Environmental policy integration through OECD peer reviews: Integrating the Economy with the environment or the environment with the Economy?

Impacts of OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) environmental and economic country reviews are compared in light of their capacity to enhance environmental policy integration (EPI). Employing a policy-making network perspective, genuine EPI is presumed to require complex learning –'paradigmatic change'. Impacts of reviews on four functions of EPI – agenda-setting, horizontal communication, capacity-building, and policy-learning – are analysed. Environmental Performance Reviews have greater potential to enhance EPI than the experiment in which a sustainable development section was included in a full cycle of Economic Surveys during 2001–04. Lack of political commitment and the strength of prevailing OECD discourse – dominated by mainstream economics – explain much of the failure.