Retelling the Transformation of the International Economic Order from Within: The Life and Death of Bureaucratic Charisma at the OECD (1955–1985)

This article aims to develop a historical sociology of international institutions inspired by a reading of Max Weber and his concept of the charisma of office. It traces the professional trajectory of Stephen Marris, a high-ranking international civil servant at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Despite being a "special economic advisor" to the secretary-general, Marris was later erased from official historical records after being designated persona non grata —a "Keynesian" target to be shot down—in 1983, at the height of the Reagan-Thatcher era. The research challenge is to understand, over a period of thirty years, the evolving transgovernmental networks that progressively made this extraordinary bureaucratic position possible. Specifically, this article focuses on the transgovernmental networks on monetary and financial issues that are concentrated within the understudied OECD's Working Party 3, which developed a form of multilateral Keynesianism before turning neoliberal. It constitutes Marris's trajectory as both an analyst and a subject of this transformation, partly thanks to an exceptional archival document: Marris's unpublished farewell seminar.