Postcolonial tendencies in Swedish development aid (original) (raw)

Swedish Aid – A Multi-Purpose Tool for Globalization?

Sweden is an interesting aid donor to study. With a reputation of a committed and trustworthy dialogue partner with a focus on poverty reduction, Sweden is seen to be driven by altruistic motives and pushing the international donor coordination agenda. However, at a closer look, selectivity and poverty focus in the Swedish partner portfolio is relatively weak; country selections have primarily been based on historical patterns and are often contributing to donor congestion; aid motives are increasingly becoming blurred, while the Swedish aid agencies rapidly are becoming messier from an organizational standpoint, So what is the Swedish aid model, and how is it evolving? Why has Swedish aid become increasingly complex in its content?

Writing the History of Development Aid

Scandinavian Journal of History, 2007

International aid has been a significant element both in economic development and international politics since 1945, but has been insufficiently integrated in the discipline of history. The present article discusses the main problems of method, sources and discourse in the field of aid history, based on the recently published three-volume history of Norwegian development aid. The shifting conjunctures of aid are seen in relation to main paradigm changes in development theory. It is emphasized that history is not a macro-evaluation, but that it provides a basis for reflection, in this as in other fields. Keywords aid; historiography; development discourse International aid, or 'development aid', has played a significant role in the international economy over the last half century; it constitutes the single largest form of transfer of resources from developed to developing countries compared both to foreign direct investment and commercial loans. Up to half of the state budget of some African countries has been financed through international aid, and many local communities have for a more than a generation been strongly affected by aid projects. 1 For the donor countries aid has been an instrument of foreign policy and of national image-building, not least in the Nordic countries. Yet, the subject of aid is conspicuously absent from general historical surveys, both national and international, and monographs on aid history are rare. To remedy this situation work is now underway in all the Nordic countries on the history of development aid, and Nordic networks of cooperation have been established. What follows are reflections on some problems of method and theory in this field, based on the newly published threevolume History of Norwegian Development Aid. 2 The history of Norwegian development aid This project was initiated and financed by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry to mark the 50 years' anniversary of the Norwegian Agency for International Development, NORAD, in 2002. 3 In an ideologically loaded field of this kind the formal definition of the relationship between sponsors and researchers is of importance. In conformity

Swedish Internationalism and Development Aid

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2016

This chapter provides a critical assessment of Swedish internationalism by unpacking its social democratic roots and liberal expressions. It examines the distinct features of Sweden’s social democratic internationalism, with its focus on solidarism within and beyond borders, and the country’s tradition of neutrality, which is also linked to internationalism. The chapter also provides an investigation into the internationalist tradition of the center-right coalition government known as the Alliance. The discussion is situated within constructivist scholarship on Swedish internationalism, social democracy, and neutrality. The empirical focus is Sweden’s commitment to a more equitably distributed international income through provisions of overseas development assistance.

Swedish Foreign Aid Policy, Narrative Analysis

2017

This paper will examine the Swedish Foreign Aid policy, particularly those values it was based on. It will attempt to discover how the narrative of foreign aid was affected after the accession to the European Union and how the European values were reflected in national foreign aid policy. Since the 1950’s, the Official Development Assistance (ODA), usually referred to as foreign aid is one of the inseparable aspects of foreign affairs of the industrialized world. Moreover, several multilateral organizations, amongst others the European Union (EU), have been established to contribute to the process of development. Even though the European Union tries to represent itself in global politics as a single actor and aspires to have one common voice like in EU trade and agricultural policies, foreign aid policy differs radically from the latter. In this area, the EU and Member States allocate funds separately from each other. When it comes to ODA, Member States retain their autonomous aid p...