Browsing by Author "Suominen, Kaarina"

The role of Vietnam in Finnish Development Policy changed in the beginning of the 21st century as Vietnam “graduated” from a low-income country status to a lower middle-income country. While this has justified reduction of ODA or a complete aid exit, Finland, like other donors has clearly interest in maintaining and strengthening ‘post aid’ relationships with Vietnam. But what does this shift to post-aid relations or “transition” actually mean in the specific context? In this thesis, the complex phenomenon of transition is looked through different theoretical lenses of international relations and development studies. The main research questions concern the dimensions of transition: what has been the transition environment in Vietnam and how the transition process has changed the relations between Finland and Vietnam. Furthermore, I look at what aims, expectations and justifications have been around the transition process. Thus, it is a study on the process in which state-to-state relations move from the position of one side giving grant-based bilateral assistance to the enhancement of a new kind of partnership as well as a dive into contemporary Finnish development policy. In a temporal scale, the research is confined to the period of transition, which is officially stated to be between the years 2016-2020 but as the process has started long ago, focus is around the year 2010, the year Vietnam “graduated”. Central areas of focus in the research are the role of middle income countries in contemporary development policy as well as different justifications for transitions. The research did not focus on a dichotomous thinking on whether development cooperation was seen as good or bad, but was aimed at looking at the negotiation between the actors and views from both sides. I look at the collected data from the point of view of both the materialist theories, mostly the realist school without forgetting the appeal of ideal approaches, thus pluralist and constructivist points of view. The empirical foundation of the study is based on archival and document data on the relations between Finland and Vietnam, focusing especially on the transition period. The data includes among others the official transition strategy as well as minutes and ambassador’s statements. I complement the document data with thematic interviews conducted in Hanoi with practitioners of the transition. In the study, it was found out that the decision to end aid to Vietnam seems to have been a sum of many developments, but especially a Finnish political decision. Finnish development policy has been directed by the official statements and guidelines in which developmentalist justifications for ending bilateral development assistance have been highlighted. It is also a big step for both the donor as well as the receiver, as ending the funding also changes the power relations between the countries. The case of transition between Finland and Vietnam was chosen as the case represents a major transformation of the development relation, involves processes of negotiating and planning new initiatives. On the relations of Vietnam and Finland there can be found supporting evidence for all of the theoretical approaches. A change in the relations can be detected and the change has many justifications. Materialist interests were obvious, but even better the change might be explained by the fact that the decision and design for transitions was done in the developmentalist complex which was directed by how donors view Middle Income countries. Also three dimensions from the literature were identified in this case: the phasing out of ‘traditional’ development cooperation; phasing in of new forms of ODA-financed activities more focused on fostering bilateral relations based on mutual interests; and phasing in of new types of broader or broad-based non-ODA cooperation, be it political, commercial or scientific. Also, the issue of using ODA-funding for activities to promote broader bilateral cooperation and trade-interests were present. In the research, it was noted that how Vietnam has reacted to phenomenon of donors phasing out has been volatile. As a premise, it can be stated that the decision of ending aid has been adopted but reluctantly and that Finland’s attempt to transform the bilateral relationships with Vietnam proved to be challenging for a variety of reasons. On one hand, the Finnish transition was smoothened by the fact that many other donors had already phased out before Finland and it was found out that the decision to phase out quite late might be beneficial for Finland, On the other hand, the Vietnamese actors would not have opposed to the continuing of aid. Nevertheless, the government of Vietnam is clearly making autonomous plans on its future and the fear of aid dependency was not present. As a conclusion of the donor-recipient relation it can be stated that Finland has seemed to have had commercial and geopolitical interests involved in the transition process, but these interests were not the primary directing incentives in the transition process. This is much due to the strong ownership of Vietnam as well as the example of the donor community in Vietnam.