Healthy democracies? The potential impact of AIDS on democracy in Southern Africa

What are the implications of the HIV/AIDS pandemic for the survival and consolidation of democratic government? This paper attempts to systematise emerging thinking about the various economic, social and political consequences of HIV/AIDS in the context of political science's knowledge about the factors that lead to the consolidation of democracy.

The paper finds that:

• HIV/AIDS threatens to block and even reverse democratic development across the region as lost incomes, increasing health costs, shrinking tax bases, increased labour costs and decreasing productivity all conspire to threaten the economic growth necessary to sustain democratic practice in poor countries
• increasing death and illness in cabinets, legislatures and government ministries threatens the institutionalisation that young democracies need, to create the strong and effective states that give effect to the rules of democracy
• sharply decreasing adult life expectancy, and increasing proportions of people living with effective death sentences, removes incentives for large sections of the populace to participate in democratic politics or comply with the rules of the democratic state
• stigma, discrimination and conflict over scarce resources threaten to increase political conflict and criminal behaviour.

The author maintains that two developments may force a revision of the assumptions and all the projections based on the premise that HIVis a death sentence:

• first, sharply decreased costs of anti-retroviral drugs, or, increased political will by national leaders across the region to provide such drugs to their citizens may significantly mitigate the economic, social and political consequences of HIV infection
• second, bold and imaginative prevention campaigns may convey to the uninfected how to avoid infection, thus reversing the cycle of gloom and despair

The paper concludes that little is known about why or how children, citizens, elites and institutions infected, affected or threatened by HIV/AIDS change their social and political behaviour. The spread and extent of the pandemic across the southern African region and within individual countries should provide sufficient evidence to support comparative cross-sectional and longitudinal research by inquisitive and dedicated researchers. The author concludes by recommending further research be undertaken in this area.