In the early 2000s, at the height of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, several high-profile firms in Botswana and South Africa began providing their employees with antiretroviral (ART) drugs. Though an expensive undertaking, these firms opted to take a long-term approach to protecting their interests while promoting a social good. In her illuminating analysis of the political economy of business responses to social crises, Antionette Handley asks why firms would make such a decision. Handley helps us see businesses as actors that are situated firmly between their sociopolitical contexts and the demands of making a profit. Although we have historically overlooked business as a key player in the provision of public goods, Handley’s work reveals that, in some cases, firms can take a powerful stand by actively seeking constructive solutions to social crises.

Business and Social Crisis in Africa is divided into five well-developed chapters. Chapter 1 sets out the study and the interesting puzzle; it also operationalizes constructive and unconstructive responses thoroughly, providing a terrific model for those teaching political science courses. Chapter 2 explores a largely nonexistent business sector response to HIV/AIDS in Kenya and Uganda, whereas chapter 3 considers the more robust responses of some South African and Botswanan businesses (particularly in the mining sector). Chapter 4 shows that the findings of chapters 2 and 3 hold in the particularly challenging context of political violence, in which the state may not just be absent from the solution but also an active cause of the problem. Chapter 5 offers thoughtful comparisons of South Africa to other countries outside Africa, including India and South Korea, to illustrate the generalizability of Handley’s findings. It also warns against reliance on the private sector for public goods, because it lacks the ability of the state to ensure their universal distribution (p. 192).

Using the contexts of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and protracted political violence, Handley explores how, under some conditions, African businesses respond effectively to crises, often before a sluggish state can react. These constructive responses to crises can only emerge when firms have developed a good degree of what Handley calls “business autonomy,” or the ability to act “independently of and perhaps even in opposition to the state” (p. 6). Throughout the book, she pushes against our assumptions that businesses will always act like “roving bandits,” as she builds on Mancur Olson’s work to show when and how firms begin to define their interests in more nuanced and long-term ways, developing beyond a focus on short-term profits. Business and Social Crisis in Africa reveals that, under the appropriate conditions, businesses can both harness and transcend their primary societal role as employers to offer robust and essential responses to serious problems in their countries.

This book draws on cases from across eastern and southern Africa, using a nested case design that begins with two country cases in each of the regions hit hardest by HIV/AIDS (Uganda and Kenya, Botswana and South Africa) and follows with two countries that have experienced contemporary political violence (electoral violence in Kenya during the 1990s and 2000s, and antiapartheid violence in South Africa during the 1980s and early 1990s). The comparative study is thoughtfully designed, allowing Handley to isolate factors that led to stronger business responses to HIV/AIDS in the southern, rather than eastern, African cases (chapters 2 and 3) and an ultimately constructive response to apartheid-era violence by firms in South Africa (chapter 4). The two chapters on HIV/AIDS, which look at each region in turn, are paired beautifully, carefully following the same structure and engaging with the particulars of each case, while keeping the comparative argument in plain sight. These chapters would be an excellent model to use in class for those teaching comparative politics.

Building a strong case using an effective mix of qualitative fieldwork (including dozens of interviews) and document analysis, Handley argues that firm- and societal-level factors, as well as the timing of a crisis, can combine to allow firms to offer “a response to crisis that enhances the broader public welfare” (p. 11). Larger firms were better able to respond, as were those operating in a context where firms and capital were more centralized (p. 143). Labor relations are also uniquely key to this process in two ways: workers can “translate or transmit” societal problems to management to help them better understand the severity of a crisis (p. 12), and a history of labor disputes can teach a business’s decision-makers “the art of negotiation and the need for political settlements” (p. 148). This was especially the case in South Africa where Handley notes that average citizens had a more hostile view of business (because of the history of colonization and apartheid) than in Kenya, where small entrepreneurs dominate and there is less animus toward business.

Another particularly interesting factor that Handley explores is firms’ reliance on skilled labor; during the peak of the HIV/AIDS pandemic she finds that agricultural firms in east Africa were able to lay off, and easily replace, relatively unskilled workers who fell ill (p. 73), whereas businesses’ reliance on expensive-to-train highly skilled mine workers in southern Africa drove them to seek ways to protect their workforce from HIV (p. 95). What is especially surprising is that some businesses acted to address HIV/AIDS in Botswana and South Africa even without pressure from trade unions or the state (whereas Botswana had a stronger state-sponsored response to HIV/AIDS, South Africa’s government infamously delayed its response; p. 99). Although the broader state of firms, their size, and their relationships with labor were central factors, Handley also identifies key individuals within firms who championed HIV/AIDS programs in some cases (p. 97). Through these processes, which Handley carefully documents and details, firms can begin to conceive of their interests as broader, more long term, and tied closely to the fate of the societies in which they operate.

Throughout the book, Handley effectively weaves her findings into the literature on public goods, social responsibility, and the politics of HIV/AIDS, effectively grounding her work while also pulling these literatures closer to one another. Business and Social Crisis in Africa challenges us to consider the unique ways in which the private sector operates in contexts where the state may be weak, unfocused, or even actively contentious.

One of Handley’s most interesting findings is that business responses are not determined by the state, as we might expect. Instead, in a show of autonomy, the private sector may offer a more progressive and constructive response earlier than the state. In the book’s most compelling turn, Handley applies her findings from the HIV/AIDS crises in eastern and southern Africa to cases of political violence in Kenya and South Africa. She uses this issue of violence as a test of her argument, ultimately revealing how firmly her explanatory variables hold in such a disparate context. Moving from a “natural” and less obviously political crisis (HIV/AIDS) to a deeply political issue (violence that is fundamentally connected to the state itself) provides a robust test for Handley’s findings, making them even more compelling

Unlike many other studies in political economy, Handley effectively balances her analysis of the broader political contexts—for example, the antiapartheid struggle in 1980s South Africa—and the corresponding business implications (dramatic strikes and the challenges that firms perceived to capitalism itself). The interviews with business leaders who chose (or not) to engage in constructive responses to crises draw the reader in as they carefully set out the breadth of demands and uncertainty that firms faced during these difficult eras. The book also does not shy away from exploring alternative explanations, and Handley carefully addresses several throughout. She discusses the unique elements of the South African case. However, we might ask if there was something about the antiapartheid movement itself that, despite its own factions, allowed it to offer clearly articulated grievances and a simple goal with which firms could align themselves, thus making a business response to violence in South Africa more likely than in Kenya, which lacked an organized social movement with articulated goals.