Creative Learning in IOs

In this paper, we are interested in IOs that serve as knowledge brokers in international politics. We examine IOs’ ideas about what policies states should adopt. In processes of learning, IOs update their beliefs about what policies would be beneficial for states. To explain which policy ideas IOs develop and promote, we need to think of officials as confronting a strategic situation structured by three kinds of problems.

First, IOs need to obtain financial and symbolic resources (funding and legitimacy, primarily) from the environment or field they operate in (Barnett and Coleman Reference Barnett and Coleman2005; Sending Reference Sending2015). The need for financial resources means that IOs have to satisfy principals and donors. This is a core concern of the existing literature on principal-agent problems (Nielson and Tierney Reference Nielson and Tierney2003; Hawkins et al. Reference Hawkins, Lake, Nielson and Tierney2006). However, a strict principal-agent model misses key dimensions of the strategic relationship between states and IOs. For one, states can fund IOs in multiple ways. States fund IOs through non-voluntary contributions. But they can also give funds directly to the IO for dedicated projects and priorities. This creates an alternative avenue of influence and tends to increase the latitude that IOs have to pursue their own policies (Graham Reference Graham2015). Compounding this is the fact that states are not the only important donors. NGOs, foundations, and other IOs can all contribute to IO projects, further increasing the autonomy of IOs to secure resources for their favored policies. Moreover, if an IO is not regarded as legitimate, donors and principals are unlikely to entrust it with resources. We have to go beyond a strict principal-agent framework to situate IOs in a broader strategic situation. In this broader frame, it is an empirical question whether, how, and which principal demands shape IO behavior.

Second, IOs need to motivate client states to engage with the IO and implement its preferred policies. IOs have their own preferred policy means and ends which they try to implement through projects. Most IOs have only limited tools to coerce client states. Moreover, these tools can be evaded by states that feign compliance. Thus, IOs need to get genuine buy-in from client states if they want their preferred policies to be enacted in a meaningful way. To move client states, IOs need to be regarded as legitimate and have the financial tools to wield that authority effectively.

Third, IO officials must manage these two problems while negotiating internal organizational imperatives. These could be structured by organizational rules, leaders’ reform campaigns, or the need to maintain a distinct identity and position vis-à-vis other IOs.

In sum, the strategic situation is the set of problems that IO officials are grappling with. It is important not to pre-theorize the elements of the strategic situation, as rationalists do by prioritizing and centering principal states. It is an empirical question which problems press on officials at any given moment. These pressures emerge from a dynamic situational order that IO officials actively manage (Pouliot Reference Pouliot2016).

Confronting a problem in the strategic situation, IOs depend on creative learning. When policymakers confront an impasse, they need a creative act that meets the demands of the problem while fulfilling organizational imperatives. Immersed in a situation they do not fully understand, officials must improvise, matching new concepts and practices to problems (Cornut Reference Cornut2017; Pouliot Reference Pouliot2016). New concepts and policy ideas are essential to IOs because they help solve multiple problems in the strategic situation at the same time. New ideas help states build coalitions of principals, clients, other IOs, NGOs, and epistemic communities (Haas Reference Haas1990; Jabko Reference Jabko2006; Noel Reference Noel2012). A successful ideational campaign helps an IO raise money, achieve its mandate, and push its preferred policies with client states in a coherent, motivated way. In order to align these elements, actors must possess the diplomatic skill or virtuosity to “craft compromises, take initiatives or herd others in ways that locally resound with others” (Pouliot Reference Pouliot2016, 62).

Existing theories of creativity posit that all action is creative in some sense. We are particularly interested in when creativity generates lasting change in concepts and ideas. To get at this, we specify the conditions under which policymakers are likely to engage in rational, bounded, or creative learning. Rational learning is only likely in a world of “calculable risk” in which policymakers can and do assign probabilities to events that fall into stable and predictable patterns (Seybert and Katzenstein Reference Seybert, Katzenstein, Katzenstein and Seybert2018, 10, 17-19). In situations of uncertainty and ambiguity, actors are more likely to engage in bounded learning wherein they adapt existing ideas to problems.

When are we likely to observe creative learning? First, there must be a challenge or problem that disrupts existing patterns of policy development and spurs the search for new ideas. This is a key insight of the pragmatist tradition which posits that creative action is a result of the reflection induced by such disruptions (Joas Reference Joas1996, 157–159; Berk and Galvan Reference Berk and Galvan2009, 554; Herrigel Reference Herrigel2010, 8; Schmidt Reference Schmidt2014). This is consistent with studies of ideational change that argue new ideas are only likely to spur major changes in discourses when they are framed as solutions to crises or major problems (Hopf Reference Hopf2018, 699–700). Problems and crises cultivate a sense of contingency and suggest the necessity of new approaches. As in bounded learning, creativity is a response to uncertainty and contingency in such moments (Seybert and Katzenstein Reference Seybert, Katzenstein, Katzenstein and Seybert2018, 31, 38). Second, the policy officials must have the autonomy to create new ideas (Barnett and Finnemore Reference Barnett and Finnemore2004). In a strict principal-agent situation, IOs could be disciplined such that they only deploy ideas vetted by states. Other IOs may operate within discourses they do not control. For example, an IO may have to employ a specialized scientific or legal terminology in order for its policy recommendations to remain legitimate. Third, new ideas are more likely to emerge from peripheral social actors or brokers situated between social networks (Goddard Reference Goddard2009; Hopf Reference Hopf2018). The peripheral position of bureaucracies renders them less vulnerable to political interference, providing greater discretionary space for policy innovation (Breznitz and Ornston Reference Breznitz and Ornston2013). Fourth, the size of an IO is likely to affect its likelihood and rate of change, with large IOs likely to be late, slow adopters (Vetterlein and Moschella Reference Vetterlein and Moschella2014). Finally, competition between organizations in a field can also fuel creativity because of the need for organizations to differentiate themselves by creating unique brands and strategies (Sending Reference Sending2015).

These are enabling conditions. To explain specific episodes of creative learning in organizations, we must analyze the confluence of factors in the strategic situation. We expect creative learning when changes in the problem and solution space align with a perceived problem in an IO’s strategic situation. When a number of IOs pursue such an alignment at the same time, they create a macro-level process of creative learning that restructures the landscape of global governance.

Three Modes of Creative Learning

We theorize three modes of creative learning that help illuminate the mechanisms by which actors creatively grapple with the strategic situation: conceptual combination, translation, and repurposing. These modes emphasize how creative learning draws on the resources at hand, combining and recombining elements into new forms (Joas Reference Joas1996; Herrigel Reference Herrigel2010). As Kalyanpur and Newman (Reference Kalyanpur and Newman2017, 364) put it, the work of changing international institutions “is not problem optimization but the creative use of existing tools.” But, importantly, these modes also help explain the creation of lasting new entities by capturing how policymakers integrate concepts and ideas into organizational contexts by forging connections with existing ideas and practices.

Conceptual combination is the invention of a new compound concept by joining existing terms together (Sawyer Reference Sawyer2012, 115-120; cf. Meadowcroft and Fiorino Reference Meadowcroft and Fiorino2017). The case of “green growth” as well as “human rights,” “gender mainstreaming,” and other new objects of global governance are all examples of this. New compound concepts have a unique meaning because they combine semantic networks, allowing actors to make new connections between previously disparate concepts and ideas (Sawyer Reference Sawyer2012, 116; Kenett, Anaki, and Faust Reference Kenett, Anaki and Faust2014). Thus, new concepts are not just new labels. They are vehicles of associated meanings and practices that can aid actors in thinking through problems in new ways. Policymakers are more likely to engage in conceptual combination when they have a minimum level of ideational autonomy and when they conclude that the articulation of new goals or policy instruments will help them overcome obstacles of political mobilization in the strategic situation.

Translation is the act of importing new entities from outside the organization and reshaping it to work within the new organizational context. We expect translation in cases where another organization in the same or an adjacent issue area has introduced a dynamic new concept or idea that appears to be getting traction with principals and clients, putting pressure on other organizations to engage with it. Stone (Reference Stone2017) defines translation in opposition to the view that entities are “diffused” or “transferred” from one organization to the next. She argues that such language ignores the fact that concepts and policy ideas are adjusted each time they “spread” to a new context (cf. Berger and Esguerra Reference Berger, Esguerra, Berger and Esguerra2017). Translation creates novelty because even if two organizations adopt the same concept, each organization will produce a new combination of practices and substantive policy ideas to support and operationalize it (Hopf Reference Hopf2018, 692). When a new concept is imported, it can be creatively aligned with other arguments and frames that circulate within the organizational context. This produces a unique web of meanings and practices around the concept. Translation is distinct from emulation processes in which an organization merely copies or pays lip service to a concept or idea, rather than working out its implications in the new context. If an imported concept does not produce new policy arguments, then it is a case of rational or bounded learning, depending on the mechanism that generated the outcome.

Repurposing involves the reframing and invigoration of existing policy ideas under a new concept.Footnote ⁴ The new concept could be an invented conceptual combination or a translated one. Repurposing creates novelty because it results in new combinations of arguments and themes. It is likely when a new concept provides an opportunity for IO officials to adapt practices and ideas they had pursued or pushed before. The novel concept provides a purpose that gives the projects of IO officials new meaning. Repurposing is distinct from “grafting” (Price Reference Price1998) and other mechanisms because it involves a process of metamorphosis in which the ideas are altered as they are adapted to a new purpose. For example, Hafner-Burton and Pollack (Reference Hafner-Burton and Pollack2002) show how women’s groups repurposed ideas from the “Women in Development” discourse into a new “Gender and Development” discourse. This solved a strategic problem, the confinement of women’s issues to reproduction and child-health, by switching the frame from the exclusion of women to unequal relations of power. This highlighted the crucial role of empowering, rather than merely including, women. This combined existing ideas with new ones in an innovative program of gender mainstreaming.

In sum, creative learning is distinct from rational and bounded learning in terms of both the outcome and the mechanism. The outcome of creative learning is a new entity (concept or idea) and the mechanism is not updating but modes of reconfiguration shaped by the strategic situation. These modes of creative learning allow IO officials to mediate between changes in the problem and solution space, principal demands and interests, and clients’ problems and motivations (figure 1). Changes in state practices or the landscape of policy problems provide the stimulus for creative learning. Then IO bureaucrats engage in one or more of the modes of creative learning. They do so under the political constraint of needing to satisfy principals and motivate client states. New concepts and constellations of ideas allow IO officials to align the incentives of principals, clients, and the IO itself.

Figure 1 Overview of the argument

The Explanandum: Ideas on Economic Growth and the Environment

Our analysis of IO reports reveals a major change in global environmental policy over the last thirty years: the emergence of green growth ideas. This included both the creation of new concepts (“green growth”; “green economy”; “low-carbon growth”) and the rise of substantive policy ideas (Keynesian and Schumpeterian themes). Figure 2 shows the rise of green growth concepts relative to sustainable development. Figure 3 shows the rise of green versions of Keynesian and Schumpeterian policy ideas.

Figure 2 The rise of green growth in global environmental discourse

Note: The y-axis shows the number of times “sustainable development” or “green growth” goals appeared in our sample of 165 IO annual reports, published between 1990 and 2017. “Green growth” includes “green growth,” “green economy,” and “low carbon growth.” Refer to the online appendix for more details.

Figure 3 Economic schools of thought on the environment

Note: The y-axis shows the number of times neoclassical, Keynesian/Schumpeterian, or limits to growth arguments appeared in our sample of 165 IO annual reports, published between 1990 and 2017. To arrive at the aggregate codes for different schools of economic thought, we code policy problems, goals, and means, the three components of policy paradigms following Hall (Reference Hall1993). Refer to the online appendix for more details.

The new ideas that emerged after 2000 were innovative because they articulated the view that there is a strong complementarity between economic growth and environmental protection. Weak complementarity suggests merely that growth and environmental protection are compatible. Arguments for strong complementarity maintain that environmental policies can spur economic growth. Weak complementarity dominated thinking about sustainable development in the 1980s and 1990s. This reflected neoclassical thinking: preserving natural capital was seen as necessary to avoid future declines of economic growth (Solow Reference Solow and Gopalakrishnan1974). On the neoclassical view, the optimal solution is to construct market mechanisms that internalize natural capital through a well-designed Pigouvian tax or a tradable permit scheme. The neoclassical perspective inspired the use of market mechanisms for U.S. efforts to regulate acid rain in the 1980s and the Kyoto Protocol in the 1990s (Meckling Reference Meckling2011).

The innovative arguments for strong complementarity that emerged after 2000 expressed Schumpeterian and Keynesian themes (Bowen and Fankhauser Reference Bowen and Fankhauser2011; Jacobs Reference Jacobs and Falkner2013). In Schumpeterian thought, the environmental problem is one of lock-in into dirty technology. The goal is to develop waves of technological change that will drive the “creative destruction” of polluting firms and technologies while spurring long-term growth (Helpman Reference Helpman1998). In policy terms, Schumpeterian thought proposes government subsidies for research and development and to some extent deployment subsidies (Acemoglu et al. Reference Acemoglu, Aghion, Bursztyn and Hemous2012; Acemoglu et al. Reference Acemoglu, Akcigit, Hanley and Kerr2016; Van Benthem, Gillingham, and Sweeney Reference Van Benthem, Gillingham and Sweeney2008). Adaptations of Keynesian economics argue that environmental policies, such as investments in green infrastructure, could stimulate aggregate demand and therefore growth. The goal is to promote short-term economic growth by increasing the demand for environmental goods and services through, for instance, green economic stimulus. The policy solution of green Keynesianism focuses on fiscal measures, in particular government investment in green infrastructure, including subsidies to deploy clean technologies (Bowen and Stern Reference Bowen and Stern2010). These ideas were not commonplace before 2000. Nor were the Schumpeterian and Keynesian arguments for strong complementarity necessarily drawn from academic work on the topic. Rather, they were created and translated by policymakers who were dynamically responding to changes in the problem and solution space.

The Problem and Solution Space: Climate Change and Green Industrial Policy, 2000–2005

IO officials deployed these new green adaptations of Keynesian and Schumpeterian ideas in response to two changes in the environment. First, there was a shift in the problem space as climate change rose on the global agenda (figure 4). In the 1990s, IOs dealt with a range of environmental problems—including climate change, desertification, loss of biodiversity, and biosafety concerns. After 2000, they increasingly focused on climate change. This focus foregrounded the energy sector and provided a vivid case that made strong complementarity seem viable.

Figure 4 The shifting problem focus

Note: The y-axis shows the number of times we coded that a passage was focused on climate change versus environmental problems generally (including deforestation, desertification, etc.). The UNFCCC is excluded from this graph, so as not to bias the results toward a climate change focus.

Second, policymakers responded to a change in the solution space as the policy practices of states changed. In the 2000s, a number of states conducted experiments with green industrial policy. Green industrial policies include subsidies, regulations, and infrastructure investments that aim to develop environmentally beneficial industries. In the 2000s, Germany and China adopted ambitious green industrial policies in an attempt to stimulate innovation in the energy sector (Rodrik Reference Rodrik2014; Nahm Reference Nahm2017; Meckling Reference Meckling2018).

In the wake of government policy, markets for environmental goods and services in general and markets for clean energy in particular began to grow rapidly in the early 2000s. Between 2001 and 2006, global exports for environmental goods doubled to about USD 460 billion (International Trade Centre 2014). Renewable energy technologies were a key growth sector in environmental goods. Throughout the 1990s, investment in renewable energy technologies grew moderately at a low level of total investment. Between 2000 and 2005, however, global new investment in renewable energy tripled (REN21 2007, 16).

Creative Response: Conceptual Combination in UNESCAP and UNEP, 2005–2008

How did IO officials respond to these changes in the problem and solution space? One alternative explanation could combine a rationalist, Bayesian model of learning with diffusion theory. As climate change rose up the agenda, major states like China and Germany demonstrated the benefits of green industrial policy. This notion then diffused as IOs updated their beliefs about the relative costs and benefits of Keynesian and Schumpeterian policy options in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Another possible explanation is that a coherent epistemic community or professional group of environmental Keynesian and Schumpeterian thinkers pressed and diffused the ideas within and across IOs.

These accounts are problematic in two respects. First, they ignore the creative process by which policymakers invented “green growth” and related concepts. In short, it fails to recognize the novelty of the outcome. Second, as we shall see, they posit the wrong mechanism of learning. IO officials did not conduct a systematic review of costs and benefits to decide which policies would be effective. Rather, they invented or translated concepts and ideas to deal creatively with problems in the strategic situation. IO officials usually initiated creative learning themselves, rather than copying concepts and arguments directly from epistemic communities or academic work. Creative learning thus produced distinct but related “green growth” concepts and policy ideas across the IOs. The diffusion frame fails to identify or explain the variegated nature of the spread of new policy concepts and ideas across IOs.

In the case studies that follow, we provide an account of the overall process by which green growth concepts emerged and spread as well as a comparison across cases. The cases in this subsection emphasize emergence while those in the next provide a more structured comparison of modes of creative learning (see table 1). Our comparative explanation emphasizes the role of the strategic situation in shaping the form and content of creative learning in each IO. In each case, we seek to demonstrate whether new concepts or policy ideas were created through the three modes of creative learning. This distinguishes our account from rational and bounded learning on both the mechanism (updating versus modes of creative learning) and the outcome (existing versus new ideas). Looking across the cases, our narrative emphasizes that the new ideas emerged in small, peripheral IOs before spreading to larger, core ones.

Table 1 Overview of cases

Note: Operating budget is offered as a proxy for size. Full details are available in the supplementary materials. For the organizations with large lending or grant portfolios, we have separated out the project funds.

UNESCAP. The term “green growth” first emerged in a small, peripheral IO, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), where South Korea championed the new ideas and channeled them into global discourse. The first mention of green growth in an international policy document was the Ministerial Declaration of the Fifth Ministerial Meeting of UNESCAP of March 2005. The conference was organized by UNESCAP joint with UNEP, UNDP, and the Asian Development Bank. The declaration endorsed the green growth approach, while launching the Seoul Initiative on Environmentally Sustainable Growth.

The creation of the term green growth is a case of conceptual combination. The term was invented by Ambassador Rae Kwon Chung, then Director of UNESCAP’s Environment and Development Division. Chung had served as Korea’s climate change negotiator from 1991 until 2004. His work on green growth was a response to a strategic problem that he and other advocates of climate action confronted. He felt that climate negotiations were gridlocked because countries perceived climate action as a “zero-sum game with economic growth.” He was convinced that climate mitigation could be a driver of jobs and growth. Chung felt a new “paradigm” would help: “I tried to harmonize climate action with economic growth. ‘Green growth’ was the right word. When I came up with it, I was thinking ‘green’ was ‘environment’, ‘climate change,’ etc. and that climate action can drive economic growth” (Chung Reference Chung2018).

As UNESCAP’s Environment and Development Director, Chung wrote the background document for the 2005 UNESCAP Ministerial himself. Chung’s status as a relative outsider to the world of IO environmental policy ensured that he did not just replicate well-rehearsed “sustainable development” discourse. His background paper drew on an eclectic set of academic sources to argue that a “positive win-win synergy between environment and economy” was possible (UNESCAP 2005b, 1). Although he did not really have empirical evidence to support the claim, he made the bold, creative case that a combination of pricing schemes, public investment, government regulation, and private sector innovation could generate economic growth and employment (UNESCAP 2005b, 11-18). A purely rational or Bayesian learning theory suggests that learning must be informed by systematic evaluations of the costs and benefits of policy options. But Chung worked from personal experience and conviction, not a careful analysis of the evidence. It was only later that Chung found and drew on the work of economist Paul Ekins who had published a book in 2000 titled Economic Growth and Environmental Sustainability: The Prospects for Green Growth (Chung Reference Chung2018).

The importance of change in the problem and solution space is evident in the fact that Chung was motivated to address problems in climate politics. Moreover, subsequent UNESCAP documents explicitly drew on the economic practice of Asian economies, including South Korea and China (UNESCAP 2005a, 46). For example, a 2006 UNESCAP report stated that “countries such as China are developing visionary Green Growth policies” (UNESCAP 2006, 12).

Chung was the key policy entrepreneur in the early years of the concept, driving its success at UNESCAP, in the Korean government, the OECD, and elsewhere (Chung Reference Chung2018; Nikolova Reference Nikolova2018). Chung personally persuaded Korean President Myung-bak Lee to adopt the concept and support the promotion of green growth ideas (Chung Reference Chung2018). He also succeeded in the drive to have the 2005 UNESCAP Ministerial adopt the concept against developing country opposition. China and India were initially concerned that the concept might establish a new basis for denying the right to grow (IISD 2005). But Chung and his staff worked hard to convince the Chinese and Indian representatives, who allowed the concept to enter the Ministerial statement. Chung’s invention of a new term spurred a dynamic process of creative learning across IOs.

United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP). UNEP Executive Director Klaus Töpfer was present at the 2005 UNESCAP Ministerial, so the organization was familiar with green growth thinking early on (UNESCAP 2005a, 14). Under Achim Steiner, who succeeded Töpfer in 2006, UNEP engaged in its own process of conceptual combination. Rather than using the term “green growth,” UNEP began systematically developing the concept “green economy” (Interview 1; Steele Reference Steele2017). Fulai Sheng, head of UNEP’s Economic and Fiscal Policy Unit said Steiner “carried the idea of a macroeconomic case [for the environment] into UNEP … In terms of substance, [Achim] wanted to highlight the positive linkages [between the environment and economy]. Achim was stating what was happening in the economy.” In particular, UNEP noted that China was driving growth in environmental goods and services (Interview 1). As Sheng (Reference Sheng2018) puts it, “I was inspired by the growth of China’s environmental industry.” Thus, UNEP’s articulation of the green economy concept was in part a creative response to new state practices and changes in energy markets.

Early on in his tenure, Steiner commissioned an internal report from David Pearce, an economist at University College London, on the links between eradicating poverty and protecting the environment. In 1989, Pearce had published the best-selling Blueprint for a Green Economy, joint with Anil Markandya and Ed Barbier. Fulai Sheng (Reference Sheng2018) explains why UNEP decided to draw on Pearce’s work: “I had looked at the major writings on the topic, and I had concluded that in most cases on the relationship between the economy and environment had been portrayed in a negative fashion … the focus was on costs and negative externalities … how environmental costs translate into economic costs … . Except in Pearce, where there were some signs of showing positive linkages, especially for investments, for example in organic agriculture and clean water, for poverty reduction.” Here, Steiner, Sheng, and others reacted creatively to changes in the solution space by creating new policy arguments for strong complementarity themselves. Academic ideas were brought in after the fact to flesh out and support new concepts. Contradicting the expectations of rational or Bayesian learning perspectives, there was no systematic accounting of whether or not China’s policies vindicated earlier academic work. Rather, learning involved complex combinations of creative impulse, strategic action, and post-hoc academic engagement.

In 2007, the organization’s annual report mentioned the term “green economy” for the first time. Also, as part of the Green Jobs Initiative with the International Labor Organization and other partners, UNEP published the research report Green Jobs though the green growth/economy language had not yet made its way into official policy reports. After 2008, the financial crisis created the impetus for the further development and spread of these ideas. On October 22, 2008, UNEP launched the Green Economy Initiative, funded by the European Commission, Germany, and Norway. As part of the new initiative, UNEP published in March 2009 the briefing A Global Green New Deal: Policy Brief, which offered specific policy advice on a green stimulus response to the financial crisis (UNEP 2009).

What explains UNEP’s invention and integration of the green economy concept? UNEP’s strategic situation is structured by the fact that it does not have a large lending portfolio. It can provide technical assistance but does not have strong levers of influence over client states. To be influential, it must persuade government officials that its preferred policies are necessary and effective. UNEP also depends on voluntary contributions from states, NGOs, and other IOs (Graham Reference Graham2015, 182). Innovative policy work helps it accomplish both these tasks. In this case, UNEP officials used the green economy concept to solve practical problems with client states and to generate revenue. Part of UNEP’s rationale in promoting the concept was to gain greater traction with Finance Ministries in addressing climate change. Finance Ministries controlled funding decisions but were not motivated by neoclassical ideas on negative environmental externalities (Sheng Reference Sheng2018). The growth narrative resonated more strongly with this constituency.

Variation in Creative Learning: Repurposing and Translating Green Growth Ideas, 2008–2012

There is considerable variation in how and when the OECD, World Bank, and UNDP engaged in creative learning after 2008. In 2009, the OECD produced a Ministerial Declaration on green growth that capitalized on the interest in a green stimulus. In doing so, it had to creatively repurpose sustainable development ideas as it translated green growth ideas into its work. The World Bank initially exhibited creativity by inventing a new concept, “low-carbon growth.” But it later incorporated this original work into studies of green growth. It offers a hybrid case in which conceptual combination gave way to translating a pre-existing concept. The UNDP did not adopt green growth ideas until Achim Steiner moved from UNEP to the UNDP. The UNDP case provides some variation that helps us theorize the conditions under which IOs engage in bounded learning or emulation, rather than creative learning. This variation undercuts the simple diffusion narrative on which a single set of ideas spread amongst IOs. Instead, it shows how the strategic situation shapes the production of novel combination of concepts and policy ideas in IOs.

The OECD. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s strategic situation is unique because its principals are its client states. OECD policy is determined primarily through declarations by government Ministers. A central task of the OECD directorates then is to motivate member states to comply with these Ministerial declarations. But the directorates also work with activist states to get their preferred ideas into declarations. They help craft the language of declarations and work to persuade reluctant states to support certain initiatives. To accomplish all of this, the staff members have to engage in creative learning that weaves together new concepts, technical policy proposals, and diplomatic skill.

In the runup to the 2009 OECD Council of Ministers, the Environment Directorate confronted two specific problems in its strategic situation. First, efforts to push environmental policy under the umbrella of sustainable development were not working (OECD official 2017). As one official put it, “the failure of sustainable development” was clear (Girouard Reference Girouard2018). Second, the staff wanted to get environmental policy upgraded to the level of the Finance Ministries where it could have a broader impact (Girouard Reference Girouard2018; Kitamori Reference Kitamori2018). Green growth allowed the Environment Directorate to accomplish both these goals.

In June 2009, the OECD Council of Ministers adopted the Declaration on Green Growth. The impetus came from Korea, whose then-Prime Minister Han Seung-soo chaired the OECD Ministerial Council Meeting. He placed green growth on the OECD agenda at the behest of President Lee Myung-bak (Girouard Reference Girouard2018; Kitamori Reference Kitamori2018). Staff in the Environment Directorate sought to use the Korean initiative “as a way to raise awareness and get policy traction on some things we’d been working on” (OECD official 2017).

In short, OECD officials repurposed existing sustainable development policies as they translated green growth policies into their organizational and political context. This was a creative act in that it led OECD staff to articulate a unique constellation of green Keynesian and Schumpeterian ideas. In 2006 and 2007, the OECD had tried to push jobs programs and renewable energy policies under the auspices of sustainable development (e.g., OECD 2006; OECD 2007). The repurposed ideas were new because they emphasized the strong complementarities between growth and environmental protection. For example, in a 2009 report, the OECD argued that states could use stimulus packages to build “new green industries and businesses” through “proactive policies to support innovation and environment-related technological development and uptake” (OECD 2009b, 8, 10). The 2009 ministerial declaration specifically singled out the growth of clean technology markets: “In order for countries to advance the move towards sustainable low-carbon economies, international co-operation will be crucial in areas such as the development and diffusion of clean technologies” (OECD 2009a, 1). The focus on low-carbon technologies here provides evidence that the rise of climate change in the problem space was a key motivation for creative learning.

Since the Environmental Directorate was trying to get the attention of Finance Ministries, it leaned heavily on the financial crisis as a motivating problem. In developing its green growth strategy, OECD officials referenced the report, A Climate for Recovery: The Colour of Stimulus Goes Green, published by the UK bank HSBC in February 2009. As one senior official said: “There was a seminal HSBC paper on green stimulus. Everyone was reading that” (OECD official 2017). HSBC’s report summarized green investments by governments, which shows how emerging state practice—here conveyed through a business publication—shaped policy ideas.

As in other IOs, green growth was contested. European member states expressed interest in the concept, while the US and other states initially rejected it (OECD official 2017; Nikolova Reference Nikolova2018). But despite some resistance, the “Korean argument” was successful in convincing states that there were productivity gains in green investment and the declaration passed (Girouard Reference Girouard2018). After 2009, green growth began to be integrated into the organization’s work. The OECD engaged with UNESCAP’s secretariat, dispatching a representative to Thailand to take notes and learn from UNESCAP’s work (Nikolova Reference Nikolova2018). Ambassador Chung, head of UNESCAP’s environment work, attended green growth-related meetings at the OECD. The OECD also facilitated a working group on green growth among member states.

The 2010 OECD annual report deployed the concept to support a Keynesian argument for green jobs to contribute to climate mitigation. In May 2011, the organization published its green growth strategy, Towards Green Growth. The strategy explicitly referenced emerging policy practice in, for example, China and Korea, in a section called “Green growth in action.” Tying emerging policy practice to revive growth to climate change broadened the target audience of the OECD’s environmental work from environment ministries to finance ministries. This was the same intention and process as in UNEP. “Green Growth has helped coordinate discourse across ministries. This evolution was possible because of a change in the narrative,” an OECD representative said (Girouard Reference Girouard2018). As IO officials see it, learning is not a precise process of weighing costs and benefits, but a process of creating new narratives to address shifts in the problem and solution space while managing the IO’s strategic situation.

The World Bank. The Bank’s large lending portfolio structures its strategic situation. The World Bank uses lending to shape the domestic policies of client states both formally, by attaching conditionalities to loans, and informally, by providing technical assistance that pushes the Bank’s preferred policies. Even so, Bank officials understand that their preferred policies are more likely to be implemented when they have significant buy-in from client states, which are oriented toward economic growth. At the same time, Bank priorities need to be consistent with those of powerful funding states (Nielson and Tierney Reference Nielson and Tierney2003). Officials working on policy campaigns inside the Bank need to manage these two pressures on the strategic situation.

The World Bank began to experiment with Keynesian and Schumpeterian environmental policy ideas after 2000. The impetus for this was the rise of climate change on the agenda between 2004 and 2007 (Brandon Reference Brandon2018; Fay Reference Fay2017). The Bank took an interest in the development of renewable energy and “transitioning to a low-carbon economy” (Gouvello Reference Gouvello2018; World Bank 2006, 18). In the 2008 Annual Report, the World Bank coined the term “low-carbon growth.” According to one official, it was in the 2008 environmental strategy that the Bank “really owned” the ideas underpinning green growth (Lvovsky Reference Lvovsky2017). There, the Bank argued that environmental protection actually “spurs economic growth” (World Bank 2008, 1). However, this insight was incorporated under the banner of reconceptualizing “sustainable development” rather than actually using the term “green growth” (World Bank 2008, 2). Thus, initially, the World Bank did not use the terms green growth or green economy to frame its work.

The invention of the phrase low-carbon growth was an instance of conceptual combination by an environmental group within the Bank. Constrained by the longstanding commitment to economic growth in the Bank, environmental advocates sought to reassert that growth and climate action were complementary. The goal was to use the concept to, as in UNESCAP and UNEP, “create a positive narrative, to reconcile mitigation and development” (Gouvello Reference Gouvello2018). This would be realized practically in energy projects funded by the Bank (Gouvello Reference Gouvello2018). In short, these ideas emerged as a way of talking to client states about undertaking environmental and climate change action now, rather than pursuing the “grow now, clean up later” strategy many states preferred (Fay Reference Fay2017).

After 2010, the Bank took up the concept “green growth.” In 2010, the Bank’s annual report referenced green growth and the Bank funded a “green growth” project in Mexico (World Bank 2010, 27). This switch to using the concept of green growth around 2010 was “a continuation of low-carbon studies” (Gouvello Reference Gouvello2018). It thus translated a pre-existing concept into the context of its own strategic situation. This produced unique constellations of policy ideas consistent with the Bank’s more mainstream economic tendencies. In 2011, the Bank supported the policy research paper “From Growth to Green Growth.” This paper articulated the Schumpeterian and Keynesian bases for the argument that environmental protection could drive growth in mathematical formalisms that could speak to mainstream economists (Hallegatte et al. Reference Hallegatte, Heal, Fay and Treguer2011). This was an original combination that made a real contribution to green growth thinking. In December 2012, the World Bank published the report Inclusive Green Growth which stated the real-world reference: “Beyond stimulus effects, some countries—including Brazil, China, Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Morocco—are looking at green growth as a potential source of longer-term growth through which to create new markets” (World Bank 2012, 14).

This process of creative learning served as a response to the changing problem landscape and drew on salient state practices in China. As one prominent champion of green growth ideas in the Bank put it, “climate change has been incredibly helpful” in advancing new ideas. New green Keynesian and Schumpeterian ideas “emerged from frustration with the naive approach that ‘a price [on carbon dioxide] can fix everything … [as argued by] mainstream economists” (Fay Reference Fay2017). Once climate change was on the agenda, “tech and finance were the next steps” (Lvovsky Reference Lvovsky2017). As one interviewee said, “technology was changing rapidly, wind, solar” (Fay Reference Fay2017). In addition, decoupling was “already on the top of China’s agenda” (Lvovsky Reference Lvovsky2017). The complexities of the World Bank case show that learning was not a mechanical process of updating beliefs about costs and benefits, but a creative engagement with exemplars of state practice that combined inspiration and evidence.

While the green growth concept has entered the Bank, it is contested. One economist in the Bank suggested: “if you ask mainstream economists or energy specialists, I’m not sure everyone would say that you can reconcile the environment with growth” (Fay Reference Fay2017). Nonetheless, economists in the research division studied green growth, at least in part because the Korean government funded the research (Brandon Reference Brandon2018). Despite those efforts the Bank has not made the concept central to its work. Why? The institutionalized power of neoclassical economists in the Bank means that a new concept rooted in alternative economic knowledge will not disseminate through the Bank easily. Moreover, the Bank is a large IO with a big project portfolio, so it takes time to mainstream new ideas throughout the organization.

UNDP. The United Nations Development Programme case is interesting because there is little evidence that creative learning took place. The UNDP was the last of the IOs in our sample to engage with green growth ideas. The concept “green economy” appears in the UNDP’s Annual Report in 2010, 2014, and 2017, but it is not central to the arguments and proposals. Only in 2017, when Achim Steiner became leader of UNDP, did the concept become significant to its operations (Interview 27). Steiner had helped create the concept “green economy” at UNEP, so it is not surprising that he helped bring it to the UNDP. In deploying the concept, the UNDP essentially followed UNEP (UNDP official 2018). The UNDP thus provides a case of diffusion through bounded learning, in which existing concepts and policy arguments were imported without meaningful alteration.

Why did the UNDP not experiment with new concepts or Keynesian-Schumpeterian ideas before Steiner came to the organization? First, the UNDP’s creativity is constrained by its place in the UN system. As multiple officials noted, the UNDP is reluctant to adopt new concepts like green economy or green growth because “once you adopt such a concept, it becomes a standard that becomes binding” (Interview 26). Once the green economy concept had been created by UNEP, the UNDP could use it. Before that, it lacked the autonomy to deploy a new concept.

Even so, the entry of the concept after 2017 did not lead to repurposing or bold new visions. UNDP officials do not see the concept as all that useful or distinct from their existing concepts. Our interviewees reported that in the day-to-day work of the UNDP, green economy concepts are treated as synonymous with “sustainable development.” As one official explained, the UNDP has always funded “green economy” projects as part of its sustainable development program, even if is only now “terming this green economy” (Interview 27). This is in contrast to UNESCAP, where Chung used the idea to marshal new ideas, or the OECD where the encounter with “green growth” helped create new ideas about fostering innovation and developing industries.

Second, UNDP officials reported that the organization was reluctant to advocate for green economy or green growth concepts because they feared alienating client states. One official reported that green growth generated “pushback” from developing countries on the grounds “that it seeks to protect the environment at the expense of people” (UNDP official 2018). Another official was concerned that once the UNDP was labelled as an “environmental” organization, client states would be less likely to work with the UNDP (Interview 24). Instead of solving a problem in the strategic situation, green growth would have created one.

The UNDP case helps identify the restrictive conditions under which we see diffusion by bounded learning. Recall that Steiner brought the concept to the UNDP. A policy entrepreneur in a powerful position can certainly generate ideational change. However, without a compelling reason to adopt the concept, the IO has no need to translate or repurpose it in order to make the concept suit its particular strategic problems. Thus, it imports existing heuristics without novelty.