Drawing on a rich set of interviews and surveys, this book shows how the global AIDS treatment advocacy movement helped millions in the developing world gain access to life-saving medication. The movement achieved this by transforming the market for AIDS drugs from one which was 'low volume, high price' to one based on access for all. The authors suggest that a movement's ability to transform markets depends upon whether: (1) markets are contestable; (2) they have framed their arguments to resonate across their target audiences; (3) the movement itself has a coherent goal; (4) the costs are low, or the benefit-to-cost ratio is favourable; and, finally, (5) institutions are present to reward continued achievement of the new market principle. These insights are applied to a range of other cases including malaria, maternal mortality, water/diarrheal disease, non-communicable diseases, education, climate change, the ivory trade, sex trafficking and the Atlantic slave trade.

Winner of the 2014 Don K. Price Award, Science, Technology, and Environmental Politics (STEP) Section, American Political Science Association

‘One of the most profound social movements of our time was the one that pitted people with AIDS against Fortune 500 drug companies, fighting to push treatments through the R&D pipeline, and then bring their prices down to levels affordable for the entire world. Kapstein and Busby tell the saga, and offer powerful insights into why this battle was won for AIDS, but not for other global health issues. Bravo!’

Laurie Garrett - Pulitzer Prize winner and Senior Fellow for Global Health, Council on Foreign Relations

‘Kapstein and Busby provide the most complete and rigorous analysis of the untold story of how millions of people in poor countries obtained access to life saving HIV therapy. It will undoubtedly become a classic text.’

Peter Piot - Director, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and former Executive Director, UNAIDS

‘How can social advocacy alter the fundamental economic laws of supply and demand? The future of social entrepreneurship hangs on the answer. Kapstein and Busby offer us a fascinating study of how the market for AIDS drugs was transformed from scarce and expensive to cheap and universal. The lessons of when the conditions for such transformations are and are not met will be valuable for scholars, activists, and policymakers alike.’

Anne-Marie Slaughter - Bert G. Kerstetter ’66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University and Director of Policy Planning, US Department of State, 2009–2011

'In advancing a 'theory of strategic moral action', Kapstein and Busby provide a detailed account of the political economy of AIDS drugs dissemination, but also offer new ways to understand social movement efforts on issues from climate change to energy development to human trafficking. In this sense, AIDS Drugs for All is political science at its best: topically relevant, theoretically broad, empirically rigorous, and morally compelling. It is a fitting homage to Professor Don K. Price.'

Manny Teodoro - Texas A & M University