The Hegemony of Growth: The OECD and the Making of the Economic Growth Paradigm

Description

In modern society, economic growth is considered to be the primary goal pursued through policymaking. But when and how did this perception become widely adopted among social scientists, politicians and the general public? Focusing on the OECD, one of the least understood international organisations, Schmelzer offers the first transnational study to chart the history of growth discourses. He reveals how the pursuit of GDP growth emerged as a societal goal and the ways in which the methods employed to measure, model and prescribe growth resulted in statistical standards, international policy frameworks and widely accepted norms. Setting his analysis within the context of capitalist development, post-war reconstruction, the Cold War, decolonization, and industrial crisis, The Hegemony of Growth sheds new light on the continuous reshaping of the growth paradigm up to the neoliberal age and adds historical depth to current debates on climate change, inequality and the limits to growth. Cover......Page 1 Copyright......Page 5 Contents......Page 6 List of figures and tables......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 9 List of abbreviations......Page 12 Introduction......Page 14 Setting the stage: a historical introduction to the OECD......Page 47 Part I: Paradigm in the making: the emergence of economic growth as the key economic policy norm (1948–1959)......Page 88 1. Measuring growth: the international standardization of national income accounting......Page 98 2. Propagating growth: from reconstruction and stability to “selective expansion” and “productivity”......Page 130 3. “Expand or die”: international economic mandarins and the transnational harmonization of growth policies......Page 155 Part II: Paradigm at work: a “temple of growth for industrialized countries” in action (1960–1968)......Page 176 4. Power, progress, and prosperity: growth as universal yardstick and the OECD’s 1961 growth target in perspective......Page 180 5. Boosting growth: the Western “growth conscience” and social engineering in the name of accelerated growth......Page 202 6. Replicating growth: the “development of others” and the hegemony of donor countries......Page 228 Part III Paradigm in discussion: the “problems of modern society,” environment, and welfare (1969–1974)......Page 252 7. Quantity in question: challenging the hegemony of growth and the OECD-Club of Rome nexus......Page 258 8. Reclaiming growth: organizational dynamics and the “dialectic” of qualitative growth......Page 280 9. Quantifying quality: managing the environmental costs of growth and the difficult quest for “gross national wellbeing”......Page 301 Epilogue: paradigm remade (1975–2011)......Page 325 Conclusion: provincializing growth......Page 348 Archival sources and select bibliography......Page 371 Index......Page 387