The Politics of Policy Surveillance: Lessons from OECD Peer Reviews for the EU Climate and Energy Policy

The OECD international peer reviews represent a typical example of policy surveillance at the international level. Lacking direct regulatory power, the Organisation exerts its influence via soft persuasion through peer pressure, reinforced by the attention from the media, civil society, and other member country governments to the reviewed country’s policy performance. This paper draws lessons for EU energy governance from four types of OECD peer reviews: the Environmental Performance Reviews, Economic Surveys, Energy Policy Reviews (conducted by OECD International Energy Agency), and radioactive waste management peer reviews (conducted by the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency). Drawing on interviews, documentary material and participant observation from the period 1996-2017, the paper explores key challenges associated with, and lessons for EU energy and climate governance from these peer review exercises. Instead of generating direct and immediate policy changes, OECD peer pressure operates mainly via indirect, subtle and long-term ‘conceptual’ impacts, shaping frameworks of thought and setting agendas. As such, these peer review need to constantly strike a balance between contradictory objectives and operating philosophies. These include ideological tensions, as well as those between accountability and learning through open and frank debate as competing purposes of peer review. The tensions are underpinned by the fundamental cleavages amongst member countries and between OECD secretariat divisions (preference for ‘soft’ vs. ‘hard’ persuasion; nuclear vs. non-nuclear; liberalism vs. state dirigisme, etc.). The failed attempts to introduce systematic peer reviews in the area of radioactive waste management illustrate challenges of policy surveillance in this particularly sensitive policy area.