This thesis is a comparative analysis between two villages in India, examining personal accounts from participants in the world’s largest anti-poverty programme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). The analysis is based on an eight-week field-study in Andhra Pradesh, which was financed through a Minor Field Study Scholarship by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). This thesis aim to provide the discourse with empirical research of the process that leads to empowerment using qualitative methods. The relationship of interest is how women in NREGA perceive employment has led to a perception of empowerment. The hypothesis is that employment in NREGA can lead to perceived empowerment, but that it is dependent on the development level including the intensity of patriarchal norms and caste tensions in the village of implementation. Empowerment is understood as a process of change – when a person experiences an expansion in their ability to make valued choices and desired outcomes. The theoretical foundation is that empowerment can occur in three different levels of analysis: immediate (sense of self-hood and identity), intermediate (rules and relationships in different spheres of life) and deeper (structural relations of power) levels. The results show that employment in NREGA leads to perceived empowerment in immediate levels of analysis, through an expansion of abilities in choice and achievements, irrespective of development level, but that the development level and intensity of patriarchal norms and caste tensions is determinant for whether employment in NREGA leads to perceived empowerment in intermediate and deeper levels of empowerment. This thesis argues that to achieve sustainable empowerment structural relations of power must be transformed. The main recommendation for policies and programmes is therefore to acknowledge the importance of development level including patriarchal norms and caste tensions when implementing programmes like NREGA with objectives of sustainable empowerment for low-caste women, to ensure what objectives are feasible.

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Under senare tid har allt fler företag börjat hållbarhetsredovisa, vilket innebär att de på årlig basis sammanställer och kommunicerar information om miljömässiga, sociala och ekonomiska aspekter av sin verksamhet. Hållbarhetsredovisning kan stötta hållbar utveckling på två huvudsakliga sätt. För det första kan det öka transparensen i samhället genom att förbättra tillgång till samt utgöra en plattform för att lämna och hantera hållbarhetsrelaterad information om företag. För det andra kan det stärka hållbarhetsarbete inom företag genom att de får insikt i hur de inverkar på omvärlden samt bereder dem strukturer och mål för hållbarhetsarbete. För att fylla dessa funktioner krävs emellertid att företag inkluderar aktörer som påverkas av och påverkar företaget, s.k. intressenter, i upprättandet av hållbarhetsredovisningen. En central princip inom hållbarhetsredovisning är följaktligen intressentinkludering. I denna uppsats utvärderar och jämför jag intressentinkludering i hållbarhetsredovisning i det utvecklade landet Spanien och utvecklingslandet Colombia genom innehållsanalys av tio hållbarhetsredovisningar från företag i respektive land. Jag finner, i likhet med tidigare forskning, att intressentinkludering i hållbarhetsredovisning är bristfällig, särskilt i utvecklingslandet Colombia. Härtill bidrar jag till existerande forskning genom att närmare beskriva på vilket sätt intressentinkludering i hållbarhetsredovisning är bristfällig samt skiljer sig mellan det utvecklade landet Spanien och utvecklingslandet Colombia.

The future of global water supply and availability is one of the most important questions facing life on earth today, and experts agree that the most pressing angle to approach the question from is its governance. However, water represents one of the worlds broadest and most complex fields of governance due to its cross thematic and cross-boundary reach, as well as an increase in new actors through privatisation and transnational corporate influence.  In order to actively implement new governance approaches the current system, its actors, connections and influence strategies must be identified. This study combines three theoretical and methodological approaches to study our current global water governance structure: Neo-Gramscian, Network analysis and Policy Entrepreneurship. The Neo-Gramscian influence theory is used to identify 3 types of connections between actors. The resulting data is then used for network analysis to identify the key actors within the field. Once these key actors have been identified, all Nestlé (as a case study for transnational corporations) connections to said actors and the field of water governance have been highlighted under the combined theoretical lenses of Neo-Gramscian influence and Policy Entrepreneurial strategies. These three theories are used in conjunction for several reasons: All three theories represent a different perspective of analysing the decentralised, large scale governance of a complex system. While network analysis allows for the visual representation of the governance “space” and for the identification of key actors and their connections, the Neo-Gramscian and policy entrepreneur approaches give insight into how these connections might be used and created in order to lead to a position of influence within the system. The results show a list of 42 key actors to whom Nestlé has a large number of self-reported connections across all 3 influence types. It further shows that Nestle actively uses at least 3 of the 4 entrepreneurial strategies on some of these connections. This suggests that Nestlé may have some significant influence in global water governance. The study is also a proof of concept for the synthesis of the three complementary theories.

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This thesis sets out to answer if, and in that case how, the current development discourse, centring on instrumentalist arguments for gender equality and the “marketization” of aid, is reflected in Plan International Sweden’s campaign on the International Day of the Girl Child. The study draws upon critical feminist theories which stress that the instrumentalist approach, which scholars mean has become more common due to the marketization of aid, essentializes women and men in line with traditional ideas of femininity and masculinity. Through the use of discourse analysis, the study shows that the discourse of Plan’s campaign appeals to traditional constructions of femininity and masculinity where women and girls are ascribed signs such as maternal, responsible, altruistic and efficient, and men self-centred, irresponsible and potentially oppressive. Relatedly, Plan shows clear traces of instrumentalist reasoning, arguing that gender equality, besides being a social right, is an instrument to increase development efficiency. Additionally, the study finds that Plan shows traces of a marketized logic, something that can be seen in the organization’s cooperation with private companies which signifies an acceptance of them as actors in development, and the involvement of several celebrities which help validate, brand and “sell” the organization.

This thesis examines how the Sami people, as an indigenous people in Sweden, relate to the dichotomous concept of the global North and the global South. The study builds on the framework of postcolonial theory, its connection to development studies, and its critique of the concept of the global North and the global South. Another central part of the study is the concept of identity within postcolonial theory. By exploring material from the Swedish Sami parliament and the Sami info center, the research and analysis concluded that the Sami people relate to a dual identity of being both Sami and Swedish, meaning that they identify both to the global North as well as being an indigenous people. The Sami people do also associate themselves with other indigenous groups in the South, mostly in relation to colonialism and its consequences. Thereby the North-South divide is challenged.

This paper is a qualitative text analysis with a purpose of evaluating strengths and weaknesses of the Paris Agreement in the light of the eight design principles of Elinor Ostrom's theory on how to govern the common resources. The eight design principles are; clearly defined boundaries, congruence between appropriation and provision rules and local conditions, collective-choice arrangements, monitoring, graduated sanctions, conflict-resolution mechanisms, minimal recognition of rights to organize, nested enterprises. These principles then lay the ground for the chosen methodological framework. Processes of categorization and coding the Agreement into categories based upon the eight principles then allows for an understanding of strengths and weaknesses shown in the Agreement, in relation to the theory. The result is then also discussed in relation to further considerations that might be important factors to take into account when understanding the Paris Agreement. The paper is based around the document on the Paris Agreement as well as the book by Ostrom named Governing the Commons “The Evolution of Institutions for CollectiveAction”. Further documents and articles are presented throughout the paper, especially in the analysis and discussion to provide for a wider picture on the subject and to avoid an all-biased paper.

This essay is a bachelor’s thesis in the field of International Relations. The purpose is to make visible and analyse how problem representations in policies can reproduce norms, and how this has changed over a limited period of time. The purpose includes the ambition to be able to illustrate deficiencies in the European Union’s policies on gender equality. The essay intends to analyse the representations and norms in terms of a gender system. The theoretical framework consists of theories on normalization and gender system. The method used is called "What’s the problem?" developed by Carol Lee Bacchi. To achieve gender equality the EU produces policies on gender mainstreaming, this study analyses three of these policy documents. The result of the analysis shows that there has been no major change in the representation of problems in the documents and that they are reproducing stereotypical norms. The result also shows that the representations of problems are possible to explain with the theory on gender system, which allows further studies to develop a well-grounded critique of the EU policies.