I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at UCLA. In August 2010, I will join the faculty at Texas A&M University. In 2008-2009, I was a Fulbright Scholar in Malawi conducting dissertation research on the political economy of HIV/AIDS interventions. I study a variety of topics including African politics, HIV/AIDS, and research methods. In particular, I have been intrigued with the importance of village headmen in rural Africa. Methodologically, I am interested in the systematic analysis of qualitative data, field experiments, social network analysis, and anything that can be learned from longitudinal household-level data.
The Political Economy of HIV/AIDS Intervention in Sub-Saharan Africa
With a few exceptions, there is little evidence that HIV/AIDS interventions have been effective in stemming the tide of the pandemic. Most of the blame is typically placed on the individuals who are themselves at risk of infection and death: they are often seen as trapped in cultural patterns of sexual behavior and gender relations, and by extreme poverty. This dissertation takes a different tack in approaching the failure of the unprecedented international mobilization against AIDS. It does so 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. In the dissertation, I argue that the success of the global AIDS intervention requires alignment of interests and incentives across levels of governance. I find local implementation fails to meet global expectations and argue it is because of a critical disconnect between actors in my stylized model of the global hierarchy of HIV/AIDS intervention in Africa.
Download extended abstract of the dissertation.
Download job market chapter, Local Demand for a Global Intervention: Policy Priorities in the Time of AIDS.
The Role of Executive Time Horizons in State Response to AIDS in Africa, Forthcoming in Comparative Political Studies
Abstract: In this paper I argue that politicians' time horizons affect the differing levels of state intervention against AIDS. Using data measuring government spending, AIDS policy, and political constraints, I test the presumption that the leader of a country can determine a country's level of AIDS intervention. I look at countries in east and southern Africa to explore the relationship between political institutions that constrain an executive's time horizon (i.e. competitive elections) and the level of the state's efforts in the fight against AIDS. My primary hypothesis is that an executive with a shorter time horizon is less likely to create policy or devote resources to intervene against AIDS. I find that lengthening an executive's time horizon increases the level of government spending on health, but that executives with shorter time horizons tended to have more comprehensive AIDS policy than their counterparts with longer time horizons.
Download the pre-print.
Download zipped folder of replication files and analyses not shown.
AIDS Exceptionalism: The View From Below (with Patrick Gerland and Susan Watkins), PDF, under review
The AIDS epidemic has stimulated an outpouring of foreign aid intended to help governments and
individuals in sub-Saharan Africa respond to the epidemic. AIDS has been treated as "exceptional," a
crisis of such magnitude that it should be prioritized over other health and development problems. Whereas scholars and practitioners debate AIDS exceptionalism in international corridors of power,
little is known about local demand for AIDS services in sub-Saharan Africa, where AIDS has reached
pandemic proportions. This study combines analyses of cross-national public opinion data with survey
and qualitative data from rural Malawi to assess the relative demand for AIDS services compared to
other health and development needs. Our findings suggest weak demand for AIDS resources in the parts of Africa hardest hit by AIDS. Although the data from rural Malawi show that rural residents are fully aware of the risk of dying from AIDS, other problems are perceived as more pervasive and urgent.
An Offer You Can't Refuse? Provider-Initiated HIV Testing in Antenatal Clinics in Rural Malawi (with Nicole Angotti and Lauren Gaydosh), CCPR Working Paper #033-08, under review
International organizations promote provider-initiated, "routine" HIV testing of pregnant women seeking antenatal care as an effort to curb mother-to-child transmission. We offer an account of the perceptions of HIV testing at antenatal clinics in rural Malawi. Although it is both international and Government of Malawi policy that women must be explicitly informed of their right to refuse testing, analysis of in-depth interviews paired with evidence from a collection of observational field journals show that rural Malawians do not perceive HIV testing as a choice, but rather as compulsory to receive antenatal care. This study illustrates dissonance between global expectations and local realities of the delivery of HIV testing interventions.
The Different Movers in a Social Movement: Survey data from the May 1 immigration rallies in Los Angeles (with Michael Suk-Young Chwe, Darin DeWitt, and Michael Stone), preparing for submission
This paper studies participation in social movements using original survey data collected during the May 1 immigration reform rallies in Los Angeles, California in 2006. More than 500,000 people participated in the May 1 rallies in Los Angeles as part of a nationwide movement supporting immigration reform following the passage of HR 4437 in the United States House of Representatives. Our paper describes the population that participated in this recent social movement. Using the survey responses of 876 demonstration participants at three different demonstration locations, we predict first-time protest participation, demonstrating the characteristic differences between first-time and repeat protesters. The data reveal a few substantial findings. First, we find that even when there is substantial pre-protest debate on future outcomes dependent on the type of demonstration, events organized by different groups with different motivations can have participants that are quite similar to each other; in parallel to this finding, even events organized by the same group with the same motivation can have participants that are quite different from each other. Second, first-time protesters were more likely to respond to the survey in Spanish than repeat protesters. Finally, affinity with the protest message was the strongest predictor of participation in the May 1 marches, stronger than even costs of participating in a protest. Our findings point to a new mobilization of Spanish-speakers in the debate over immigration policy.
Fax: 310.825.0778
Email: kimg@ucla.edu
Updated: January 2010