Intellectual property rights
Resources, rules and international political economy: the politics of development in the WTO
Why developing countries have prevailed in the current international conflicts over intellectual property and investment?
Authors:
K.C. Shadlen
Publisher:
Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University, 2009
This working paper examines the contemporary politics of IP and investment in the WTO. The paper examines the conflicts that pit developing and developed countries against each other in these two areas, and analyses developed countries’ efforts to push beyond the TRIPS and TRIMS agreements.
The paper notes that developing countries (DCs) have "prevailed" in the current international conflicts over IP and investment. Indeed, DCs could condition the launch of a new round of multilateral trade negotiations on an agreement that would draw the line under TRIPS Plus demands. Moreover, they could make sure that the subsequent round did not include negotiations on investment. The paper finds that the WTO’s rules of unweighted voting and consensus decision-making have played a crucial role in this regard. However, a structuralist approach would lead observers to expect developed countries to be able to impose their preferences.
The paper points that developed countries closed one institution and created another in the 1990s (the GATT and the WTO respectively); thus, would they do that again? Perhaps the proliferation of RTAs is a movement in that direction, a de facto effort to leave the WTO and create a new WTO-plus world.
The paper concludes that:
- DCs would like to introduce more substantive reforms, both to TRIPS and TRIMS, but have been unable to do so
- DCs have less to fear in the current setting because developed countries are no longer exercising their "go it alone power"
- DCs newfound influence in international trade negotiations is derived from the institutional setting, but for that very reason the power is extremely fragile
