Official Development Assistance (ODA) to primary education has constituted a significant portion of Sweden’s ODA since the 1960s. Sweden is a strong advocate of aid to primary education and for many years, support to primary education was a priority across Sweden’s many partner countries. However, since at least the early 2000s ODA to primary education has seen a decline in the number of partner countries where this is a priority area and bilateral ODA to primary education has decreased as a share of total ODA. One possible explanation for this decline is the simultaneous rise of the so-called Results Agenda in Sweden’s ODA, characterised by an increasing focus on measuring results and managing aid efficiently. The purpose of this study is to explore to what extent the Results Agenda has influenced the decline in Sweden’s ODA to primary education since the early 2000s, by answering the following research question: “To what extent can the Results Agenda explain the decline of Sweden’s official development assistance to primary education since the early 2000s?”. The theoretical foundation of the study is the Results Agenda, based on research conducted by Therese Brolin and Janet Vähämäki on the Results Agenda in Sweden’s ODA. A case study design is applied, using qualitative elite interviews to gather empirical data. The results indicate that there seems to be a connection between the rise of the Results Agenda and the decline of Sweden’s ODA to primary education, however only in the number of partner countries where primary education is a key thematic priority and not in the total amount of ODA to education. The most conclusive result of the case study is that ODA to primary education has been redistributed from mainly bilateral ODA through public institutions in partner countries to multilateral ODA in order to increase efficiency and focus ODA on fewer thematic areas in fewer partner countries.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-198213 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Askeljung, Albert |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för ekonomisk historia och internationella relationer |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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