisation of world polity, a cultural process permeating all organised activities throughout the world (Drori & Meyer, 2006). According to this tradition, contemporary IOs are increasingly scientific actors in the sense that their activities are based on globally shared ideas of rational organisation and the development of societies. This alone can be expected to be reflected in the policy instructions provided by IOs. Nevertheless, an increasing number of IOs are engaged with more purely scientific activities, including the production of scientific research and supplying scientifically-based guidance for policymakers (Kentikelenis & Seabrooke, 2017;Zapp, 2018). Indeed, the scholarship argues that modern IOs act to an ever increasing extent as 'consultants' or 'rationalised others' providing nation-states and their sub-units with scientifically-based blueprints for how to behave (Meyer et al., 1997, p. 162). The ideas they disseminate contain directions for structuring activity in all fields of societal life, from education and environmental protection to organising systems of economic order or political decision-making (Meyer, 2000, p. 241). As these rationalistic scripts pervade the international sphere, they become a key component of the institutional environment surrounding and constituting nation-states.
A related trend, also suggested by world society research, is the universalisation of policy advice. It has been argued that contemporary IOs seek to access ever wider audiences by defending the values and actor interests that go far beyond their original interests and those of their members. They promote world societal values, inviting actors worldwide to take concerted and rational action to tackle problems that matter to all humanity (Boli, 2006;Meyer et al., 1997). The models and ideas promoted rest on rationalised scientific and professional analyses, which contributes to their apparent universality (Meyer, 2000, p. 241). As IOs serve as proxies for ever larger groups of entities or indeed, the 'imagined world society' (Zapp, 2021, p. 212) in its entirety, it has been assumed that a shift towards ever more abstract and universally applicable models for organising society has taken place in the global governance proposed by the IOsand consequently, a declining emphasis on the local and particularised groundings of policy advice. In world society, any successfully disseminated idea or script must be abstract and nonspecific (Strang & Meyer, 1993) enough in order to diffuse to distinct national contexts. Yet ideas also need to be connected to local contexts to be taken seriously in national policymaking. It has been argued that IOs seldom start from the premise that one-size-fits-all (e.g. Broome, 2015, p. 157) suggesting that nation-states have different policy preferences.
The dynamics between IOs' activity of scriptwriting universalised models and theorising the local effects of such models has been a little studied aspect of world society research. In this paper, we seek to bridge this gap in the existing research. We examine the policy advice tendered by one IGO considered influential in global governance, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Although the OECD has no formal authority over its member countries, it plays a significant role in formulating their socio-economic development (Armingeon & Beyeler, 2004;Woodward, 2009). By giving its member countries comparative statistical information on their respective performances, by issuing recommendations about how to improve and by subjecting its member countries' governments to peer pressure (Pagani, 2002), the OECD has set the standards for what its members (and nowadays also its partners) consider desirable socio-economic development, thereby contributing to determining the future direction of these countries. Thus, the OECD's power to affect national policies is not based on the traditional tools of governance such as coercion or conditionality, but 'on the quality of its advice and expertise as perceived by its member states' (Dostal, 2004, p. 446). The governance exercised by the OECD has attracted attention among IGOs in general, leading many of them to opt for similar soft governance methods (Marcussen & Trondal, 2011;Trondal et al., 2010).
Our focus is on how the OECD formulates its policy advice. As a case in point, we examine the OECD's flagship reports, its Economic Surveys, and how the policy recommendations promoted therein have changed from the 1960s to the 2010s. Building on world society research, it could be hypothesised that the policy advice tendered by IOs has shifted from local/particular to global/universal framings of recommendations. We test this claim by analysing whether such a change has indeed occurred in the policy advice provided by the OECD reports intended for its member countries' governments. With our analysis we seek to contribute to the current understanding of the dynamics between IGOs' activity of scriptwriting policy models and theorising the local effects of such models. Our study poses two research questions: (1) Has the OECD policy advice shifted from local/particular towards global/universal framings? (2) How are the recommendations issued by the OECD linked to the national context of the country addressed? Related to this, have these practices changed over decades?
We answer the first question by scrutinising the extent to which the OECD has packaged its policy advice into universally applicable policy models, and to what extent its advice is aimed at the conditions and interests of the country under review. We pay special attention to possible changes during the period studied. The second question leads to the central argument evinced in this article, according to which the formal reporting of IGOsthrough which policy recommendations are disseminatedcontributes to the domestication of global governance. By 'domestication' we refer to processes in which ideas and models promulgated by IGOs are rendered meaningful and hence influential by linking them to specific domestic systems (Alasuutari & Qadir, 2014;Rautalin, 2013;Syväterä, 2016). Thus, for example, the recommendations are justified by pointing to specific national needs, or the recommended reforms are presented as if they were the creations of the domestic actors.
By analysing the OECD's policy advice over six decades, the paper contributes to the understanding of global governance and the role played therein by IGOs' policy recommendations. The paper presents an empirically grounded study that tests the claim in world society theory according to which international policy advice relies increasingly on abstract, universally applicable reform templates. The paper also contributes to the development of the domestication framework, shedding light on the previously overlooked phase of the local adoption of global ideas: the phase preceding the introduction of exogenous ideas into the national field of policymaking.
The article proceeds as follows. We first review earlier studies on OECD policy advice. Then we discuss the theoretical framework. After introducing the data and methods, we present our results in three subsections focusing on the language of OECD policy advice, the formulation of policy recommendations and linking recommendations to the local conditions. By way of conclusions, we discuss the implications of our study for understanding the domestication of international policy advice and what the changes in the OECD's practices of packaging its policy advice reveal about the wider shifts in the institutional environment in which international policy advice operates.

Earlier studies on OECD policy advice
The influence of a modern IGO depends on its ability to organise its activities and messages so as to resonate with the various target audiences (Fang & Stone, 2012;Imerman, 2018). Hence, the OECD, too, has frequently adapted its policy and practices to this end. The OECD grew out of its predecessor, the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), which was founded in 1947 with the support of the United States and Canada to co-ordinate the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Western Europe after World War II. When, by the end of the 1950s, the standard of living and the economic activities of Western European countries had achieved or even surpassed the pre-war level, the European and Northern American countries decided to establish a new organisation focusing primarily on economic co-operation (Aubrey, 1967;Woodward, 2009). The literature frequently portrays the OECD as an architect of neoliberal policies. This is due to the interests of its members. The OECD inherited most of its members from its predecessor, the OEEC, while becoming a trans-Atlantic organisation by adding two North American states, the United States and Canada to its membership. The elites of its member states were decidedly sympathetic toward the liberalisation of trade and investments (Clifton & Díaz-Fuentes, 2011). Throughout its existence, the ideological foundation of the OECD's work has seen clear changes. In the 1960s and 1970s, the work of the OECD was influenced by Keynesian economics and the emphasis was on wage and price controls and active labour market policies (Mahon, 2010). Keynesian hegemony was increasingly challenged in the 1970s, and towards the end of the decade, the OECD turned towards principles of neoliberal economics (Dostal, 2004;Ougaard, 2010), allegedly at the behest of the United States and the United Kingdom (Gayon, 2017;Woodward, 2010), making the OECD a strong advocate of supply-side market reforms and neoliberal globalisation (Abdelal & Meunier, 2010). In addition to macro-economic policies, from the late 1970s onwards neoliberal ideas characterised the OECD's activities on a wide scale from family policy (Mahon, 2010) to labour market (McBride & Williams, 2001;Ougaard, 2010), education (Morgan, 2011;Sellar & Lingard, 2013), and development aid policies (Ruckert, 2008). In the 1990s, with the rise of social democratic values among the OECD's European members, the OECD revisited its approach yet again. It expanded its agenda and adopted discourses many of which were only tenuously linked to the neoliberal paradigm adopted earlier, making the OECD one of the early supporters of 'inclusive liberalism' (Mahon & McBride, 2009;Walker, 2009). Mahon demonstrates how since the 1990s this shift in the OECD approach and discourse has manifested in the organisation's work on welfare and labour market policies (Mahon, 2008;Mahon, 2011).
Although the member countries' interests have always driven the OECD's work, the organisation has tried to avoid of being seen as an actor with political motives. Rather, ever since its establishment, the OECD has sought to present itself as a neutral 'knowledge-based' expert organisation mostly independent of the policies of its member countries (Marcussen & Trondal, 2011;Trondal et al., 2010). Indeed, the organisation has become known for its high-quality scientific analyses and international comparisons, many of which command considerable attention in national policymaking (Bergh et al., 2017;Schäfer, 2006).
Our earlier study (Rautalin et al., 2021) investigating the rhetoric used in the OECD Economic Surveys demonstrated that throughout its existence, the OECD has invested in different kinds of knowledge work to appeal to its heterogenous audiences. In its early economic reports, the OECD invested in scientific writing: the emphasis was on meticulously conducted scientific analyses of national economies and the language used followed the rhetoric of economics. A dramatic change occurred in the surveys between 1995 and 2005, when providing popularised policy recommendations became the main purpose of reporting. The putative main audience was no longer limited to economists and state policymakers specifically trained in economics, but now began to include an ever more wide-ranging crowd of legislators, policymakers, public administration officialsas well as journalists, to whom the surveys became much more accessible than they used to be. In the following decades, although the reports were accompanied by references to scientific sources, they typically substantiated recommendations with little analysis of their concrete effects. Whereas a scholarly style of writing previously dominated the language of the OECD's economic reports, this is no longer the case. Instead, such work now appears in academic publications. While scientific publications authored by the OECD personnel have increased dramatically from 2000 onwards, in its own survey reports the issuing of popularised policy recommendations, often not explicitly connected to any published research, and targeted at the public at large, seems to have become the main purpose.
Earlier studies (Djelic & Sahlin-Andersson, 2006;Dobbin et al., 2007) have pointed out that global policy models and scripts have become an important feature of contemporary policymaking, but less is known about how this manifests in IGOs' actual policy advice. Most studies on IGOs' information dissemination have focused on specific models and scripts propagated by these institutions and factors explaining their diffusion. Such scriptwriting has also been studied in the context of the OECD. For example, Jakobi's (2012) study shows how the OECD, together with the European Union, played a decisive role in a process in which the ideas of 'lifelong learning' were codified and disseminated until the concept became a norm in global education policy. The organisation has also exerted considerable influence on the international taxation system through the 'OECD Model Tax Convention on Income and on Capital', which has become influential as a template for drafting bilateral tax treaties of both OECD member and non-member countries (Pistone, 2012). Finally, Henriques and Larédo (2013) argue that the OECD acted as a 'policy innovator' markedly affecting the national science policies of its member countries in the 1960s, when these policies were introduced. Although the promotion of economic liberalism remains the OECD's core mission, this is today combined, as the examples above illustrate, with an increasing emphasis on other issues deemed to be of global relevance and hence, from the perspective of efficient economic policies, imperative (Mahon & McBride, 2008;Trondal et al., 2010).

Domestication of international policy advice
Social scientists have long been interested in the passage of policy ideas across national borders and the mechanisms explaining this. Sociological institutionalism has paid attention to the processes whereby policy ideas and models diffuse cross-nationally (Dobbin et al., 2007). Such literature has convincingly demonstrated that a remarkable share of national policymaking is interdependent in the sense that 'policy decisions in a given country are systematically conditioned by prior policy choices made in other countries' (Simmons et al., 2008, p. 7). The practice of emulating other countries' examples and the consequent isomorphism across world society has been explained as conformity with dominant, culturally legitimated models and scripts of how to organise modern societies (Meyer et al., 1997).
These observations raise questions about the extent to which policies introduced by nation-states are derived from generic policy models and what role IGOs play in crafting such templates for national policies. Earlier studies have suggested that invoking the authority of IOs or the recommendations issued by them is commonplace in the national political discourse over new legislation (Rautalin et al., 2019;Syväterä et al., 2022). Several other studies (Halliday et al., 2010;Heimo & Syväterä, 2022;Kentikelenis & Seabrooke, 2017) have lent support to the argument that contemporary national policymaking is excessively dependent on other countries and that IOs have an important role in crafting and disseminating recommendations and policy models. As the studies reviewed in the previous section demonstrate, the OECD has also engaged in the 'scriptwriting' of policy models, but the extent to which this policy advice relies on universalised policy models rather than on nationally specific policy problems and solutions remains unclear.
The domestication framework pays attention to the processes by which ideas or models of exogenous origin become part of domestic policy discourses (Alasuutari & Qadir, 2014). The framework has complemented the understanding in world society theory of the worldwide policy change by approaching the phenomenon bottom-up, through investigations into the ways in which ideas and models of global origin initiate changes in domestic policymaking. The domestication studies have focused primarily on examining the local enactment of global policy models as it unfolds in a national political discourse once the exogenous idea has been launched (Alasuutari & Qadir, 2014;Heimo, 2019;Rautalin, 2013;Syväterä, 2016). The literature has analytically distinguished three stages in the process of domestication: introduction of an exogenous idea or model into national political discourse; domestic political field struggles; and naturalisation of the formerly exogenous idea or model as an integral part of the national order (Alasuutari & Qadir, 2014, pp. 10-14).
The introduction of an idea or model into national political discourse may take place in several ways (from delivering stories on what is going on in other countries to presenting the result of formal comparative analyses); quite often via references to the recommendations or information produced by authoritative IOs. Once the new ideas or models have been introduced, they typically trigger domestic political field struggles among actors defending their respective positions on how the new idea or model should be converted into modified domestic practices (Alasuutari & Qadir, 2014, pp. 11-12). Invoking the prestige of IGOs is useful as they represent a large body of members and a set of collectively agreed ideals and principles. When it is feasible to present some political idea as enjoying the approbation of a wider community, it comes to resemble an uncontested fact unrelated to domestic policies (Rautalin, 2018(Rautalin, , p. 1782. Because the local actors are the key players both in introducing global models and in taking part in the ensuing policy struggles, the whole process is largely perceived as part of domestic politics, and the eventual reform is seen as an outcome of the victories or defeats of the domestic actors involved (Alasuutari, 2013, p. 108;Syväterä & Alasuutari, 2013). Thus, the sense of national uniqueness continues strong and the illusion of nation-states being sovereignly in charge of national policymaking is perpetuated.
The present article adds to the state-of-the-art of the theory by paying attention to the stage preceding the launching of an exogenous policy idea. More specifically, we seek to elaborate how IGOs anticipate the domestication process and take this into account in the formulation of policy recommendations. This stage of the domestication process has been little studied in earlier domestication research. The notable exception is Alasuutari and Kangas (2020), who studied UNESCO's efforts to advance the global spread of 'cultural policy' as a concept. Alasuutari and Kangas demonstrate how UNESCO sought to facilitate the local adoption of a cultural policy model by emphasising in its reporting the differences between countries' cultural policies. This was a strategic choice preventing any undesirable impression of UNESCO as dictating how nation-states should organise the field of cultural policy (Alasuutari & Kangas, 2020, p. 7). In this way, the institutionalisation of a globally shared model of 'cultural policy' was advanced while the sense of national uniqueness and sovereignty was preserved. We elaborate this stage by shedding light on the ways the OECD has facilitated the anticipated domestication of its policy advice throughout the six decades.
Not all ideas and models promoted by IOs command attention, let alone trigger debate in the national contexts. The 'success' of a policy idea depends on whether local actors perceive it as convincing and hence advantageous for their own national policies and, more importantly, for their own interests and positions (Alasuutari & Qadir, 2014). For this reason, IOs aspiring to influence national policymaking need to hone their strategies by which to effectively appeal to their audiences. In order to attract their audiences and thus the resources essential for their functioning, organisations must arrange their activities and messages so as to appear legitimate and useful in the eyes of the members and a wider audience (Halliday et al., 2010;Vähä-Savo et al., 2019). In that sense, IGOs are not self-governing entities detached from nation-states and their interests, but indeed actors compelled to organise their activities and messages in ways that attract those very members which finance their budgets, staff and policies (Petiteville, 2018, p. 306). 1 The world society literature suggests that ideas and models promulgated by IOs must be sufficiently generic to diffuse. On the other hand, the literature also points out that ideas and models of global origin rarely transfer to national policies unaltered. Instead, the passage of global ideas is a process in which ideas are shaped, edited and translated when enacted in different settings (Djelic & Sahlin-Andersson, 2006;Drori et al., 2014). How IGOs balance between abstract policy models and features of any national political context in their actual policy advice has been little studied. It is clear, however, that IGOs do struggle in committing national governments to their reform ideas. Such problems may be due to the excessively intangible nature of IGOs' policy advice. For example, Lehtonen (2020, p. 820), in a study on the OECD's energy policy reporting, suggests that countries with advanced energy policies find abstract policy ideas unattractive and instead appear to favour 'hard-hitting' and 'punchy' policy instructions. In a similar vein, Broome and Seabrooke (2012) argue that the abstract and complex knowledge provided by IGOs is often elusive, meaning that the apparent efficiency or other benefits to be gained from such information may instead produce new policy problems or fail altogether in a country adopting them. To alleviate this problem, several IGOs have initiated exclusive training programmes (Broome, 2010) to ensure that national governments perceive policy problems and distinct solutions as the IGOs see them (Broome & Seabrooke, 2012). Teaching the agents of national governance to see the world in the same way as IGOs can be considered a step towards the domestication of exogenous policy ideas: once the national political discourse has been adapted to perceive the policy problems like an IGO, the policy prescriptions it issues have already started to become familiar to national policymakers.

Data and methods
In order to examine how the OECD formulates its policy advice we focus on the OECD Economic Surveys (from now on Surveys or country reports), a series of country reports considered to be among the OECD's flagships and the most cited OECD outputs in the field of economy (e.g. Bergh et al., 2017). Surveys, conducted since 1961 by the Economic and Development Review Committee, are published every 18-24 months for each country. While the OECD Economics Department coordinates the production of reports, the content is produced in collaboration with the member countries, including the country under scrutiny (Schäfer, 2006). The primary readership of the Surveys consists of national government officials and state policymakers. While for the earlier reports the putative readers were expected to be trained in economics, the more recent reports are accessible to much broader group of potential readers.
Our data consists of a sample of the Surveys from six decades and from five different member countries: Canada, Iceland, Japan, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom. The countries selected were among the 21 OECD member countries in 1965. Since then, membership has increased to 38 countries. Despite the OECD's enlargement, the member countries are to this day very similar as regards their developmental level and policy preferences. However, there are differences between member countries as regards their political stability (Widmaier, 1990). As OECD reporting is not independent of the nationstates, the Surveys of authoritarian states or transitional democracies may differ in nature from those of full democracies. As we are interested in how the standard OECD reporting has changed over time, we focus on member countries that have been stable democracies throughout the time period studied. The OECD publishes Survey reports in its official languages (English and French) and sometimes translations into the respective languages of the countries under review. Our data consists of English-language Surveys. Starting from 1965, we include reports at ten-year intervals in such a way that the most recent are from 2015. 2 As the long-term changes in the OECD reporting occur over time and simultaneously in the reports of different countries, the interval chosen is adequate for analysing these changes. In total, the sample includes 30 reports amounting to 2868 pages in all.
We first examined the overall change in language used in the body copy of the Surveys. We also examined to what extent the OECD incorporates into its Surveys themes other than those explicitly related to economy, likewise paying attention to how references to other countries and the global community developed. For these analyses, we utilised methods derived from corpus linguistics, namely keyword analysis and word frequency analysis (Evison, 2010). The former method is used to capture general linguistic shifts by comparing the contents of Surveys published at different points in time to ascertain how they differ from each other. Word frequency analysis enables us to investigate more specific questions stemming from our findings and the literature reviewed above by scrutinising how the frequency of a particular word changes over time in the Surveys. Detailed descriptions of how these analyses were conducted are provided in the endnotes (see also Appendix A).
In the second stage of the analysis, we focused on the recommendation talk. Research has shown that the recommendations issued by the OECD are occasionally very extensive, comprising numerous subsidiary recommendations (e.g. Dostal, 2004). To ensure that our analysis was precise enough and the units of analysis manageable, we first split the recommendation talk occurring in the Surveys into units of analysis according to how the talk was semantically segregated into its own entities in the texts. This meant, for example, that when some larger body of recommendation talk was condensed into a semantic entity of its own (i.e. in a separate box of text), this was processed as an independent unit of analysis.
These units of recommendation talk were then subjected to qualitative analysis, in which we coded the units focusing on the following characteristics: 1. Is the recommendation highlighted by some visual means, for example, by being placed in a separate text box? 2. Is the recommendation 'explicit', i.e. a clearly worded exhortation for a member country to revise its policy, action or system, or 'implicit', i.e. a tentative indication of what might work when a member country seeks to improve its performance? 3. Does the recommendation invoke abstract policy ideas or is it formulated as a specific reform template tailored to the country under review? These two codes were not mutually exclusive; a recommendation was assigned to both categories if it contained both abstract model talk and concrete instructions. Finally, we examined the domestication of recommendations by focusing on the distinct rhetorical means by which the recommendation was bound to the systems, conditions, or other 'special' features of the country under review.

Results
Our analysis reveals that the means by which the OECD formulated its policy advice in its country reports changed fundamentally during the period studied. To a great extent, this change took place between 1985 and 2005, dividing the Surveys into two distinct subsets: the early Surveys , characterised by a few tentative observations about actions deemed appropriate as the country evaluated seeks to improve its economic performance, and the more recent Surveys (2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015) characterised by numerous thematically diverse and often very detailed policy recommendations aimed at member countries' governments. The 1995 country reports, with characteristics from both periods, represent a period of transition between these two categories. In the following three sections focusing on the developments in the language used, packaging of recommendations and linking of recommendations to the country under review, we discuss these developments in more detail.

Pervasive changes in language
As evinced by the results of the keyword analysis (Appendix A) a significant change in the language as a whole took place between the Surveys of 1985 and 2005. This break is characterised by the inclusion of new topics and increasingly abstract language. While the earlier Surveys focused on a narrow set of issues concerning national economies (e.g. balance of payments, imports and exports, inflation, industrial production and the like) from 1995 onwards the scope of topics discussed broadened considerably. A wide set of issues, such as childcare, schooling and higher education, healthcare, postal, transportation and communication services, the environment and the like, were discussed as themes relevant to national economy. At the same time, the usage of abstract terms also increased. These two developments, a broadening of the themes discussed and the increasingly abstract nature of the language, were fundamentally connected to each other. Contemplating why such an increase in abstraction emerged, we observed that it allowed the OECD to discuss a wide array of problems, goals and solutions over different issue areas and country reports with a decidedly uniform vocabulary.
As demonstrated by our keyword analysis (Appendix A), concepts like 'innovation' and 'innovativeness' are good examples of terms barely mentioned in the Surveys prior to 1995, but subsequently widely used and presented as important goals for all countries and in relation to a wide variety of issues. According to the more recent (2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015) Surveys, innovativeness is required virtually everywhere; from industries to teaching programmes and local governments. In a similar vein, these reports stated, innovation is needed in research and development funding, venture capital, financial markets, human resources, and, of course, in innovation policies. Innovation can be seen as a reason for not increasing the regulation of the financial sector because financial innovation would find ways to circumvent such regulation. Fisheries can be seen as an innovation cluster, while allowing private nursery schooling might stimulate innovation concerning the mental development of children. Thus, innovation and innovativeness came to be regarded in the Surveys in an almost all-encompassing manner.
Terms like 'risk' and 'reform' are other examples of the extensive conceptual vocabulary evident in the more recent reports. Housing markets, lending to small and middle-sized enterprises, public ownership, tax competition, inflation, social deprivation, unemployment, social segregation, social exclusion, poverty, workers' low level of individual human capital, are all discussed in the data as risks. Children may also be stated to live in at-risk families or at-risk environments. A solution often proffered for any problem, or indeed 'risk' discussed, was a reform: pension systems, social security, health care, childcare, education, curricula, construction of social housing, electricity markets, invalidity benefits, taxation systems, can all be subjected to reforms. These are only a few examples to illustrate a more far-reaching change in the vocabulary used in the Survey texts. A wide variety of other abstract terms pervaded the Surveys such as sustainability, green growth, social cohesion, inclusive growth, and equality of opportunity. We, of course, do not mean to imply that the earlier reports were completely devoid of abstract notions. 'Recovery', as shown by the keyword analysis, is an example of this. However, especially in the early reporting, recovery was mostly used to discuss a fairly narrow set of economic issues, such as demand, production, economic growth, markets, prices, consumption, exports, which explains its relative decline after the 1990s. This change came at the expense of the specific themes or issues that were important in the Surveys during the earlier years. For example, imports, exports, and demand (domestic and foreign) extensively used in early years continued to be discussed in the Survey texts throughout the period studied, but these terms clearly lost their prominence in the overall vocabulary used towards the new millennium as shown in Figure 1.
Our analysis also shows a change in how the international context was invoked. Referencing other countries has always been an important feature of the Surveys. Analysis reveals, however, a growth of these references in general, but also more specifically in that they are used to promote policy decisions and ideas. In the Surveys of 1965 and 1975 the international community was mainly referenced to discuss a country's imports and exports, the economic situation in other countries and its effect on the country under review, or to compare the country surveyed with other countries, for instance regarding economic growth, interest rates, investments and the like. References to other countries or groups of countries in relation to actual policies accounted for less than half of the international references. The share of these grew in the 1985 and 1995 Surveys, but the real breakthrough of international references in discussing policy decisions came with the 2005 and 2015 reports, in which a vast majority (85% and 76% respectively) of all international references discussed policies ( Figure 2). Thus, the international community became an increasingly important point of reference, often utilised to demonstrate how other countries have tackled related problems, what 'works' internationally, and what the country reviewed should hence take into consideration in seeking to improve its performance. Such identifying benchmarks or positive examples in the rhetoric used go hand in hand with the increasing number of issues included in the scope of the Surveys, as earlier these policy-related references to the international community mostly touched on a fairly narrow set of economic policies, while in the later Surveys the scope of these references widened considerably.
The changes discussed above appear to support the claim about OECD policy advice shifting from the concrete and particular towards more abstract framings of problems and solutions. However, as will next be discussed in detail, contrary to the overall trend in the language used, the actual policy recommendations issued in the Surveys become increasingly precise and context-specific in nature.

Packaging of policy recommendations
Considering how the policy recommendations were formulated in the Surveys we observed several interrelated shifts. One of these concerns the volume and essence of the suasive talk. During the period 1965-1985, recommendations were few. They consisted of separate observations of measures by which the country evaluated could improve its economic performance. Such recommendations were incorporated into the bodycopy of the country reportstypically into the concluding chapter highlighting the key observations and potential challenges. These few recommendations were seldom explicitly worded exhortations but mainly tentative suggestions on actions deemed appropriate, such as improving the balance of payments and strengthening counter-inflationary policies. Explicit recommendations stating that some specific policy or action should be adopted do indeed occur, but only rarely. This 'tactful' way of issuing recommendations was characteristic of the Survey reports throughout the early decades.
A significant change occurred between 1995 and 2005, when communicating recommendations clearly became the main purpose of the country reports. For example, in the Surveys of 2005, recommendation talk pervaded the entire report. The key Notes: This analysis was conducted by identifying the cases in which other countries were referred to in the data by invoking the words 'country' and 'countries'. While this approach does not identify all cases in which other countries were referred to, for example by using only the names of specific countries, we argue that our approach still covers the majority of the cases in which the international community is mentioned. In total 1126 cases were found. The context of references was analysed to ascertain whether other countries were invoked in relation to some kind of state (in)action.
recommendations were first introduced in the Executive Summary and then further elaborated in the Assessment and Recommendations section, in which key recommendations were discussed in more detail and further divided into separate subrecommendations. Distinct visual tools, such as bullet points, italics and bold face were used to highlight recommendations. In the thematic chapters following the Assessment and Recommendations section, recommendations were repeated, first in the introduction to the chapter, thereafter in several places in the bodycopy and again in the concluding text boxes. This kind of visual emphasis of the recommendations and their systematic repetition was also characteristic of reporting in 2015, although in these reports more analytic discussion about the background for distinct recommendations was also provided.
From 1995 on, earlier tentative suggestions were complemented by decidedly explicit requests, often with frequent exhortations as to what reforms are so important for the national economy that the country under review needs to or 'should' introduce them to improve its performance. Figure 3 illustrates the breakdown of implicit (i.e. tentative suggestions) vs. explicit recommendations issued in the Surveys.
To further examine the increased explicitness of the recommendations, we looked at occurrences of the phrase 'something should be done'. 3 While such cases could be found throughout the period, they were five times more frequent in the 2005 and 2015 Surveys than in the earlier country reports. This finding matches well with the finding concerning the growing explicitness of the recommendation talk in the reports.
Our analysis also revealed a change in the wording of recommendations. As discussed above, abstract terms multiplied from the 1990s onward. Interestingly, such abstract vocabulary did not replace more concrete and detailed policy recommendations. On the contrary, we observed that concrete policy recommendations remained an integral part of the OECD's policy advice, even though it appears that particularly from the mid-1990s, concrete policy proposals were increasingly equipped or 'embellished' with more abstract vocabulary. Typically, an abstract idea or principle provides a particular frame for a recommendation; a broader goal for which the country under review should strive. More concrete guidelines are given to demonstrate how such a goal can be achieved. The 2016 Canadian Survey, for example, recommends the elimination of the dairy production quota. The Executive Summary mentions that Canadian productivity has grown more slowly in recent decades than in the 'best performing comparable OECD countries' which has been 'holding back living standards and well-being'. 'High barriers to competition in network sectors which impede innovation and productivity growth' is mentioned as one of the key reasons for the situation. Then, later in the section, the elimination of dairy quotas is mentioned once again by arguing that 'Quota elimination could help reduce Canadian prices[…] and could also promote more inclusive growth and innovation' (OECD, 2016, pp. 12, 105-106). The example shows how a very concrete recommendation, the elimination of a dairy quota, is justified by invoking a variety of abstract ideals such as innovation, inclusive growth and well-being, although the connection between the policy and these ideals remains quite tenuous.
While suasive talk increased and recommendations became more explicit, they also came to include highly specific instructions, even to an extent reminiscent of micro-managing. Consider, for example, the following policy recommendation for Luxembourg's education sector: Expand school hours so as to integrate after-school support arrangements into the regular programme, as is done in the Neie Lycée and, as planned, extend such arrangements to primary school. Such measures would enhance achievement, notably of weaker students. (OECD, 2006, p. 116) We do not claim that all policy recommendations given in more recent Surveys include equally specific guidelines, or that recommendations given in the earlier Surveys lack all specificity. However, recommendations going into this level of detail were non-existent in the earlier country reports. Hence, contrary to what has been suggested, the OECD's policy advice as tendered in its Surveys has not become more scientific and analytic, and hence, less normative and descriptive (c.f. Zapp, 2022). Instead, our analysis partially points in the opposite direction.

Domestication of policy recommendations
Addressing national systems and conditions is a recurring feature of the OECD policy advice throughout the period studied. Yet there are considerable differences in how the link between any given recommendation and the national context is negotiated in the Surveys at different times. In early decades, alleged policy problems and associated policy recommendations were mainly discussed in a national frame, as in the following recommendation aimed at the United Kingdom: The immediate task is to bring the balance of payments back into equilibrium. The Government has fixed itself the objective of achieving balance by the second half of 1966. As the present continuing deficits add to the United Kingdom's already substantial debt commitments it is clearly desirable that the time that elapses before balance is restored should be kept to a minimum. Progress this year towards balance will, of course, have to be judged against the Government's commitment to remove the import charge as soon as possible. The rate of the charge was reduced from 15 to 10 per cent with effect from 27th April. On broad economic grounds, abolition of the import charge is highly desirable. (OECD, 1965, p. 24) In the above example, national economic balance and its prospects are discussed merely against the measures to which the UK government is committed, considering if these are adequate. From the 1990s onward, the national framings change considerably. Consider the recommendation given for Luxembourg: Progress has been made in this direction with the regular updates of the Stability and Growth Programme, which encompasses social security spending. As well, the regular assessments of future pension spending by the Inspection Générale de la Sécurité Sociale and the fiscal policy analyses of the Banque Centrale du Luxembourg help to inform public opinion. More could be done, however, to foster a public debate on the consequences of fiscal choices. It would be useful if the draft central government budget submitted to Parliament included projections of social security expenditure […] Parliamentary debates on the financing needed to support social expenditure programmes would make society feel more responsible for their effects. This would be similar to the practice in other countries, such as in France where the Loi de Financement de la Sécurité Sociale gives rise to a parliamentary debate and helps to steer a debate on social spending trends and, if needed, corrective measures. (OECD, 2006, p. 57) To promote its own reform idea, the OECD refers to policies and practices in other countries. While the international community is increasingly referred to, especially regarding policy decisions (see Figure 2), the distinct ways in which the national context is introduced become more diverse. One frequent way of linking the recommendation to the context of the country evaluatedas in the example abovewas to highlight the national reforms already introduced and those underway.
When the OECD refers approvingly to measures already carried out in the country evaluatedas it frequently doesit often goes on to propose further complementary reforms. Occasionally the OECD highlights policies and practices already introduced in the country in question, acclaiming their success. The purpose of such statements is to convey that the country has done well by already introducing measures related to the problem raised, some of which have proven successful, which is why they should be retained. In a similar vein, references were made to practices in use in other policy sectors in the country concerned. The idea was to argue that the country has already established functioning policies and practices in other sectors and could use these as a source of inspiration in its attempts to improve in the policy area under evaluation. Recommendations repeatedly referred to various national surveys and the accounts of national authorities, using them as leverage to motivate the reform ideas. For example, when the OECD (2015, p. 90) urges Iceland to raise its sector-specific competition, the recommendation is motivated by observations made by the national competition authority according to which many services in Iceland continue to be provided by a single service provider, thereby distorting the desired competition.
The retention of the national framing, also in the more recent Surveys, suggests that it is important for the OECD not to address its members as a homogenous group but indeed as entities with different policy conditions and preferences. As the examples discussed above illustrate, it is typical for the OECD to emphasise the agency of national actors, often underlining how the proposed reforms are the creations of those same national actors, or at least to advance the earlier measures introduced by the national actors. This also applies to cases using references to other countries to motivate the recommendations issued. For instance, while it was often stated in the Surveys that 'something should be done', only in a handful of cases was the reason given explicitly contingent upon decisions taken elsewhere. Thus, even though the OECD increasingly discusses policies adopted elsewhere, compares the performances of different countries to each other and issues explicit and specific recommendations, it is still careful not to say that the same policy as one adopted elsewhere should also be adopted in the country under scrutiny. We argue that it is crucial to appreciate this as a strategic decision from the viewpoint of the OECD posing as a 'disinterested other' and being careful not to convey the impression of compulsory 'homogenisation'.

Discussion
This paper set out to examine how IGOs invest in abstract and generic policy models as part of their policy advice aimed at nation-states, and to what extent they formulate their policy advice as detailed policy instructions geared to the prevailing conditions and interests of the countries reviewed. As a case in point, we analysed one prominent IGO, the OECD and its country reporting. We asked whether the OECD policy advice has shifted from local/particular towards global/universal framings, and how the organisation has linked its recommendations to the national context of the country addressed. To answer these questions, we analysed the OECD Economic Surveys from six decades and from five member countries.
Our analysis lends partial support to the claim according to which the OECD policy advice has become increasingly abstract and context-free. Our analysis of the overall language of the Surveys revealed that the topics addressed proliferated since new themes, often outside the traditional sphere of economics, were increasingly discussed. At the same time, the vocabulary used became more general and abstract, enabling the OECD to use a uniform terminology when addressing problems, goals, and solutions across several national contexts. References to the international context, notably those linked to various policies and their alleged effects, also increased. While these developments began in the 1980s, they clearly accelerated after the turn of the millennium. These changes in the overall vocabulary and scope of the Surveys can be perceived as signals of the OECD breaking away from its original mission as a member-based think tank and moving towards what world society theory calls a 'rationalised other'an IO tasked with producing disinterested and policy-relevant knowledge for multiple actors and for a wide range of policy sectors (Meyer et al., 1997, p. 162;Zapp, 2021, p. 214). Research on the OECD appears to support this interpretation.
A study by Trondal et al. (2010) on IOs' bureaucracies shows how the OECD has gone through numerous reforms in its attempts rid itself of the stigma of a niche organisation. According to the authors, many of these reforms started in the 1990s and have continued to the present day. With the end of the Cold War, a considerable number of non-OECD countries had come closer to fulfilling the conditions for OECD membership, that is 'a belief in and a consolidated practice of a market economy and liberal democracy' (Trondal et al., 2010, p. 67). This compelled the OECD to reconsider its membership. It was no longer acceptable to act as 'an introvert rich-countries' club' (Trondal et al., 2010, p. 85). Instead, the OECD needed open its doors to new member candidates and extend its external relationships (e.g. Porter & Webb, 2008;Trondal et al., 2010). The prospective members, some of which had become leading economic powers in the world, did not fully share the same ideology with the old members. This, together with the pressures emanating from the members discussed earlier, compelled the OECD to adapt its ideology and discourse (Clifton & Díaz-Fuentes, 2011) causing the OECD to adopt a less ideological or indeed 'inclusive' approach to development (Mahon & McBride, 2009). In the 1990s, the idea of globalisation was also changing. There was a growing consensus among experts and decision-makers that distinct policy sectors are not detached from each other but in many ways intertwined on a global scale. When the OECD continued its work on economic growth and prosperity it needed to engage with 'a number of cross-cutting issues' deemed relevant from the perspective of policymaking (Marcussen & Trondal, 2011, p. 601). These attempts by the OECD to establish itself as an expert body with a global audience were also apparent in the language of the Survey reports. Our findings concerning the broadening of the themes discussed, the increasingly abstract language used and the mounting references to other countries' policies signal that the OECD has transformed itself from a neoliberal and member-based niche organisation to an organisation tasked with serving world society at large. 4 Our closer analysis of the recommendations suggests, however, that the phenomenon is more complex. The recommendations issued for individual member countries became decidedly explicit and specific; often arguing with exhortations about what is important from the perspective of the performance of the country evaluated and consequently, what the country under review should do to improve its systems. Moreover, contrary to expectations, considering the world society literature pointing to increasing universalisation and standardisation of policy solutions, the OECD policy advice did not become any less local. With the new millennium, the development of national systems and associated problems became increasingly related to an international frame. At the same time, however, the means by which policy proposals were linked to the respective national contexts and conditions became more refined and numerous. Such suasive talk, emphasising nation-states' special features, was designed to convince individual member countries of the need for reform.
Negotiating the policy recommendations with the country addressed has always been a key element in preparing the OECD country reports. As discussed by Schäfer (2006), when a report is drafted, the needs of domestic policymakers are elicitednot only the needs of the national ministry commissioning the report but also those of different stakeholder groups. As member countries are consulted frequently during the report writing, domestic policy actors have numerous opportunities to articulate certain kinds of recommendations. Such recommendations, consequently, carry ideas and scripts that may already have existed in the domestic policy discourse. Yet, when packaged by an organisation perceived as an expert, they acquire more credibility among the efforts of domestic advocates or 'policy entrepreneurs' (Lodge, 2005) to convince others of what is deemed a desirable way of organising domestic policies, thereby facilitating the potential domestication process.
This, however, is not tantamount to arguing that each policy recommendation issued by the OECD for its individual members is unique. Rather, it is in the interests of the OECD to ensure that the policy ideas it promotes in its separate country reports are consistent with the general policy messages the OECD aspires to convey to its member countries. The OECD has been concerned about the coherence of communication; it is deemed important that the country reports do not convey contradictory policy messages but reflect the general policy discourse of the organisation. A unique discourse is also in the interests of member countries. They do not want to fund overlapping work. Hence, policy advice organisations like the OECD are under pressure to develop their own exclusive approach to those policy issues in which they are active (Dostal, 2004). To consolidate its position, the OECD has needed to differentiate itself, notably from other international economic institutions, but also from organisations such as the EU and the ILO, which have engaged with the same issues as the OECD. Establishing a unique discourse is a challenge for the OECD as the review teams preparing the country reports include external experts whose views diverge from the dominant OECD approach (Trondal et al., 2010). What appears to be crucial from the perspective of the successful adoption of the recommendations issued is that they that they are served by an organisation with a distinguishable voice and packaged as if unique or at least customised specifically for each country context.
The literature suggests that policy advice relying merely on generic reform templates is not considered 'useful' in domestic policymaking (Haas, 2004). This renders it comprehensible that policy advice organisations (national and international) seek to provide contextualised knowledge and policy recommendations which address distinct domestic stakeholder interests (e.g. Juntti et al., 2009). The literature supports the claim that organisations which supplement abstract reform ideas with policy prescriptions considering national features and policy preferences are more successful in global governance. For example, Wong (2012) argues that the NGOs most successful in inculcating global human rights norms are those which tailor their messages differently for specific audiences; organisations keen for their ideas to be implemented 'must oblige local differences if the ideas are ever to gain traction in domestic politics' (Wong, 2012, p. 75). In this article we did not examine the consequences of recommendations. Further studies could do so by studying how different audiences receive and react to the OECD recommendations. The apparently mild resistance towards recommendations reveals something of a successful domestication processbut alternatively it could also be a result of a recommendation simply being ignored.
It is important to emphasise that no exogenous reform ideano matter how efficaciously and unequivocally articulatedconverts into national policies without actions on the part of local actors. As pointed out in domestication scholarship, the success of an exogenous policy idea or reform depends on how convincingly its proponents can argue that the solution proposed is in the best interests of the nation concerned. Unlike earlier domestication studies, which have focused on the processes triggered in national policymaking by the introduction of an exogenous policy model or idea, in this paper we were interested in the stage preceding the introduction of such ideas. We propose that the domestication of the policy ideas promoted by IGOs begins from the successful packaging of the recommendations. An important part of such packaging is to anticipate the domestication process for whose success it is crucial that recommendations do not appear to be imposed from 'above' and that the sense of national uniqueness and sovereignty are not compromised Alasuutari & Kangas, 2020). As the recommendations are motivated by scientific concepts and references to lessons learned from other countries, the proposed policy solutions appear to be based on evidence and universally relevant policy models, even though the understanding of national policies as locally designed and serving national interests persists. Notes 1. The OECD produces analyses and reports for member countries and also for other involved countries in special programmes of the OECD. This work is financed from the organisation's budget, which is made up of payments from member countries, fees collected from special programmes and voluntary contributions. The themes of these analyses are determined in conjunction with the member countries on the OECD work programmes (confirmed once each budgetary period), within programmes for specific sectors and as commissioned operations on voluntary finance. . In addition, we tested other, less frequent, phrases/words that might be used while issuing explicit recommendations, such as 'must', 'ought to', 'urge*', 'suggest*' and 'recommend*'. 4. However, while our results show that superficially the OECD did indeed start to broaden its agenda by bringing in various new topics, such as education, childcare, healthcare and pension schemes etc. the question whether this change should be understood as a retreat from the neoliberal economic agenda of the OECD as a whole remains outside the scope of this study. evolution of political discourses on an international level. For his forthcoming dissertation he investigates in particular the development and diffusion of human rights discourses from the Enlightenment until the present day.