Understanding the Security-Development Nexus in Swedish foreign policy : Aid, development cooperation and humanitarian assistance policy frameworks

Sammanfattning: Since the end of the Cold War, the concepts of development and security and the rise of the security-development nexus has proven to be important and is increasingly used in policy documents by institutions and states. This thesis aims to provide insight on how security and development concepts and their nexus have been used in governments’ foreign policies. Previous research has been focused on multilateral organizations and aid officials and how they have been influenced by the security-development nexus, but a comprehensive analysis on what drives financial and political support has been limited. Therefore, there is a gap that this thesis aims to fill. Methodologically, this thesis uses a text analysis of policy frameworks published by the government of Sweden regarding aid, development cooperation and humanitarian assistance of the years 2013/14 and 2015/16. An abductive reasoning was made with the help of the chosen analytical frameworks in this study. This study concludes that Swedish policy frameworks are using redefinitions of the concepts security and development which results in more broaden use of the concepts. This use of the concepts creates clear policy frameworks, but the policy frameworks do in some passages not elaborate what kind of security that reinforces what kind of development or what kind of definition of security or development that it is referring to.  This leaves the reader with a great room for interpretation that could eventuate in many different outcomes and versions. Furthermore, security and development are presented as concepts which are mutually reinforcing each other and used in four different narratives, or nexuses, when mapping out the security-development nexus.