| On February 15, 2005, the South Asia HIV/AIDS Team hosted a workshop on the politics of government responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Mariam Claeson, the Regional AIDS Program Coordinator for the World Bank’s South Asia region, introduced the speaker, Varun Gauri, Economist for the Bank’s Development Research Group (DEC), and Shanta Devarajan, Chief Economist for the Bank’s South Asia Region, who
chaired the question and answer session.
In his talk Varun Gauri focused on efforts to understand why some states respond more aggressively to the challenges of HIV/AIDS than others. He compared Brazil and South Africa, noting that while they face similar challenges, each country has responded quite differently, with Brazil taking a far more active approach than South Africa to both the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS.
Gauri observed that despite the high stakes and political conflicts associated with the AIDS epidemic, little had been published on the politics of HIV/AIDS. He then shared findings from a study on “AIDS and the State” that he had conducted jointly with Evan Lieberman, Assistant Professor, Department of Politics, Princeton University. Data from the study showed that two factors explain the largely divergent responses of the two countries: the centralization of pre-existing political institutions and the strength of the national political community. The data also showed that an increasingly centralized state did not always lead to a faster, more expansive response to the pandemic.
Shanta Devarajan then chaired a question and answer session. Discussion focused on the role of media in shaping political awareness and public perceptions in Brazil and South Africa, and how one may generalize from the study to analyze other countries such as India or Uganda. Questions were also raised regarding the policy implications of similar studies and how they could shape governments’ responses.
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