FOREIGN POLICY AND ITS FRAMING TO DIFFERENT AUDIENCES A qualitative study of Swedish feminist foreign policy communication in four countries

Abstract

This thesis aims to investigate whether and in what ways Swedish foreign policy actors frame feminist foreign policy differently for audiences. The focus of this thesis concentrates on the single case of Swedish feminist foreign policy and contains comparative elements. This policy area was chosen with an aim to compare policy framing to domestic audience in Sweden and to three different national audiences in the USA, Germany and the Russian Federation. Two fundamental theoretical assumptions of persuasion and framing in international politics are central in this thesis and provide supporting ground for analysis of framing differences for domestic and various international audiences. Carol Bacchi’s framework for policy analysis and different components of frames was chosen in order to set out an analytical framework and to study framing of the feminist foreign policy. Thesis is built on a qualitative research design that was guided by the concept of triangulation and was based on a qualitative text analysis. The findings demonstrated that Swedish feminist foreign policy framing does not really differ in all four contexts chosen for analysis. Three the same overarching frames appeared throughout policy communication in all chosen contexts overall and their characteristics seemed to vary depending on the context where the policy was discussed. A distinguishable tendency was observed in how feminism-related terminology was used in policy articulation. The study revealed that the “feminist” terms were expressed in the strongest way in those contexts where it does not provoke any controversy, and therefore might be least needed.