ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the international aid policies of the Nordic states, with some of their more important diplomatic activities, and with foreign trade and investments. It describes Nordic comparisons at the economic level of society and focuses on the policies involving state action in a more direct sense. Statistics about Nordic investments in the Third World are therefore more valid indicators of Third World economic policies than foreign trade statistics alone. The main Nordic criteria for selection of bilateral aid recipients are poverty conditions and readiness within the recipient country to use the aid in such a way that poverty and social and economic inequalities are reduced. Finland's foreign trade and investment policies are naturally geared to national economic interests, whereas aid appropriations have so far been small in the Nordic context. Nordic Third World policies thus illustrate the importance of trying to combine structural and political action-oriented approaches to explain politics.
