Major international surveys and reports have considerably altered the expectations andoutlooks of national policymakers in education over the last three decades. Througha comparative content analysis of bibliographies in policy documents, this article exploresthe intermediary bodies that facilitate salient interconnections between international organi-zations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) andnational policymakers and experts who prepare comprehensive school reforms in threeNordic countries: Denmark, Norway and Sweden. This article builds on a large Nordic researchproject that studied the transfer and translation of international policies in a Nordic reformcontext. It extends the study by examining the role of publishers as intermediary policybrokers that legitimize the usage of OECD knowledge as significant members of instrumentconstituencies. This study enhances our understanding of the variations in citation patternsacross policy documents from three Nordic countries. It also investigates the extent to whichdifferences in instrumental constituencies arise from institutional arrangements and theideational foundations underpinning reform trajectories. Additionally, it examines the topicsaddressed by these reforms and the governments’ affiliations with new policy brokerssupported by both public and private publishers.