1 Speech delivered by the World Bank president at the UN Security Council Special Session on ‘The Impact of AIDS on Peace and Security in Africa’. UNSC, The Impact of AIDS on Peace and Security in Africa, 4087th Security Council Meeting, 10 January 2000 (New York: UN, 2000).

2 It is important to mention that the present analysis covers a particular period of the HIV/AIDS policy responses in the three case studies, from the mid 1990s to 2006. Since the completion of this article in 2007, there were significant changes in the domestic political systems of Botswana, Mozambique and South Africa with some implications to the direction of their HIV/AIDS policies. Given the clearly defined historical scope of this article, these changes do not compromise the validity of the study's theoretical and empirical findings.

3 G. J. March and P. J. Olsen, ‘The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders’, International Organization, 52:4 (1998), pp. 943–69.

4 M. Vieira, ‘The Securitization of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic as a Norm: A Contribution to the Constructivist Scholarship on the Emergence and Diffusion of International Norms’, Brazilian Political Science Review, 1:2 (2007), pp. 137–81.

5 For example, O. Waever, B. Buzan, M. Kelstrup, P. Lemaitre, ‘Securitisation and Desecuritisation’, in Ronnie D. Lipschutz (ed.), On Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995); O. Waever, B. Buzan, M. Kelstrup, P. Lemaitre, Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe (London: Pinter, 1993); O. Wæver, P. Lemaitre, E. Tromer (eds), European Polyphony Perspectives beyond East–West Confrontation (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1989).

6 J. L. Austin, How to do things with words (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962); J. R. Searle, Speech acts. An essay in the philosophy of language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).

7 For a more in depth historical analysis of the emergence, evolution and consolidation of HIV/AIDS norms in the international system, see M. Vieira, ‘The Securitization of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic as a Norm: A Contribution to the Constructivist Scholarship on the Emergence and Diffusion of International Norms’, Brazilian Political Science Review, 1:2 (2007), pp. 137–81; M. Vieira, Southern Africa's Response(s) to International HIV/AIDS Norms: The Politics of Assimilation (London: PhD Thesis, London School of Economics, 2007).

8 OAU, Abuja Declaration on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Other Infectious Diseases (Abuja: OAU, 2001), emphasis added.

9 L. Garret, HIV/AIDS and National Security: Where Are the Links? (Washington: Council on Foreign Relations, 2005), p. 12.

10 M. Finnemore and K. Sikkink, ‘International Norm Dynamics and Political Change’, International Organization, 52:4 (1998), p. 895.

11 Foucault describes a normative collection of rules, or ‘discursive knowledge’, which is produced in the service of modern institutions and has the character of truth. M. Foucault, ‘Truth and Power’, in C. Gordon Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977 (New York: Pantheon, 1980), p. 115.

12 P. Bourdieu (ed.), Language and Symbolic Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

13 M. Barnett and M. Finnemore, ‘The Politics, Power, and Pathologies of International Organizations’, International Organization, 53:4 (1999), p. 700.

14 J. Mearsheimer, ‘The False Promise of International Institutions’, International Security, 19:3 (1994), p. 47.

15 G. Prins, ‘Aids and Global Security’, International Affairs, 80:5 (2004), pp. 931–52.

16 M. Finnemore, ‘International Organizations as Teachers of Norms: The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and Science Policy’, International Organization, 47:4 (1993), pp. 565–97.

17 These are: 1) one agreed HIV/AIDS action framework that provides the basis for coordinating the work of all partners; 2) one national AIDS coordinating authority with a broad based multi-sectoral mandate; 3) one agreed country-level monitoring and evaluation system. UNAIDS, The Three Ones: Driving Concerted Action on Aids at the Country Level (Geneva: UNAIDS, 2004a).

18 US Department of State, Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator, Overview of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (Washington: US Department of State, 2003).

19 Ibid., Engendering Bold Leadership: The President's Emergency Plan to AIDS Relief – First Annual Report to Congress (Washington: US Department of State, 2004).

20 UNAIDS, Donor Contribution Table 1995–2005 (Geneva: UNAIDS, 2005).

21 Global Fund, The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria – Pledges (Geneva: Global Fund, 2005).

22 Garret, HIV/AIDS and National Security, p. 12.

23 A. Graham-Silverman, ‘Bush's Problematic AIDS Plan’, The New Republic (4 July 2005).

24 These are Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Côte d'Ivoire, Nigeria, Guyana, Haiti, and Vietnam. It is interesting to note that, with the exception of Vietnam, every country benefiting from PEPFAR is predominantly Christian.

25 A. Florini (ed.), The Third Force: The Rise of Transnational Civil Society (Tokyo and Washington: Japan Centre for International Change and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999).

26 M. E. Keck and K. Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1998).

27 D. Snow, B. Rochford Jr., S. Worden and R. Benford, ‘Frame Alignment Process, Micromobilization and Movement Participation’, American Sociological Review, 51:4 (1986), pp. 464–81.

28 World Relief, Our Work, available at: {http://www.wr.org/ourwork/} accessed on 21 June 2005.

29 The Economist (28 June 2005).

30 At the end of 2005, South Africa alone had an estimated 5 million people living with HIV, which represents roughly 20 per cent of its adult population. The situation in Botswana is even worse, with around 24 per cent of its adult citizens carrying the virus. In Mozambique, 16 per cent of the adult population, which corresponds to 1.6 million people, are similarly infected. UNAIDS, 2006 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic (Geneva: UNAIDS, 2006).

31 K. Good, ‘Towards Popular Participation in Botswana’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 34:1 (1996), pp. 53–77.

32 J. Wiseman, ‘The Slow Evolution of the Party System in Botswana’, Journal of African and Asian Studies, 33:3 (1998), pp. 241–65.

33 The Tswana is by far the largest ethnic group in the country, amounting to 85 per cent of the population. They are divided into 8 main chiefdoms: Bamangwato, Bakwena, Bangwaketese, Batawana, Bakgatla, Bamalete, Barolong and Batlokwa. J. Wiseman, ‘Multi-Partyism in Africa: The Case of Botswana’, African Affairs, 76:302 (1977), p. 73.

34 Good, ‘Towards Popular Participation’; B. Tsie, ‘The Political Context of Botswana's Development Performance’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 22:4 (1996), pp. 599–616; J. Holm and S. Darnolf, ‘Democratising the Administrative State in Botswana’, in Y. Bradshaw and Stephen Ndwega (eds), The Uncertain Promise of Southern Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001); C. Stegling and M. Mosima, Civil Society and the Response to HIV in Botswana. Article Presented at the 14th International Aids Conference (Barcelona, 2002).

35 G. Bauer and S. D. Taylor, Politics in Southern Africa: State and Society in Transition (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 2005), p. 99.

36 J. Holm and S. Darnolf, ‘Democratising’, p. 99.

37 A. Acharya, ‘How Ideas Spread: Whose Norms Matter? Norm Localization and Institutional Change in Asian Regionalism’, International Organization, 58:2 (2004), p. 251.

38 Finnemore and Sikkink, ‘International Norm’, p. 895.

39 Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1998).

40 M. Newitt, ‘Mozambique’, in P. Chabal (ed.), A History of Postcolonial Lusophone Africa (London: Hurst, 2002).

41 P. Chabal, A History of Postcolonial Lusophone Africa (London: Hurst, 2002), p. 42.

42 H. Abrahamsson and A. Nilsson, Mozambique: The Troubled Transition, From Socialist Construction to Free Market Capitalism (London: Zed Books, 1988), p. 23.

43 E. Harsch, ‘African States in Social and Historical Context’, Sociological Forum, 12 (1997), pp. 671–79.

44 A good number of analysts tried to understand the functioning of patronage networks and corruption in post-colonial African states. R. Fatton, Predatory Rule: State and Civil Society in Africa (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1992); J-F. Bayart, ‘Africa in the World: A History of Extraversion’, African Affairs, 99 (2000), pp. 217–67; J-F. Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly (Harlow: Longman, 1993); W. Reno, Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leoa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); M. Mandani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); P. Chabal and J-P. Daloz, Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument (Oxford: International African Institute in association with James Currey, 1999). According to Bayart's view, for example, these phenomena are deeply woven into the social fabric of many of those states. For him, in these political contexts ‘the struggle for power is chiefly a struggle for wealth’. Bayart, ‘The State in Africa’, p. 89.

45 J-F. Bayart, ‘Africa in the World: A History of Extraversion’, African Affairs, 99 (2000), pp. 217–67.

46 While arguing more generally about African polities, Bayart defined ‘strategies/tactics of extraversion’ as the deliberate exploitation by ruling elites of their ‘unequal relationship with the external environment’. Bayart, ‘Africa in the World’, p. 218.

47 Renamo was established in the mid 1970s as a guerrilla movement sponsored by the white regimes of South Africa and Rodhesia. By the early 1980s, Renamo, with the logistic and financial backing of the South African government, unleashed a series of violent and orchestrated actions, attacking the state's infrastructure, intimidating entire populations, and further crippling an already fragile economy. A. Vines, Renamo: Terrorism in Mozambique (London: James Currey, 1991), p. 57.

48 Newitt, ‘Mozambique’, p. 233.

49 M. Vieira, Southern Africa's Response(s) to International HIV/AIDS Norms: The Politics of Assimilation (London: PhD Thesis, London School of Economics, 2007).

50 B. Santos, ‘O Estado Heterogéneo e o Pluralismo Jurídico’, in B. Santos and J. C. Trindade (eds), Conflito e transformação Social: uma paisagem das justiças em Moçambique (Porto: Afrontamento, 2003).

51 M. Foucault, ‘Truth and Power’, in C. Gordon (ed.), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977 (New York: Pantheon, 1980).

52 A. Cortell and J. Davis, ‘Understanding the Domestic Impact of International Norms: A Research Agenda’, International Studies Review, 2:1 (2000), p. 77.

53 For a comprehensive analysis of the history and social implications of HIV/AIDS policy-making in South Africa, see P. Fourie, The Political Management of HIV and AIDS in South Africa, One Burden Too Many? (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); D. Fassin, When Bodies Remember: Experiences and Politics of AIDS in South Africa (Berkeley: University of California, 2007); N. Nattrass, Mortal Combat: AIDS Denialism and the Struggle for Antiretrovirals in South Africa (Cape Town: Centre for Social Science Research, 2007).

54 F. Eboko, ‘Patterns of Mobilization: Political Culture in the Fight Against AIDS’, in S. A. Patterson (ed.), The African State and the AIDS Crisis (Hants: Ashgate, 2005), p. 42.

55 J. Checkel, ‘Norms, Institutions and National Identity in Contemporary Europe’, International Studies Quarterly, 43 (1999), pp. 83–114.

56 After being formally denounced by his alleged victim, Zuma apologised on national television for having unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman. In May 2006, he was acquitted of the rape charges by Johannesburg's High Court. Mail & Guardian (1 September 2006).

57 However, given the record-breaking cases of sexual violence against women in South Africa, their power to negotiate the use of condoms is also problematic.

58 Apparently, Mbeki was seduced by the views of a few dissenting scientists, called ‘denialists’, the most notorious of whom was the US-based doctor Peter Duesberg, who scientifically questioned the link between HIV and AIDS and the efficacy of anti-retroviral drugs. For more, see, Nattrass, ‘Mortal Combat’.

59 M. E. Keck and K. Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1998).

60 For more, see, ‘Mbeki Fires Aide Who Reshaped HIV Policy’, International Herald Tribune (9 August 2007).

61 For example, M. Barnett, ‘High Politics is Low Politics: The Domestic and Systemic Sources of Israeli Security Policy, 1967–1977’, World Politics, 42:4 (1990), pp. 529–62; P. Katzenstein and N. Okawara, ‘Japan's National Security: Structures, Norms and Politics’, International Security, 17 (1993), pp. 84–118; T. Berger, ‘From Sword to Chrysanthemum: Japan's Culture of Antimilitarism’, International Security, 17:4 (1993), pp. 119–50; T. Risse, ‘Ideas Do Not Float Freely: Transnational Coalitions, Domestic Structures, and the End of the Cold War’, International Organization, 48:2 (1994), pp. 185–214; A. Klotz, Norms in International Relations: The Struggle Against Apartheid (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995); P. Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); A. Cortell and J. Davis, ‘How Do International Institutions Matter? The Domestic Impact of International Rules and Norms’, International Studies Quarterly, 40:4 (1996), pp. 451–78.

62 For example, T. Risse, S. C. Ropp and K. Sikkink, K. (eds), The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).