GDAE Working Paper No. 09-01 Resources, Rules and International Political Economy
Policy under Multilateral and Regional-Bilateral Trade Agreements,” Review of International Political
Economy 12 (December 2005): 750-775.
9Stephen D. Krasner, “Global Communications and National Power: Life on the Pareto Frontier,”
World Politics 43 (April 1991): 336-66; Martin and Simmons, “Theories and Empirical Studies”; Gruber,
Ruling the World.
10Examples of such analyses include Krasner, Structural Conflict; Lake, “Power and the Third World”;
Susan Strange, “Cave! Hic Dragones: A Critique of Regime Analysis,” in Krasner, ed., International
Regimes; Robert Tucker, The Inequality of Nations (New York: Basic Books, 1987). What drives
countries’ interests, however, is a further question. Some scholars regard interests as a function of actors’
position in the international system, while others focus on how domestic policymaking processes shape
national interests and goals.
11 Examples of prominent institutionalist approaches to IPE that emphasize the uncertainty-reducing
role of rules include Keohane, After Hegemony; Martin, “The Political Economy of International
Cooperation”; Kenneth Abbott and Duncan Snidal, “Why States Act through Formal International
Organizations,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 42 (February 1998): 3-32.
12Stephen D. Krasner, “US Commercial and Monetary Policy: Unraveling the Paradox of External
Strength and Internal Weakness,” International Organization 31 (Autumn 1977): 636.
13In his analysis of North-South conflict in the 1980s, for example, Krasner showed that where
institutional arrangements allowed developing countries to influence that was disproportionate to their
resources, developed countries simply stopped participating. See Krasner, Structural Conflict. I return to
this point in the conclusion.
14To the extent that legal security derived from IPRs encourage owners to share (i.e. license) their
knowledge, IPRs may also contribute to knowledge dissemination. Yet where third parties can access
knowledge without the help of the owner, the costs imposed on third parties for using knowledge is greater
in the presence of IPRs than in their absence.
15See, among others, Peter Drahos, “Global Property Rights in Information: The Story of TRIPS at the
GATT,” Prometheus 13 (June 1995): 6-19; Duncan Matthews, Globalising Intellectual Property Rights:
The TRIPs Agreement (Routledge, 2002); Susan K. Sell, Private Power, Public Law: The Globalization of
Intellectual Property Rights (London: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Kenneth C. Shadlen, Andrew
Schrank, and Marcus Kurtz, “The Political Economy of Intellectual Property Protection: The Case of
Software,” International Studies Quarterly 49 (2003): 45-71.
16Matthews, Globalising Intellectual Property Rights; Jayashree Watal, Intellectual Property Rights in
the World Trade Organization: The Way Forward for Developing Countries (New Dehli: Oxford
University Press [India], 2001).
17This discussion draws on Shadlen, “Patents and Pills, Power and Procedure.”
18Article 31 of TRIPS addresses compulsory licenses.
19South Africa is the most prominent case, of course, but a number of countries were punished by the
USTR (e.g. loss of GSP benefits) for failing to meet US standards’ TRIPS Plus demands.
20Comments of Francisco Cannabrava, Brazilian delegate to TRIPS Council, at the meeting of the
Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, “How Intellectual Property Rights Could Work Better for
Developing Countries and Poor People,” Session 6: Medicines and Vaccines, 22 February 2002.
21The June 2001 remarks of Thailand’s delegate to the TRIPS Council are illustrative of the campaign’s
demands and the issues at play. “We are all aware that TRIPS provides built-in flexibilities regarding
measures WTO members can take to obtain medicines, both patented and non-patented, from the best and
cheapest sources, both foreign and local. However, due to lack of clarity of certain provisions of the
Agreement, developing countries seem to be reluctant to take measures that they are entitled to under the
Agreement. This is very unfortunate, because one of the purposes of the Agreement was to establish an
international benchmark for intellectual property protection and to prevent unilateral pressure, as stated in
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