Swedish Foreign Aid Policy, Narrative Analysis

Författare

Astghik Sahakyan

Summary, in English

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 policies, thus resulting in a differentiation of aid from a single Member State and aid from the EU. These two policies and accordingly their value systems may differ in several aspects. Member States both provide their share in the EU foreign aid budget and carry out their national foreign aid programs.
Narrative analysis was proven effective in analyzing the values. Hence, the
Swedish Foreign aid values will be scrutinized through narrative analysis.

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