Business Fighting Poverty: The Rise of New Private Sector Strategies in Swedish Foreign Aid

Abstract: This thesis aims to explain the rise of CSR and the increasing private sector strategies within foreign aid in Sweden. The theoretical approach is grounded in three hypotheses that could explain the rise of this I) that the global idea on a changed role for business has fostered the development II) that it is due to a conservative more pro-business government in power or III) that it is a development due to business world influence with the means of lobbyism. In order to explain this, the investigation sets out to trace the processes of private sector strategies in the foreign aid agenda from 1991-2012. The results present that there seems to always have been some party differences in relation to tied aid in the earlier phase and CSR in the later phase, and business has an interest in affecting the content, but the overall trend has not been driven by these factors. The change process from tied to untied aid was spurred by new thinking about how corporations should be integrated, legitimating business involvement according to their role in market-making and as members of civil society. The results of the thesis are drawn from extensive empirical material, including interviews with major actors in the field.