ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes Sarec’s policy development in the 1990s and focuses on how the relationship between research and development was portrayed. The main argument for strengthening national capacity is of course that any other alternative would make the South’s dependence even greater than it is today. The 1990s were a very intense period of change within both foreign aid and research politics. Development theory started paying more attention to the particular and grand narratives took a step back at the same time as theories engaging with globalization as a phenomenon gained ground. There were profound changes in international relations after the end of the Cold War. Many discussions in Sarec’s various policy documents and the 20-year review are more polemic than in the previous decade. Critique of foreign aid is a more or less constant phenomenon, but the early to mid-1990s was a period when such debate flared up.
