Burkina Faso and Sweden - A discourse analysis of public politics in the field

Abstract: This thesis analyse different understanding of the world how this leads to different actions with real consequences for people. In a public policy chain from the government of Sweden down to the field in Burkina Faso, civil servants have been interviewed in order to identify changes in discourses and what they may potentially mean. The use of qualitative data gives a deeper understanding of how individuals can affect the outcomes in a policy process, this is especially important in a multi factor environment with cross culture implementation like the field of development aid. The changes can be understood as results policy slippages and policy resistance among involved actors. The chain of potential policy changes can on an aggregated and looped cycle cause policy failures, which cannot easily be understood by normal evaluations. This thesis put forward the need for a discursive perspective in the different stages of a policy process in order to increase the efficiency the policy creation, implementation and evaluation and hence increase results and minimize costs.