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ABSTRACT
Most existing studies on the role of business in global governance conceive of business as one group acting vis-à-vis the state or NGOs. This article highlights that conflicts within the business community can be an important factor to explain policy outcomes. Drawing on the ‘business conflict school’ literature from International Relations, studies on the politics of markets developed in Economic Sociology, and work on corporate political strategy undertaken in Management Studies, it develops the concept of the governance-competitiveness nexus to theorize how economic competition translates into political competition. The article demonstrates how such an analytical angle can add to our understanding of the global governance of intellectual property rights for pharmaceuticals. It helps explain the motives of different actors to become politically involved at specific points in time and the policy goals they promoted. Thus, the concepts of business conflict and governance-competitiveness nexus help explain the agenda setting process on global pharmaceutical IP governance.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author would like to thank all the respondents who gave their time to be interviewed for this research. For confidentiality reasons their names have not been disclosed. The author would also like to thank Dana Brown, Robert Falkner, Rodney Hall, Barbara Harris-White and Laura Rival for commenting on earlier versions of this study. Finally, the author wishes to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.
Notes
1. An exception is Shadlen's (Citation2007) work on The Political Economy of AIDS Treatment. The intra-industry cleavages he focuses on are, however, not those addressed in the present article, namely between R&D-based and generics producers. Rather, he shows that global pharmaceutical IP governance has created differential political interests within the generics sector. See Shadlen (Citation2007).
2. For instance, Canada and Denmark introduced product protection for pharmaceuticals only in 1983, the Netherlands and Sweden in 1978, Switzerland in 1977 and Japan in 1976. Belgium introduced product patent protection for pharmaceuticals only in 1987, Greece, Portugal and Spain in 1992 and Finland in 1995.
3. DiMasi, Hansen and Grabowski (Citation2003) estimate that the average development costs for a new drug is approximately USD 800 million, of which about 60 per cent would be required for trials and a substantial amount of these trials would be needed in order to gain regulatory approval. See DiMasi et al. (Citation2003).
4. In this they were supported by multinational companies from other IP sensitive industries, notably the chemical, computer, electronics and recording industries. The most influential business organisation active in promoting TRIPS was the Intellectual Property Committee (IPC). It was formed in 1986 and consisted of the CEOs of 12 companies, four of which were from the R&D-based pharmaceutical sector (Sell, Citation2003).
5. CPTech was later transformed into Knowledge Ecology International (KEI).
6. Interviews with representatives of several NGOs (transcripts on file with the author).
7. Interview with NGO representative (transcript on file with the author).
8. Interview with NGO representative (transcript on file with the author).
9. The Indian parliament passed the Patents (Amendment) Act, which re-introduces patent protection for pharmaceutical products, only in 2005.
10. Interview with Yusuf Hamied, Mumbai, 6 March 2008 (transcript on file with the author).
11. Interviews with industry representatives (transcripts on file with the author).
12. Interviews with company representatives (transcripts on file with the author).
13. Interview (transcript on file with the author).
14. Interview (transcript on file with the author).
15. Interview (transcript on file with the author).
16. Message sent to the email-list ‘IP-Health’, 15 April 1999. (On file with the author.)
17. See for example Pfizer's campaign REALDANGER at http://www.realdanger.co.uk/privacy-policy/ and IFPMA's website: http://www.ifpma.org/global-health/counterfeits.html.
