Structures, agents and institutions Susan K.Sell

• Published in: Non-State Actors and Authority in the Global System pp. 109 - 124
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 2000
• Subjects: International Law; International IP Protection; Activist MNCs; Uruguay Round Trade Talks; Patentable Subject Matter; Punta Del Este Meeting; IP Protection; Intellectual Property; Public International Law; GSP Benefit; Confer; TRIPs Agreement; International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition; Agent Structure Debate; Intellectual Property Protection; Uruguay Round; GATT Liberalization; Rallying Device; United States Trade Representative; IP Code; IP Activist; USTR; IP Right; Indirect Power; Strong IP Protection
• DOI: 10.4324/9780203165041-14

The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPs) agreement, enshrined in the World Trade Organisation (WTO), dramatically expands the global protection of intellectual property (IP; i.e. patents, trademarks, copyright) rights. In this chapter, I argue that a small handful of US-based multinational corporation (MNC) executives and their advisors succeeded in amplifying its private interests into public international law. This is a case of particular MNCs wanting, and getting, their kind of international regulation of intellectual property. My argument combines structural, institutional, and agent-based explanations with a focus on contingency and concrete problems that decision-makers at various levels sought to solve. Agents’ interests are refracted by the state and projected on to the international system. If the US state were not so structurally powerful, its domestic agents would have had less impact. If US policy-makers had not been facing new challenges arising from the changing structure of global capitalism, they would not have been so receptive to the MNCs’ efforts. If the particular agents pressing for a tough multilateral agreement were not so powerful within the US, their actions would have been less effective. The MNC IP activists were structurally privileged in terms of having structural power in US and global markets, but more centrally were successful in converting this latent power into purposeful action.