The comparative political economy of pharmaceutical intellectual property rights in Mexico and Turkey

Abstract

Since the late twentieth century, the protection of intellectual property has become integral to a free and fair international economic order. The ensuing global harmonization process in intellectual property that aimed to ensure the continuity of international economic activity has turned knowledge and information into globally protected private property. However, despite this overarching process of global convergence, countries differently navigated the course to this new global order in which intellectual property turned into private property. This thesis seeks to answer why and how countries respond differently to commonly experienced global changes by examining the experiences of Mexico and Turkey in the area of pharmaceutical patents. Asking why Mexico and Turkey's similar behaviors regarding pharmaceutical patents in the 1990s gradually diverged during the 2000s, this study examines these experiences in their historical unfolding. By relying on the existing literature in the case of Mexico and examining parliamentary minutes, newspaper articles, and reports published by various other domestic actors in the case of Turkey, this thesis explains the policymaking processes in pharmaceutical intellectual property as an outcome of shifting coalitional alignments in each country. This thesis contributes to many critical analytical themes in the literature on political economy by demonstrating how, despite intense pressures for global convergence, global rules are still negotiated domestically to produce domestic policy change.