Wambuii, Henry Kiragu

Dr. Henry Kiragu Wambuii is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Geography at Central Missouri State University. He earned his Ph.D. from Western Michigan University. Dr. Wambuii authored a chapter, “For the Sake of Children: Community-Based HIV/AIDS Youth Projects in Kenya” in The Children of Africa Confront AIDS (Ohio Univ. Press, 2003) and has written several articles.

Politics of HIV/ AIDS and Implications for Democracy in Kenya

2006 0-7734-5649-X
Taking the responses against HIV/AIDS as a political arena for the interaction between the state and civil society in Kenya, this book explores the relationship between the resulting mobilization against HIV/AIDS and the ongoing process of democratic consolidation in Kenya. Evidence from the country’s mobilization against HIV/AIDS in the early part of the 21st century reveals an explicit positive impact on the buildup of democracy in the country. This is mainly as a result of emergent institutional mechanisms in the response against the pandemic. While HIV/AIDS has been widely portrayed as a negative force to reverse political gains made in many sub-Sahara African countries in recent years, this book concludes that mobilization against this human catastrophe is inadvertently contributing to the process of democratic consolidation in Kenya. The book advances the ‘theory of democratic enrichment’ which makes the case that mobilization against an external shock can serve as an ‘enhancement’ as opposed to an ‘interruption’ for democratic consolidation.