AIDS Drugs For All
Social Movements and Market Transformations

Uses the success of the AIDS treatment advocacy movement to show how social movements can successfully transform global markets.

Ethan B. Kapstein (Author), Joshua W. Busby (Author)

9781107036147, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 29 August 2013

337 pages, 12 b/w illus. 9 tables
23.5 x 15.6 x 2.4 cm, 0.61 kg

'In advancing a 'theory of strategic moral action', Kapstein and Busby provide a detailed account of the political economy of AIDS drugs dissemination, but also offer new ways to understand social movement efforts on issues from climate change to energy development to human trafficking. In this sense, AIDS Drugs for All is political science at its best: topically relevant, theoretically broad, empirically rigorous, and morally compelling. It is a fitting homage to Professor Don K. Price.' Manny Teodoro, Texas A & M University

Drawing on a rich set of interviews and surveys, this book shows how the global AIDS treatment advocacy movement helped millions in the developing world gain access to life-saving medication. The movement achieved this by transforming the market for AIDS drugs from one which was 'low volume, high price' to one based on access for all. The authors suggest that a movement's ability to transform markets depends upon whether: (1) markets are contestable; (2) they have framed their arguments to resonate across their target audiences; (3) the movement itself has a coherent goal; (4) the costs are low, or the benefit-to-cost ratio is favourable; and, finally, (5) institutions are present to reward continued achievement of the new market principle. These insights are applied to a range of other cases including malaria, maternal mortality, water/diarrheal disease, non-communicable diseases, education, climate change, the ivory trade, sex trafficking and the Atlantic slave trade.

1. Introduction: global markets and transnational social movements
Appendix A. A brief history of AIDS and the AIDS treatment movement
Appendix B. Key dates
2. Industry structure and movement opportunities
3. Drugs = life: framing access to AIDS drugs
4. Movement coherence and mobilization
5. Advocacy strategies to address costs
6. Institutions to stabilize the market
7. Lessons for other campaigns
8. Conclusions: implications for research and policy.

Subject Areas: Organizational theory & behaviour [KJU], Political economy [KCP], International relations [JPS], Politics & government [JP], Sociology [JHB]