Domestic Determinants for the Norms of Global Response to AIDS: Case Study of Japan.

The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) in the OECD has played a significant financial role in providing foreign aid for AIDS. In accounting for the convergence in AIDS funding, constructivists would claim that the norms of global response to AIDS motivate foreign aid for AIDS by reshaping and redefining donors' identity and preferences. More interestingly, the countries vary in the timing of initial funding decision and the size of funding as well as the pattern that the norms are transferred into domestic arena. The variations, I argue, are based upon distinctive domestic structure and domestic norms. I will examine the case of Japan which posed a lagged pattern of global AIDS funding in terms of its initiation and increase of funding. When it comes to public awareness and perception on HIV/AIDS, basically Japanese people were not aware of what AIDS was and how they should respond. In addition, foreign perception was so strongly intensified that even risk groups such as homosexuals did not change their sexual behavioral pattern. In terms of civil society and domestic structure, Japanese government has a rigid structure that has strong bureaucracy at the top of the society with weak civil society. The bureaucracy was not responsive to the new demands of society under the situation that civil society did not play active roles in encouraging government to respond to the need by adopting new agenda in its priority. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]