Ett oberoende civilsamhälle på statens villkor: Om Democratic Backsliding inom biståndspolitiken

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how institutional discourse in Swedish aid policy concerning civil society has changed over the years from the perspective of Democratic Backsliding. The main resources used for the results of this thesis were six government policy documents, namely official aid strategy for government aid institutions Sida and FBA spanning between two different government periods. To analyze these policy changes, two analytical frameworks were employed in combination: What’s the problem represented to be developed by Charol Bacchi and Ideological Discourse Analysis developed by Mats Lindberg. The combination of the methods was inspired by Ali Riaz and Sohel Ranas model Institutional-ideological approach for analyzing institutional change concerning Democratic Backsliding. The main findings are that the state is redefining the function of civil society and that this also limits civil societies’ traditional practice of advocacy, mobilization and surveillance towards the state. Another finding is that the condition for economic grants also highlights the ideological orientation of an incumbent government, which raises the question of the contradictory goal of strengthening the independence of civil society while at the same time conditioning what the focus of civil society should be and giving privilege to those organizations that follow those conditions. One example is Sweden’s recent membership in NATO and how the criteria for security limits the economic grants for civil society organizations that advocate for peace. The main discussion is what the limits are for conditioning civil society by the state and whether the state should be conditioning an independent and free civil society and what implications this can have for democratic backsliding in the future.