BETWEEN BEDROOMS AND BALLOTS: THE POLITICS OF HIV'S ...

HIV/AIDS. Protest and collective action around the disease have been prevalent in these two
countries (in the 1990s in the U.S. and more recently in South Africa) and have been shaped by
openings in the political institutions, opportunities for participation and contestation, and the
framing of the disease as a human rights issue. But what occurs in countries with weak states
and civil societies; where a strong history of repression, fear and violence exists; and where
opportunities to free-ride may in fact outnumber those to engage? As Campbell notes in one of
the first detailed studies to highlight the political failure of AIDS programs:
community mobilization, and the associated concepts of grassroots participation and
representation, and of multi-stakeholder partnerships…form the cornerstone of HIV
prevention programmes the world over, and are…key strategies for building healthy
communities. Participation and representation are also the foundations of democracy, so
this is a research question that has relevance way beyond the health and development
arenas. (Campbell 2003: 11)
Yet political science in general, and the subfield of comparative politics in particular, has
failed to incorporate this into the mainstream agenda, as the topic has traditionally been relegated
to the fields of medical anthropology and public health. The AIDS crisis, however, “demands
political as well as technical solutions because it is deeply associated with national priority
setting and because it often involves overcoming conflicting interests at the core of national and
international political processes.” (WHO 2005: 35) By overlooking the AIDS domain, we who
are comparativists have been missing out on a grave situation that impacts how democracy is
unfolding (particularly in developing countries with an authoritarian past) and crucial strategies
employed by those on the ground with little access to resources to fill in the gaps, which has
implications for governance and the manner by which we try and explain the ‘development’ of
poor nations.
This study thus aims to change the neglect of AIDS by juxtaposing various topics within
comparative politics: access to resources and influences from both formal and informal
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