The relationship between Fairtrade cities

Sammanfattning: The idea of fair trade is still widely debated. Yet, cities have since 2001 been able to apply for a Fairtrade City certification. In Sweden the initiative has been active since 2006 and today has 65 of its 290 municipalities certified. Proponents claim a municipalities needs to be involved while detractors se the concept as market intervention. The purpose of the thesis is to examine if there were any significant factors in the Swedish cities that became Fairtrade City certified before the year 2014. The hypothesis is that political representation and socioeconomic conditions in the municipalities have significance. The subject of the thesis is: Which factors influenced cities to their Fairtrade City certification? The method used is a qualitative and a quantitative analysis. The theory guiding the study is based on the different views of the trade market and fair trade being a new social movement. The result from the qualitative study finds that a certification is within a municipality’s objectives and that political representation has significance. The quantitative study is overall significant but it does not find significance on political representation. However the tests have a low explanatory value and due to this, the study suggests that one cannot draw any conclusions from the presented results.