AIDS and Policymaking in the US and UK during the 1980s

HARPER, Thomas Robert (2024). AIDS and Policymaking in the US and UK during the 1980s. Doctoral, Sheffield Hallam University. [Thesis]

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Abstract
The AIDS Crisis of the 1980s represented an unprecedented public health challenge that transcended the boundaries of disease response, capturing a multitude of policy issues and a plethora of interconnected and competing socio-cultural problems. This thesis employs a comparative framework to develop a fresh analysis of the British and American responses to AIDS during the 1980s. It demonstrates the importance of the period prior to the discovery of HIV and redresses scholarly focus on the mobilisation against it from the mid-decade onwards in the US. Furthermore, it challenges and builds upon the existing scholarship through a comparative lens, placing a spotlight on the emergence of new material and debates around inaction and mobilisation that would previously have been missed by a focus on individual nation states. The main contention of this thesis is that a comparative framework enables a perspective to better articulate the nuances of AIDS policy development in the US and UK, and to reassess the existing scholarship within a broader contextual and circumstantial scope. It posits that 1981-1989 was a period of two distinct policy phases. The pre-discovery phase (1981-1984) was largely governed by similar levels of administrative inactivity on both sides of the Atlantic. However, this thesis asserts that we must contextualise these parallels and suggests the absence and avoidance framework to better explain them. The post-discovery phase (1985- 1989) was primarily shaped by the contrasting mobilisation and stagnation of the British and American policy narratives in important policy areas such as public health education, screening and policy for intravenous drug use. These divergent policy trends cultivated unique policy discourse that reflected the individual context of the respective nations and, subsequently, delivered alternative responses to the disease.
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