Deciding who gets what - A study of Swedish aid policy change through FPDM theory

Abstract: This thesis seeks to investigate what factors played a role when Sweden took the decision to lessen the amount of countries it should give aid to, commonly called the land focus. It seeks to do so using foreign policy decision making theories and the rational actor model commonly assumed by those. The study is made part through the study of official materials, part through interviews with people at the Swedish ministry of foreign affairs and SIDA, Swedish International Development Agency. The thesis finds that the process had several problems, both due to intentional and unintentional biases. This is due to several reasons, mainly stemming from a historic power disparity between the MFA and SIDA, but also due to the nature of the process itself. Since foreign policy matters are of delicate nature, time constraints meant that a quantitative process was used, introducing ambiguity due to indicators not being singlehandedly “good” or “bad”. The land focus process combined with other measures does help to alleviate the problem of individual rationality leading to sub-optimal collective rationality. Finally it’s concluded that the need of aid was a guiding, but not the only, factor in the decision.