The Double Impact of Transnational AIDS Regimes on State Repression in China, 1989-2012

• In Event: 479 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 04. Health

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between transnational institutions and domestic repression. Existing research suggests that repression is determined either by domestic factors or by transnational forces that pressure recalcitrant governments to reduce the level of repression. The author highlights an alternative mechanism: transnational institutions can constitute political models and technologies that fashion state repressive practice. This argument is grounded in an analysis of the transformation of repression against AIDS activism in China. The intervention of transnational AIDS institutions have not only constrained the operation of traditional hard repression, but also generative of soft repression by (1) transforming the objectives of repression through moving AIDS from the margin to the center of the dominant polity; and (2) providing organizational forms, material resources, and framing language for the state to generate new actors and means of repression at both the domestic and transnational levels.

Author

• Yan Long, Stanford University