The activities of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (oecd) extend from discussion of macroeconomic theory, to the negotiation of guidelines for multinational corporations, to exchanges of information on energy consumption, to attempts to agree on the standardization of fruit and vegetable sizing. To lump all of these activities into one analytical pot is possible, but hardly desirable. The oecd has been characterized as an 'international monitoring agency/1 or simply as a 'communications system/2 but these generalizations are of limited utility and usually focus on particular aspects of oecd activity. Delegates and members of the secretariat all stress that the oecd should not be regarded as an executive agency which takes decisions and carries out operational work.3 Rather, it is a marked characteristic of oecd activities that all parties take great care that recommendations or resolutions of the various branches of the