According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the role of the organization is to “work on establishing evidence-based international standards” in education by providing “a unique forum and knowledge hub for data and analysis, exchange of experiences, best-practice sharing, and advice on public policies” (OECD, 2022).  However, nation-states also participate in this work of setting up new frameworks of international standards and serve as places for the negotiation of transnational policies and national adaptations. A consequence of greater demands on transnational cooperation is an increased interdependence between transnational and national arenas (Steiner-Khamsi, 2004; Sassen 2013). 

The purpose of this paper is to explore the national government and the OECD as two arenas depending on each other for their exercise of power and legitimization of education reforms. The research question is “How do the government and the political parties in Sweden use the OECD to legitimize their policy, and how does the OECD use Swedish education policy to promote its policy ideals”?    

The study draws on discursive institutionalism for a theoretical conceptualization (Carstensen & Schmidt, 2016). From this theoretical perspective, ideas, discourses, and human agency are central for understanding how social institutions both can be maintained and change. Ideas are here seen as represented through discourse that is the interactive process by which ideas are processed, changed, and conveyed. 

The data consists of Swedish policy documents and reports from the OECD between the years from 2014 to 2021. The analytical approach to the policy texts is critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2010). Critical discourse analysis distinguishes between three steps in the analysis: the descriptive, interpretive and explanatory phases (Fairclough, 2001). The result reveals an interdependent, although ambivalent, relationship between the nation-state and the OECD in legitimizing educational reforms. The same political parties that emphasizes the OECD as a world-leading and neutral educational expert when being in government, a few years later argues that the OECD is partisan and ignorant in when being in opposition. The OECD, on their side, proposes a central governing of the school system in line with its ambition to influence the outcome of the national education system.