It has become a commonplace that there has been an information revolution, transforming both society and the economy. In 1995 the Trade Related Intellectual Property (TRIPs) agreement aimed to harmonise protection for property in knowledge throughout the global system. This book considers the contemporary disputes about the ownership of knowledge resources - as in the cases of genetically modified foods, the music industry or the internet - and the problematic nature of the TRIPs agreement. In this highly topical book, Christopher May reveals that, because of such problems, at present the balance in intellectual property rights between public good and private reward is more often than not weighted towards the latter.

The first edition established itself as one of the leading books to situate the issue of intellectual property within the discipline of International Political Economy (IPE). Since its publication, intellectual property has continued to rise up the global agenda, reflecting expanding interest in the area among policy-makers and advocacy groups, linked to the increasingly fraught politics of the global governance of IPRs. Significantly revised and updated to take account of developments within the World Trade Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization, this edition incorporates the author’s recent research on IPRs. It retains the theoretical and analytical elements of the first edition, whilst offering students and researchers a detailed analysis of how intellectual property is politically constructed, and how it is linked to the economics of knowledge and information in the contemporary global political economy. Rapidly-developing issues addressed in the work include: arguments around the implementation of the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of IPRs (TRIPs) the WIPO Development agenda and the ‘resistance’ to socialization programmes the AIDS crisis and the pharmaceutical industry Digital Rights Management This book will be of interest to students and researchers of international political economy, international relations and intellectual property law.

Examines the social, political and economic impacts of trade, paying particular attention to the textiles and clothing sector with respect to developing countries.

After exploring multifaceted issues of IPR enforcement, this book argues that the problems with it are not an actual outcome of Confucian philosophy and "to steal a book" is not an "elegant offence." This book demonstrates that counterfeiting and piracy are inevitable consequences of inadequate economic development. It goes on to state that they are a by-product of a unique set of socioeconomic crises that have their origin in a dysfunctional institutional regime.

Is the US losing its economic authority to China, whose global economic identity is being determined more by entrepreneurial spirit than developmental principle? Through the exercise of soft power and hard currency in some areas of the global economy, China has clear national interest in the protection of intellectual property rights, financial integration and sovereign wealth funds. China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank will set new standard to global economic development.

This book seeks to make an intervention into the ongoing debate about the scope and intensity of global copyright laws. While mapping out the primary actors in the context of globalization and the modern political economy of information ownership, the argument is made that alternatives to further expansion of copyright are necessary. By examining the multiple and competing interests in creating the legal regime of copyright law, this books attempts to map the political economy of copyright in the information age, critique the concentration of ownership that is intrinsic in the status quo, and provide an assessment of the state of the contemporary global copyright landscape and its futures. It draws upon the current narratives of copyright as produced by corporate, government, and political actors and frames these narratives as language games within a global political project to define how information and culture will be shared and exchanged in the future. The text problematizes the relationship of the state to culture, comments on the global flows of culture, and critiques the regulatory apparatus that is in place to commodify culture and align it with the contemporary nation-state. In the end, the possibility of non-commodified and more open futures are explored. The State of Copyright will be of particular interest for students and scholars of international political economy, law, political science, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, library sciences, and communication studies. It also will appeal to a growing popular audience that has taken an interest in the issues of copyright.

Coalitions and Compliance examines how international changes can reconfigure domestic politics. Since the late 1980s, developing countries have been subject to intense pressures regarding intellectual property rights. These pressures have been exceptionally controversial in the area of pharmaceuticals. Historically, fearing the economic and social costs of providing private property rights over knowledge, developing countries did not allow drugs to be patented. Now they must do so, an obligation with significant implications for industrial development and public health. This book analyses different forms of compliance with this new imperative in Latin America, comparing the politics of pharmaceutical patenting in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. Coalitions and Compliance focuses on two periods of patent politics: initial conflicts over how to introduce drug patents, and then subsequent conflicts over how these new patent systems function. In contrast to explanations of national policy choice based on external pressures, domestic institutions, or Presidents' ideological orientations, this book attributes cross-national and longitudinal variation to the ways that changing social structures constrain or enable political leaders' strategies to construct and sustain supportive coalitions. The analysis begins with assessment of the relative resources and capabilities of the transnational and national pharmaceutical sectors, and these rival actors' efforts to attract allies. Emphasis is placed on two ways that social structures are transformed so as to affect coalition-building possibilities: how exporters fearing the loss of preferential market access may be converted into allies of transnational drug firms, and differential patterns of adjustment among state and societal actors that are inspired by the introduction of new policies. It is within the changing structural conditions produced by these two processes that political leaders build coalitions in support of different forms of compliance.

This edited volume addresses the 2007/2009 financial crisis as the occasion to engage critically with the corpus of Susan Strange’s work, in order to consider what changes (if any) this crisis portends for the structural organization of the global political economy. The contributors use Strange’s rich conceptual framework to explore the financial crisis and its aftermath, and reflect critically on the broader contributions which her work has made to the discipline of IPE. The volume makes three valuable contributions for scholars and students. First, it raises the profile of Susan Strange, a unique and powerful contributor to the field of IPE whose ideas matter to our current circumstance and can provide deep and enduring insights into important questions and issues. Secondly, each contributor to this volume combines her work and ideas with that of other traditions or individual theorists in ways that extend and/or deepen Strange’s own efforts. Finally, this volume leaves us with a judicious optimism about the future of both IPE and the world as it actually is, on the ground. This book will be of interest to scholars and students who are interested in the dynamics shaping contemporary and future developments in the global political economy, as well as those who are interested in the theoretical debates about how to study IPE.

Shortlisted for the 2013 BISA IPEG Book Prize, this book explores how Eastern Europe’s post-communist transition can only be understood as part of a broader interrogation of neoliberal hegemony in the global political economy, and provides a detailed historical account of the emergence of neoliberalism in Eastern Central Europe. Adopting an innovative Gramscian approach to post-communist transition, this book charts the rise to hegemony of neoliberal social forces. Using transition in Poland as a starting point, the author traces how particular social forces most intimately associated with transnational capital successful in the struggle over competing reform strategies. Transition is broken down into three stages; the "first wave" illustrates how the rise of particular social forces shaped by global change gave rise to a neoliberal strategy of capitalism from the 1970s. It goes on to show how the political economy of Europeanization, associated with EU enlargement instilled a "second wave" of neoliberalisation. Finally, exploring recent populist and left wing alternatives in the context of the current financial crisis, the book outlines how counter-hegemonic struggle might oppose a "third wave" neoliberalisation. The International Political Economy of Transition will be of interest to students and scholars of international political economy, post-communist studies and European politics