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ABSTRACT
Since intellectual property rights (IPRs) and services were introduced to the international trade regime, state regulation on development sensitive issues such as access to education and medicines is directly affected by multilateral and bilateral trade agreements. By adopting a global governance analytical approach to trade politics and a comparative research strategy, the article shows, on the one hand, how national positions on trade in education and IPR have been defined, coordinated and contested in developing contexts and, on the other, the implications of these trade policies on a range of scales. Case studies in Argentina, Peru, Chile and Ecuador will enable us to discuss, on the grounds of extensive primary empirical data, how the apparent conflict between development and liberalization principles is being managed in free trade agreements in Southern countries, and with what outcomes.
Notes
1 In the IPE literarure, the ‘global governance' concept also adopts a more normative meaning (see, for instance, Buchanan and Keohane, Citation2006).
2 See http://rtais.wto.org/ui/PublicMaintainRTAHome.aspx (accessed 7 March 2011).
3 MERCOSUR (Common Market of the South) is an economic and political agreement that includes Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay.
4 Within the GATS negotiations, liberalization demands have a bilateral nature (from country to country). However, after the WTO Hong Kong Ministerial Conference (2005), with the objective of boosting the Doha Round, the organization experimented with a new services negotiation modality via the so-called ‘plurilateral demands' (which go from a group of countries to another group of countries). The first (and unique until now) plurilateral demand on education was coordinated by New Zealand and seconded by Australia, Chinese Taipei, Malaysia and the US in 2006 (Verger, Citation2010).
5 The Brasilia declaration is an anti-GATS statement signed by the Ministers of Education of Argentina and Brazil, together with the heads of the two biggest teachers unions in each country in 2004. The Montevideo declaration has a similar content and signatory constituencies, but was signed at the MERCOSUR level one year after.
6 There is one exception that can be found in the FTA between Chile and the US. The Colegio De Profesores, together with other civil society organizations, consider that their lobbying efforts were responsible for the inclusion of a provision that states that Chile reserves the right to regulate all aspects of foreign teachers' activities (cross-border supply of services by natural persons) at all levels of formal education (ACJR, Citation2004).
7 ‘Uribe and Garcia Break Negotiations Between the EU and the CAN', RECALCA, Bogota, 16 September 2009.
8 The most controversial was the inclusion of five years data exclusivity in addition to 20-year patent protection and provisions on traditional knowledge and biodiversity (see http://www.ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/peru-tpa/final-text (accessed 1 December 2011).
9 ‘EU, Andean Nations Struggle Forward to Trade Talks', Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest, 13(6).
10 ‘Peru no aceptará exigencia de UE sobre medicamentos', in the newsletter Comunidad Andina, 11 February 2009. See also Health Action International (Citation2011).
11 Constitución 2008, Asamblea constituyente, Ecuador. In particular Article 421, p. 184.
12 http://store.businessmonitor.com/article/345335 (accessed 10 March 2011).
13 It is said that international pressure, in particular from Peru, did play a large role in this political decision (Interviews Ecuador 5 and 6).
14 Ecuamex, ‘Presidente de la República cuestiona a funcionarios de Cancilleria', 17 November 2009.
15 This is largely due to the fact that the US, for historical reasons, is very unpopular in the region, whereas Europe is perceived as the lesser evil.
16 Proposals of the EU in 2009 included the use of Supplementary Protection Certificates which would in effect be similar to patent extension, as well as extending data exclusivity to 10 or 11 years. Both were successfully denied by Peru and Colombia, although some controversy still exists over inclusion of biological products, as well as over some of the enforcement provisions that remained in the text (Health Action International, Citation2011).