Intellectual Property Rights and Economic Authority

A state's protection of intellectual property rights vis-a-vis the pharmaceutical industry serves as a great case study of the relationship between economic and state authority. In particular, it may be argued that collective efforts to improve global healthcare indicates no fundamental change in the ways in which states preserve economic authority over their industries. In looking at the efforts of NGOs, states, and international institutions to improve access to life-saving treatments globally, we see what appears to be the beginnings of a global sphere bound to a set of shared values, rather than markets driven by profit or preservation. Still, Big Pharma and states’ decisions to contribute to global health care initiatives are ultimately driven by material gains.

Gutner evaluates the efforts of the World Health Organization, World Bank, NGOs, and individual state to facilitate access to healthcare globally, particularly for HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis treatments. Since 2000, AIDS treatment prices have dropped over 100 times, and many pharmaceutical companies offer pricing on a sliding scale, thereby improving accessibility. Simplistically, this appears to represent a global commitment to public health. In actuality, states are encouraged to contribute to fighting health endemics through the promise of lower tariffs, patent protection, and other gains.¹ In this way, large states exercise their authority and ultimately preserve their preference for retaining power over their intellectual property, economic structure, etc.

A point most notable to this argument is that of regime shifting. Powerful states like the US worked to shift matters of intellectual property rights (like pharmaceuticals and technology) to other international institutions in advance of the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), an agreement which addresses matters of global health as it pertains to a state’s intellectual property rights.² The result was a complex international arena in regard to intellectual property rights which ultimately benefits larger states by allowing them the flexibility to retain these rights which contribute to the state's economic authority. This reaffirms the realist theory of international relations, i.e. that a state's main interest is preservation of power and resources. 

1. Tamar Gutner, International Organization in World Politics (California: SAGE Publications, 2016). 

2. ibid