POLITICAL WILL, NO FREE WILL? A Quantitative Analysis of the Influence of Contextual Factors on Leaders’ Political Will to Fight HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Political will has become a ‘silver bullet’ in political science to explain the outcomes of public policy reforms. While success is seen as proof of its existence, failure is regularly attributed to a lack of political will. Political will is typically understood as originating from the personal characteristics and voluntary decisions of individual political leaders. In researching this still ambiguous concept, so far only few studies have attempted to systematically analyze the underlying factors that influence political will. Using a theoretical framework based on political economy, this large-N study argues that the incentive structure leaders face is crucial for building political will. Looking at the fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic in 33 Sub-Saharan African countries, it is therefore examined which and to what extend country-specific factors influence political will. The study finds that in particular the scale of the epidemic, i.e. the degree to which political leaders are personally affected by the disease, exerts significant positive influence on their response. While the data provides some evidence that a higher degree of legitimacy of and stronger identification with the nation state increase political will as well, no support can be found for the hypothesis that the threats leaders face influence their political will. Democracy even turned out to have a negative impact on the political will to fight HIV/AIDS.