AID(S) Politics and Power: A Critique of Global Governance

ABSTRACT: This article provides a case study of AIDS aid to South African civil society, in order to analyse how power is exercised and resisted in the context of international aid. It is argued that governance theory tends to underestimate power inequalities in the context of policy networks. The case is instead related to the theoretical debate on whether current global power structures can be analysed in terms of a (US led) neo-imperialism, or whether they rather should be understood in terms of post-imperialist power constellations based on ‘regulation of self-regulation ’ through market-mechanisms; and with an emphasis on ‘civil society participation’. While the case shows how US aid under the Bush administrations to certain extent involved a ‘civilising mission’, it is argued that ‘regulation of self-regulation’ was the more significant form of governing AIDS aid networks, contributing to a development through which AIDS activism went through a process of ‘NGO:ization’, de-politicising the AIDS issue. Introduction: the politicization and de- politicization of AIDS1 During the last decade, a number of analyses of politics in a global context have used the concept of ‘governance ’ in order to grasp new developments (Held and Koenig-Archibug