Diverging Like-Mindedness? Development Policy Among the Nordics

Abstract

The ‘Nordic exceptionalism’ in development aid is well known and characterized by its generosity and focus on poverty reduction and sustainable development. However, the individual Nordic countries’ development policies differ significantly, as the contributions to this special issue have uncovered. For example, Sweden and Norway have continuously upheld the volume of aid at above 1 per cent of GNI, while Denmark in the new millennium has cut the aid budget by almost one third, and Finland has struggled to surpass 0.45 per cent. Sweden maintains a strong focus on poverty reduction, whereas Norway’s and Finland’s poverty focus has been diluted somewhat by several competing goals, and Denmark’s even more so. This article compares the volumes, instruments, and goals of the four Nordic countries’ development policies. We find that if there ever was such a thing as a Nordic model in development aid, this model has been significantly weakened in the 00s and 10s, when the four countries have grown apart. The main explanations behind these differences, we posit, are the particular domestic political coalitions behind aid policy, which affect the extent to which development policy is politicized.

Keywords:

• development policy
• aid volume
• aid instruments
• policy paradigm
• the Nordic model

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank the Finnish Development Policy Committee and Cultural Centre Hanaholmen for hosting the authors when we had a joint workshop in September 2021. We also thank the editors of Forum for Development studies and finally, Mia Woer for excellent research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Two observations are worth noting. First, Finland’s belonging to this group has regularly been questioned due to its lower share of aid in Gross National Income (GNI). Icelandic development policy is not included in the analysis mainly due to its small size. Like Finland, Iceland has committed itself to an ODA level at 0.7 percent of its GNI but it has never succeeded in meeting this goal. Finland has reached the target only once in 1991. In 2020, Iceland's ODA reached 62MUSD, equivalent to 0.29 per cent of GNI.

2 Although development policy is wider than merely aid and can be any policy that aims to promote economic and social development, especially reduction of poverty, we focus mainly on development policies as they relate to official development assistance (ODA).

3 The study consists of five case studies in which Sweden is treated as representative for all Nordic countries (see e.g. sections 3.1 and 4.3).

4 However, Stokke (2019, pp. 357–360) argues that much of the (informal) cooperation, in particular between social-democratic political actors, is better described as a ‘competition’ to be the best performer within several policy areas, not least aid.

5 There are at least three technical explanations for yearly variations that are not linked to policy priorities: First, the Nordic countries and the DAC follow different reporting conventions. Second, budget allocations use forecasted GNI, whereas reporting to DAC relates ODA to final GNI. Third, in some cases, unpredicted increases in the cost for asylum seekers in donor countries.

6 Respective shares targeted at country, regional, and global programs are around 50-10-40 (Denmark), 50-20-30 (Finland), 40-10-50 (Norway), and 60-10-30 (Sweden).

7 According to the OECD DAC CRS reporting directives, only bilateral aid reports humanitarian flow. Thus, core support to multilateral organizations within the humanitarian sector is not included. Core funding to some humanitarian UN agencies and funds are significant for some Nordic countries.

8 http://www3.compareyourcountry.org/states-of-fragility/donor/0/, accessed 19 June 2022.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anne Mette Kjær

Anne Mette Kjær (https://pure.au.dk/portal/en/[email protected]) is a Professor of Political Science at Aarhus University with a focus on the Politics of Development. AMK has published on themes of development and foreign aid, on policy reforms in agriculture, land and property rights, education and learning, and public sector reforms. Her latest publications include ‘Nomination violence in Uganda's National Resistance Movement’ in African Affairs (2021); and ‘When ‘Pockets of effectiveness’ matter politically: Extractive industry regulation and taxation in Uganda and Tanzania’. The Extractive Industries and Society. Kjær co-authored the volume, ‘The Politics of African Industrial Policy’, Cambridge University Press, 2015. She is currently leading the research programme Political Settlements and Revenue Bargaining in Africa (www.ps.au.dk/psrb).

Jan Pettersson

Jan Pettersson is the Manager Director of the Expert Group for Aid Studies, EBA (www.eba.se). He holds a Phd in Economics from Stockholm University and has been a research fellow at Uppsala University and Stockholm University.

Elling Tjønneland

Elling Tjønneland is a political scientist and senior researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway. He has published several studies of development assistance and has led numerous reviews and evaluations of aid programmes and projects. He is currently directing a major research project comparing Chinese and Western development aid to Africa.

Marikki Karhu

Dr. Marikki Karhu is currently the Secretary General of the Finnish Development Policy Committee. She serves also as an expert member of Finnish National Commission on Sustainable Development. Karhu's work draws on her experience as a researcher and educator at the Department of Political and Economic Studies (University of Helsinki), where she gained her Ph.D. in Development Studies (2013). Before her appointment to the Finnish Development Policy Committee, she worked as a researcher in the European Union research programme at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA).

Jari Lanki

Jari Lanki is a PhD student at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki. He has also taught for several years courses in Development Studies at the Helsinki Open University, including on development policy and aid. Lanki was one of the co-editors for the first Finnish-language textbook on Development Studies.