Neoliberalism, Intellectual Property Rights and the Turkish Pharmaceutical Industry in the 2000s

Abstract

The strengthening of intellectual property regimes has been an important dimension of the neoliberal restructuring process observed in the global political economy over the last three decades (Harvey, 2007, pp. 34–5). A common factor underpinning both the global neoliberal restructuring process and the strengthening of intellectual property rights (IPR) in the developing world, most clearly under Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), has been the increased structural power of transnational capital (Gill, 1991).Many national policy outcomes in the area of pharmaceutical IPR have also been shaped by the dynamics of particular class struggles in developing countries (Eren Vural, 2007a). As a result, there are significant variations in the strength and standards of IPR provided for pharmaceuticals in different polities (Watal, 2000). At a practical level, such variations present different potentials for meeting public health needs and for local production capabilities. Theoretically and globally, this heterogeneity reveals how the operations and political strategies of transnational capital both impact upon and are mediated by class relations and struggles within and across developing countries.