Field:
    Comparative Politics

Dissertation Title:
    The Political Economy of HIV/AIDS Intervention in Africa

Committee:
    Daniel Posner (Chair), Arthur Stein, James Honaker, Evan Lieberman, and Susan Watkins

Date of Completion: June 2010

Contact Information:
    Kim Yi Dionne
    UCLA Political Science Department
    4289 Bunche Hall
    Los Angeles, California 90095-1472
    Phone: 310-825-4331
    Fax: 310-825-0778

 Curriculum Vitae:
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Dissertation Summary:
    This dissertation studies the failure of the unprecedented international mobilization against AIDS by focusing on the discrepancy between interventions as they are conceived in the world's capitals and as they are actually implemented on the ground in Africa, and locating this discrepancy in a multi-tiered principal-agent problem. In the global hierarchy of actors supplying the HIV/AIDS intervention in Africa, principals and agents span three levels of governance: international, national, and local. I explore the constraints and motivations of these actors to study the preferences of principals and agents and how those preferences lead to the policy outcomes we witness. I draw on cross-national public opinion data, semi-structured interviews with elites across the three levels of governance, and an original dataset from rural Malawi that interviews ordinary Africans and their village headmen. My contribution is to discuss the incentive compatibility of actors in a hierarchical system tasked with the delivery of healthcare services. Because much scholarship is devoted to the principals of the global HIV/AIDS intervention – international donors and national policymakers – my primary task is to shed light on the agents implementing interventions and the conflicting pressures they face.

Research Interests:
    African Politics, Politics of Development, Health Policy, Social Network Analysis, Public Goods Provision

Teaching Interests:
    Comparative Politics, African Politics, Public Policy