South-North Cooperation : Exploring the symbolic regime of a ‘new’ development cooperation paradigm

Abstract: This thesis studies the symbolic regimes of Southern and Northern development cooperation partners. Symbolic regime is understood as the jointly articulated discourse of the Southern and Northern development partners. South-North cooperation is a suitable topic for study due to its peculiarity. The power structure typically seen in development cooperation is inverted, with the Southern country being the primary architect of cooperation between the two countries, unlike in traditional development cooperation. The study is placed in the context of wider research on convergence between Southern and Northern countries. Symbolic regimes are studied by inductively generating theoretical categories using a grounded theory method on documents from China’s Belt and Road Initiative and comparing those categories with established North-South and South-South symbolic regimes, which are framed using gift theory. The results suggest that China and its Northern partners’ symbolic regime is similar to the symbolic regime from South-South cooperation, without the emotional claims of solidarity or empathy. Jointly articulated discourse was found primarily to detail intended consequences and facilitating conditions, while individually articulated material showed that there are realities which are obscured by the symbolic regimes.