Browsing by Author "Mäkinen, Milla"

Abstract After the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, neighboring Lebanon has received over 1,5 million refugees – now hosting the most refugees per capita in the world. Already fragile Lebanese society is under extreme pressure. The Lebanese Crisis Response Plan 2017-2020 produced by the United Nations and the Government of Lebanon represents the only comprehensive strategic blueprint outlining the local crisis management measures in front of the Syrian conflict spillover. It directs the international commitments and guides the efforts from top to grass-root level. The goal of this study is to investigate how this plan has been formulated and to what kind of knowledge base it is grounded on, in order to assess its comprehensiveness. In this case, the foundation is predominantly built on the situation analysis produced by the World Bank Group. To investigate the World Bank’s representation of the crisis and mitigation measures, this thesis employs poststructuralist theoretical orientation. With the applications of Foucauldian poststructuralism, James Ferguson and Tania Li Murray provide theoretical tools through which the data set of four World Bank’s documents between 2013 and 2016 are analyzed. The research design of qualitative content analysis is systemized by using a political analysis framework. Analysis proceeds through structural, institutional, stakeholder and political levels of analysis. The findings demonstrate that the World Bank’s analysis of the Lebanese context is incomplete. The representation of the situation does not take into account all relevant factors affecting the crisis management in Lebanon – especially questions of power and comprehensive stakeholder engagement are missing. Altogether, the findings fit for the most part into the overall narrative of governmentality of development, as established in works of Ferguson and Murray. Some of the observations are not as categorical as Ferguson’s and Li’s and this study resulted in the interpretation that some of the earlier critiques have been adopted by the World Bank. However, changes do not seem to be far-reaching but rather rhetorical. Governmentality as the World Bank’s mode of reasoning remains. The findings update and elaborate existing research and theorizing. This thesis uncovers and clarifies the complex process of different knowledge-power relations, how the institutional context affects the information produced, how ideas in these processes then generate structural change and how the embedded dynamics create conditions of possibilities for action.