HIV/AIDS: thinking through the politics of country responses

Clare Dickinson, March 2006

This paper examines the various dimensions of the politics of AIDS:

• how political and social history affects a country's response;
• how a country’s political system, the social roots of that system and its sources of power can influence the nature and intensity of the response;
• the political ideology and discourse around HIV/AIDS and their effect on a government's response;
• the political incentives for tackling HIV/AIDS and their relationship with effective leadership for HIV/AIDS;
• the influence of historical/structural or ideological basis of relationships between key institutions and sectors;
• relationships between the state, donor and non governmental sector.

The paper is accompanied by a review of current literature that takes political science as the primary framework of analysis for explaining why countries have responded successfully or have failed to respond to the epidemic.