Even as the world has undergone significant pressure to globalize through a neo-liberal model supported by the World Trade Organization, the IMF, the World Bank and the G8, substantial resistance to this path of globalization has emerged. Part of this resistance is focused upon a specific aspect of globalization – the introduction of intellectual property as an international regime through the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Agreement (TRIPS). This article seeks to look at what has happened to the TRIPS agreement now that over 10 years have passed since its inception. In that 10 years a growing transnational resistance to intellectual property specifically and globalization generally has emerged. This paper will briefly describe the inception of TRIPS and the underlying controversy associated with the agreement; outline the social movement literature as it applies to resistance to neo-liberal globalization; and describe the ways in which this resistance is (and can) impact intellectual property. Ultimately, it is argued that transnational resistance to TRIPS can lead to minor repairs to the agreement and require nation-states to remain responsive to the needs of their populations. However, the transformation necessary if social justice is the desired outcome, while not a likely outcome of resistance, is still worth the attempt.
Almost eleven years ago, the World Trade Organization (WTO) was formally created after years of negotiations through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) framework. The system of economic globalization that ultimately gave birth to the WTO began in the wake of World War Two with the Bretton Woods Institutions – the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. John Maynard Keynes, who was instrumental in the creation of the Bretton Woods Institutions, had at the time also sought to include an International Trade Organization (ITO) as a third dimension to the international economic framework developing in the post World War II era. While the ITO was not ultimately included, part of its original charter became the foundation for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was established in 1947 (George, 2004: 57-58). The GATT underwent a series of negotiating rounds leading to the creation of the WTO on January 1, 1995. The birth of the WTO was remarkably uneventful, perhaps because attention was focused on the already existing institutions, such as the World Bank and the IMF (George, 2004: 58).
The Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) agreement was an important agreement countries desiring to be members of the WTO were required to sign. Throughout the 1980s, but gaining significant momentum in the 1990s with the increased importance of the digital environment, intellectual property became an important business tool. Intellectual property is a generic term used to describe a series of legal regimes. Specifically, intellectual property refers to copyright, trademark and patent law. There are also sui generis regimes that protect specific kinds of innovations, such as plant variety protections. These laws generally protect the aspects of a product that are not tangible and as copying has become even easier and corporations have become more concerned with what they call global piracy, lobbying efforts increased to create stricter laws that reached internationally to protect intangible products.
The inclusion of TRIPS in the WTO marked the culmination of the US industry push to conceptualize intellectual property as a trade issue. It had become clear to many leaders in US industry that the most popular American exports relied upon some form of intellectual property – patents, trademarks, or copyrights, and because of the ease of copying associated with many of these products, US industry sought to design a regime that would protect these commodities in the international market. The developed world saw TRIPS as an essential part of any new trade organization; an important first step necessary to improve the protection of intellectual property rights around the world (Doane, 1994: 467).
TRIPS linked intellectual property rights to trade by arguing that the failure to provide adequate intellectual property laws was tantamount to a barrier against free trade. TRIPS required WTO member countries to harmonize their intellectual property laws with the minimum standards elaborated in the agreement. In 1995, these minimum standards were generally those already existing throughout the United States, Europe, Australia and Japan. Thus, harmonization meant only minor adjustments for developed countries. As Eileen Hill noted during the negotiation process for TRIPS, “The TRIPs agreement requires little change in U.S. law, while requiring our (mostly developing country) trading partners to upgrade their protection substantially (Hill 1994: 10-11).” For many developing countries and LDCs, where intellectual property laws were either absent or widely un-enforced, the TRIPS agreement meant a substantial legal and enforcement infrastructure needed to be built and the implementation of standards and enforcement mechanisms were an important part of the process of all new member countries (Otten, 2003:101-113). Beyond building infrastructures, in order to ultimately gain compliance, many countries also needed to educate their citizens and businesses regarding the importance of intellectual property protection.
TRIPS also provided for a dispute resolution framework in which a member country could file a claim against another member country. Based upon the successful resolution of a dispute claim, TRIPS provides for sanctions against countries who are found in violation of the agreement thus giving teeth to the TRIPS agreement. TRIPS was designed to eliminate the need for bilateral agreements between countries by creating a global intellectual property standard to which all countries would eventually adhere.
The passage of TRIPS, at least from a developed country perspective, failed to generate any significant public interest. With the exception of legal scholars focused on intellectual property issues and the collection of government and businesses interests that had lobbied for the agreement, intellectual property issues had not become controversial enough to generate much public attention.1 Even today, TRIPS remains esoteric enough that many people who have heard of the World Trade Organization remain unaware of the TRIPS agreement. The global south perspective saw the TRIPS agreement much differently. From the inception of TRIPS, developing countries knew they were entering a Faustian bargain.
Countries in the developing world expressed grave concerns regarding the inclusion of intellectual property into the agreement, but didn’t have the negotiating power to withstand the US position. While there was enormous disagreement regarding the inclusion of TRIPS into the WTO framework, it was ultimately approved after additional time was given to developing countries to bring their laws into compliance with TRIPS. Despite misgivings, by 2000 over 100 countries were working towards compliance and most had signed TRIPS (Otten 2003: 101).
The past eleven years have marked continued focus on the TRIPS agreement and efforts have been made by WTO member countries to implement intellectual property laws that would meet the standards of TRIPS. Despite over ten years of constant effort, the legal protection of intellectual property around the globe remains incomplete and widespread understanding and acceptance of the justifications for intellectual property rights is even further behind. Even as an immense effort has been put into “educating” publics throughout the world about the benefits of protecting intellectual property rights, there has been growing resistance to the expanding law. Building from the disputes between the Global North and South that marked the origin of the TRIPS agreement, an international resistance to TRIPS has developed and merged with the larger resistance to neo-liberal globalization.
This article investigates the emergence of a global critique of intellectual property rights that is associated with the counter-globalization movement that broke onto the international scene in Seattle and has manifested itself in numerous public protests throughout the world against the over-expansion of patent and copyright law. I will focus on the global resistance to intellectual property as conceptualized by the TRIPS agreement and international actors seeking to expand intellectual property rights around the globe. While not all resistance is directed at the TRIPS agreement, the concept of intellectual property rights has come to be seen as a central problem with neo-liberal globalization. I am not attempting to claim that all aspects of transnational resistance to globalization are about intellectual property. Rather, it is my goal to assess the ways in which social protest has had an impact (or can have an impact) on the TRIPS agreement.
Recent years have seen the emergence of a discourse emphasizing access by people of the world to knowledge, culture, health care, seeds and technology. Activists outside the legal system and working at the global level have been instrumental in creating a discourse critical of the neo-liberal economic policies and property rights systems of current globalization efforts. Critique of intellectual property rights, including patents, copyrights, sui generis protections and data base protections weave throughout a host of international social movement concerns, including those focused on environmental issues, human rights issues, indigenous peoples’ issues, and economic disparity between the global north and global south.
As a growing transnational social movement coalesces around a rejection of neo-liberal economic institutions, central to the fight is a resistance to intellectual property rights as they are currently defined. While many involved in the transnational resistance of TRIPS do not necessarily understand the details of the agreement and certainly don’t speak the language of copyright or patent attorneys, they have been successful in creating a parallel language that bypasses the technical discourse of the TRIPS agreement in favor of moral claims regarding human rights. While there is clearly misunderstanding of the goals and languages used on both sides, it is my argument that the current resistance staged by transnational activists will require a more serious consideration of issues of social justice and global equity within TRIPS, even as alternatives to intellectual property are conceptualized.
While the TRIPS agreement is the product of over a decade of negotiations removed from the democratic process, ten years after coming into force, TRIPS can no longer be negotiated quietly in the background with little public attention. Intellectual property laws are now subject to much wider public scrutiny than in the past and it is likely they can no longer be developed under the radar of public consciousness. Furthermore, regardless of the actual costs and benefits of the TRIPS agreement, the pressure exerted by counter-globalizing forces has had an impact on the tone and content of the international debate surrounding TRIPS. While it is possible to determine the objective costs and benefits flowing from a free trade system, these become irrelevant if there is a public perception that the system is illegitimate or not beneficial. Counter-globalization forces suggest it is not enough to assess the economic benefits of the WTO, but the outcomes must be filtered through a moral framework that focuses upon global social justice.
TRIPS is no longer just a trade agreement (if it ever was), it must now struggle to define itself (or be defined) within the sphere of public opinion. Regardless of the actual costs and benefits, the multiple resistances to neo-liberal globalization have successfully changed the international language so that issues of social justice must be considered. The effects of increased scrutiny have already been felt as bilateral actions to punish countries lacking appropriate intellectual property protection and TRIPS-plus negotiations are increasingly met with some level of resistance. The ultimate outcome is far from certain. While it is possible to identify a counter-globalization movement, it must also be recognized that without significant structural change, a counter-discourse will lead to nothing new.
I will first briefly outline the history of the TRIPS agreement by focusing on the criticisms of the agreement by forces seeking to mitigate the perceived damage TRIPS would cause them. Second, I will delve into the social movement literature to begin explaining the counter-globalization movement. More specifically, I will focus on the way TRIPS has sparked resistance, the types of resistances, and the impact these actions have had. The final sections will evaluate the counter-globalization movement as it relates to TRIPS and alternatives to neo-liberal globalization.
TRIPS: A PEOPLE’S BRIEF HISTORY
Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite document the coercive and anti-democratic nature that gave birth to the TRIPS agreement (2002). The United States played a crucial role in the early TRIPS process by using bilateral pressure to “encourage” countries to adopt intellectual property laws. The United States exerted (and still exerts) pressure through the use of the United States Trade Representative’s (USTR) Special 301 status. If a country is found to be violating intellectual property laws, they are placed on a “watch list” and threatened with trade sanctions if compliance is not reached (Ibid, 2002: 85-107). During the early years, countries resisting the TRIPS framework found themselves pressured by the U.S., especially during the Uruguay Round, and were ultimately offered no option but to sign the TRIPS agreement (Ibid, 2002: 102).
It was possible to negotiate TRIPS without significant public input because copyright and patent law were considered important only to a small number of business elite, primarily concentrated into entertainment, software, agriculture, and pharmaceutical industries located in developed countries (Sell 1998: 137-138; Drahos and Braithwaite, 2002: 126). Specifically, Susan Sell argues that intense lobbying by large multinationals including Pfizer, IBM and Monsanto were the foundation for the construction of the intellectual property agenda with the chief executive officers from these major firms helping to form the U.S. position (2003:2). The TRIPS agreement was the culmination of substantial behind the scenes work to ensure that an international agreement on intellectual property was created and ultimately signed.
As the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was being negotiated considerable anxiety regarding the impact of protection of intellectual property developed. During the Uruguay round, numerous concerns voiced by developing countries, led by India, divided them from the interests of the developed world. The split between the developing world and the developed world was significant.
American coverage framed concerns in terms of the negotiating process. For example, Eileen Hill who worked in the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Office of Multilateral Affairs, characterized developing nation concerns as; first, favoring WIPO as the site for protection standards instead of shifting standards to the GATT with the exception of trade-related aspects of intellectual property protection that were clearly defined, such as stopping counterfeit products at the border; second, claiming that TRIPS displaced sovereignty and control over national legislation, meaning intellectual property laws would not meet development needs (1990: 18-19). Hill’s remarks framed developing country concerns as negotiating differences that would be overcome and the U.S. position as de facto correct. The U.S. discounted issues raised by the developing countries and saw its position as one of “educating” the rest of the world regarding the benefits of intellectual property protection (Trade Tripwires, 1994: 61). As Hill put it,
The United States entered the negotiations with the knowledge that it had a big job ahead of it to educate the rest of the world about the significant distortions that result from inadequate protection in the TRIPs area (Ibid: 19).
The developing world did not see the problem as one of educating people about the importance of intellectual property, but instead criticized TRIPS because of the structural problems they saw with the agreement. However, the concerns of the developing world were discounted (Hill: 18-19; Rapp and Rozek, 1990: 101).
While there was not a unified developing country position, considerable alarm was voiced by countries representing the global south. The global south argued that the push to protect intellectual property perpetuated structural inequality between the global north and global south (Primo Braga 1989: 252). It was generally understood that the TRIPS agreement was designed to protect the interests of multinational corporations and disregard the interests of Third World countries (Ibid: 252-253). Braga argued that developing countries valued “social” rights as superior to private rights and an effort was made to articulate a “social” justification for weaker intellectual property protection, an argument soundly rejected by the developed world (253).
A second concern voiced by the global south focused on access to new technologies and technology transfer. The global south placed their concerns within the larger social agenda of development and quality of life for their citizens. Thus, instead of higher rates of intellectual property protection that might preclude developing countries from access to new technology, arguments were made for unrestricted access to technology (Oyejide 1990: 441).
India was one of the most vocal opponents to the TRIPS agreement. They fought to transform the document to better address the needs of the global south, but did ultimately yield to the more powerful bargaining forces of the U.S. The Economic and Political Weekly broadly condemned India’s capitulation to U.S. demands (BM, 1989: 1023-1024). In June of 1989, Indian concessions on intellectual property rights in Geneva were considered “all ‘give’ and no ‘take’ for Indian interests (Intellectual Property Rights, 1989: 1201).” In language that ten years later has become central to the international rejection of TRIPS, the magazine opines,
In this situation, the US is only trying to bring GATT into conformity with its national law! And it would not countenance any opposition to its noble mission. It matters little that this would impinge on the autonomy of development policies in the third world. It is of no consequence that what the US might consider as a desirable norm may not be a right norm for another country placed in a different position, economically, socially or culturally. It is not worthy of any thought whether universally acceptable norms could ever be devised in some of these complex areas. And never mind that, until March 1989, the US itself was not a signatory to the Berne Convention on Copyrights and was not protecting foreigners’ copyrights in accordance with the norms of that international convention; that the US is signatory to a much smaller number of international labour conventions of ILO than many other smaller developing countries; that even now the US has a very restrictive regime in regard to access for foreign shipping lines to its coastal trade; that there are already strong legislative initiatives to discriminate against Japanese investment in the US. All that matters is the profits of the US drugs and pharmaceutical industry. If that industry feels that in a country ‘A’ it can double or quadruple its profits by changing that country’s patent law, well use the GATT to twist the arm of that country to do so. And if the GATT does not provide for such arm-twisting, twist the arm of the contracting parties who have the temerity to point that out (Ibid: 1202).
The Indian example also illustrates that negotiators for developing countries were quicker to recognize the “benefits” (and feel the coercion if they did not) of TRIPS than were the general populations. These benefits only existed within the highly limited language of neo-liberal ideology and the benefits would not be spread evenly throughout the world or throughout the individual countries signing the agreement.2
The critique that negotiations were biased in favor of the developed world remained central to global south concerns. The agreement was widely seen as providing few protections for developing countries while these countries would be required to make the most significant transformations in their laws and domestic regulations, often to the detriment of their domestic industries (Kumar, 1993). The outcome, it was felt, would be a growing gap between the rich and poor.
Amiya Rao in 1994 noted that, “[t]rade liberalization is expected to expand global output by some $6 trillion over the next decade, $1 trillion of this going to the U.S. The question that comes to mind, but will remain unanswered is, how much or how little of these trillions will reach the poor, the nameless, the homeless of the world (723).” Even more polemically, Narindar Singh argues that, “[t]he exceeding power of the GATT-induced monocultures on a world scale provides glimpses of the final solution to the human question (1994: 542).” Perhaps more rationally, a study commissioned by WIPO and produced by the Secretariat of the United Nations Conference on Trade & Development (UNCTAD) found that the agreement would create costs for the developing world (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 1996).
Trade negotiators largely ignored these early concerns and intellectual property issues had not yet entered the public consciousness enough to produce serious protest in the global north. However, as countries moved towards harmonization, protection of intellectual property rights increased and so did public awareness regarding what was at stake. In order to protect intellectual property in the information age where controlling illegal copies of a commercial item was increasingly difficult, it was necessary to develop public consciousness regarding the abstract and esoteric legal regime of copyright and patent law. Education campaigns focused on piracy were created throughout both the developed and developing nations. Hot lines were established to turn in known software pirates, advertising campaigns were developed, law enforcement was utilized to raid pirates, and laws punishing piracy were developed and/or made harsher (Halbert, 1997: 55-78). Furthermore, writers coming from a developing world perspective helped highlight issues regarding intellectual property as they related to plant and seed protection, biopiracy and access to pharmaceuticals (Correa, 2000; Shiva, 1997).
The unintended consequence of heightening awareness of the intellectual property regime, expanding intellectual property rights, and strengthening enforcement, has been a growing global resistance. Ironically, expanding protection of intellectual property meant educating people on what exactly intellectual property was, which created an opportunity to critique the notion of expansive intellectual property rights and who benefits from them. The growing network of intellectual property laws and enforcement mechanisms means that more individuals are caught up in the web of intellectual property laws, either by downloading songs, trying to buy affordable medication, preserving their traditional knowledge, or retaining control over the seeds they plant. Ten years after TRIPS, the combined impact of international agreements and domestic legislation has created an awareness of copyright and patent laws, but along with awareness has come resistance.
Growing awareness of what are perceived as abuses of intellectual property law have led to a network of organizations working to resist, if not transform global trade, including rules regarding intellectual property (Sell, 2003: 139-162). This transnational movement is loosely connected, but committed to developing a global civil society focused on fair trade, not “free” trade and resisting neo-liberal globalization. The pressures exerted by the anti-globalization forces are highlighting issues of increased transparency in the WTO/TRIPS, a focus on human rights and input into the decision-making process as crucial to a more democratic and legitimate future global system (Petersmann, 2003: 21-52). While disagreement over the scope of TRIPS existed during the negotiations, today, the resistance has gone global and well beyond the original state actors who had worked to define the scope of the agreement. Those who find themselves subject to the laws of intellectual property, primarily designed without public input or debate, are seeking a voice in the process. While the counter-globalization resistance may or may not be an “authentic” social movement in the framework established by social movement scholars, this framework is the most useful for examining the current counter-globalization movement. By examining the general theory of social movements and its relationship to the contemporary counter-globalization movement we can begin to provide an analysis of the resistance.
In 1993, six years before the Seattle protests, half a million people protested patents on agricultural seeds in Bangalore India, an action called “out-of-date” at the time by The Economist (1994: 72). Social protest was irrelevant, according to The Economist, because the GATT agreement established the rules of the free trade game. GATT provided remedies if a violation of intellectual property occurred and social protest was not one of those options. Challenging the legitimacy of intellectual property rights, in this case patents over seeds, was also not an option allowable under the GATT. The choices under GATT were limited:
“[u]nder GATT, violators in intellectual property face retaliation not only in this sector, but in others as well. Of course, a country could reject TRIPS by opting out of the Uruguay round, but that would risk forfeiting all of its rights under GATT (Ibid, 73).”
State actors could protect intellectual property rights, limit protection of intellectual property and face economic sanctions within the GATT system, or remove themselves from the system. Social protest was irrelevant because the law established property rights over seeds and thus the farmers and other protestors in India were behind the times of contemporary trade law.3
Much has changed since The Economist declared social protest over patent rights irrelevant in 1994. The 1999 “battle in Seattle” became a watershed event for global resistance to the WTO (Weissman, 2003: 207-213). While it was somehow easy to miss thousands of Indian farmers marching against privatization of seed stocks, thousands of people marching through the streets of Seattle in front of the nightly news was much more difficult to ignore.4 These activists sought to highlight the problems with the neo-liberal trade regime and articulate a discourse of social justice and equity, and they brought this message out of the complex language of international negotiation and to the streets.
The response, even among the global south was not universally supportive and this dissention must be acknowledged. Some concern was expressed about the ability of developing world voices to be heard through the enormous numbers of protestors (Batliwala, 2002). Ironically, the protests outside the WTO in Seattle kept developing countries from articulating their position within the negotiating process. Additionally, while hundreds of NGOs were scheduled to participate in the WTO process, they were ultimately kept from doing so when those outside the convention center shut down the talks. This prompted some to question the tactics of activists and for some to wonder “why individuals representing single issue movements believed themselves to be so much better suited to speak for the labor, environmental, and human rights interests of the planet? (Burgoyne and Cole: 17).” Invited NGOs and developing countries were divided on the issue. Some argued that the street protests “emboldened the Third World negotiators to object to the exclusionary processes inside the WTO,” while others in the Third World saw the street protestors as advocating for interests that were opposed to their own (tighter environmental and labor laws) (Weissman: 212).
Despite the ongoing assessment of the Seattle protests, that event helped to energize and mobilize citizens around the world to reconsider the process of globalization. Building upon the resistance to neo-liberal globalization, the American version of the counter-globalization protests were successful to the degree that the abstract world of global trade relations were made concrete through examples of injustice and inequity allowed to continue, and some suggested intrinsic to, the WTO.
As part of the WTO structure, TRIPS entered the international limelight as indicative of the injustices inherent in the international regime. In 1999, access to HIV/AIDS medication in South Africa was at the forefront of the criticisms leveled at TRIPS and the pharmaceutical industry that employed what was considered an abusive patent system to halt the creation of life-saving drugs. The international resistance that emerged around the issue of access to medication successfully inserted the language of health care as a human right (already integrated into other international documents) into the discussion on intellectual property (Halbert, 2002; Shepard and Hayduk, 2002). As a result of international political pressure, the WTO was forced to reconsider access to HIV/AIDS medication in a manner that was open to the interests of the global south during the Doha round (May and Halbert, 2005).5 Growing concern over problems such as biopiracy and traditional knowledge may also require the WTO to reconsider the TRIPS agreement (Gervais, 2004; Reichman, 2003: 120).
While TRIPS was never universally endorsed, the emergence of a vibrant civil society-based movement has literally taken the abstract world of TRIPS to the streets. As a result, there is some reason to believe TRIPS negotiators will need to consider issues of justice and equity to retain legitimacy in the future and compromises on the part of the WTO regarding social justice issues may have to be considered. At the global level, this turn of events represents a significant transformation resulting from the activities of transnational networks of organizations working with civil society groups to contest the ideology of the TRIPS agreement. I will first examine the concept of counter-globalization as an alternative to the anti-globalization term used to describe current resistance, then turn to an examination of the social movement literature to help understand the function and importance of these counter-globalization movements.
COUNTER-GLOBALIZATION VS ANTI-GLOBALIZATION
The creation of the WTO marks an important step in the economic globalization that has come to define modern international economic relations. While international economic institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have long been the subject of criticism for their adherence to and promotion of a neo-liberal trade model, the World Trade Organization has become the more recent focal point for the emergence of the contemporary resistance to neo-liberal globalization. There is considerable debate over what to call the current globalization trend and the movement that has emerged to resist it.
Many critics of globalization seek to clarify that they are not against globalization per se, but against neo-liberal globalization – an economic paradigm that includes structural adjustment, US hegemony, the reduction of social services, and the privatization of the public sector (Starr, 2000). Thus, the resistance is to neo-liberal, or corporate globalization, not to a process of globalization that could make the world a better place for all inhabitants. Within this paradigm, global resistance is not anti-globalization, but seeks to resist a specific form of globalization that privileges corporations at the expense of citizens (Starr, 2000; Shepard and Hayduk, 2002; Notes from Nowhere, 2003; Sandbrook, 2003; Korten, 1995).
To make things more complex, however, there are people involved in a resistance to the current neo-liberal globalization that are anti-globalization – movements that seek to return to local control and/or state control. I will use the term neo-liberal globalization to refer to the process of globalization that includes the WTO and TRIPS. The resistance to neo-liberal globalization will be referred to as counter-globalization, because it is not technically anti-globalization despite the fact that some components of that resistance may be anti-globalization. Amory Starr provides an excellent analysis of the many types of groups resisting neo-liberal globalization that highlights the complexity of the movement, an important issue of scholarship itself (2000).
The counter-globalization movement came to world attention in 1999 when the WTO meetings to be held in Seattle were shut down by social protest. Since the Seattle meeting, resistance to corporate globalization has spread and mass protests have become so common a part of the international trade scene that organizations like the WTO have sought out non-democratic governments in relatively remote locations for their meetings, such as the WTO meetings in Doha Qatar where it was much easier to control social protest (Notes from Nowhere, 2003: 418-422). Despite efforts to avoid protests, resistance to neo-liberal globalization has become part of the international landscape and while diverse, these disparate forces have begun to articulate an important alternative to globalization as currently conceived. One part of this alternative globalization is a resistance to the expanding scope of intellectual property rights through the TRIPS agreement.
While counter-globalization movements seem to transcend the social movement literature, I’d like to use this literature as a starting place and build out from there. The social movement literature helps clarify the importance of actors beyond the state. Despite neo-realist accounts of world politics that political actors work within an already framed system, people who may not be represented through governments, industry lobbies, or even NGOs, have begun to develop a counter-movement to globalization seeking to influence globalization and international law from the outside.
While the counter-globalization movement is certainly larger than intellectual property issues, my purpose is twofold. First, I want to look to theory in order to better understand the nature of the movement as a whole. Second, my goal is to understand the way social movements can impact international copyright law. I argue that transnational resistance has made an impact on the interpretation of intellectual property rights at the international level. Thus, social movements must be taken into consideration at the international level because they have illustrated that they can affect change.
Habermas’ concept of “new social movements” is a good place to begin when studying the types of transnational movements that are countering neo-liberal globalization. New social movements, according to Jürgen Habermas, focus less on distribution and more on issues associated with what he calls the “colonization of the lifeworld (1981).” As Edwards notes, “The agents now crucial for generating a public sphere of debate, for Habermas, are not those asking about what we should get but those asking about who we are, how we live, and who is accountable (2004: 115).” Two terms help describe the colonization of the lifeworld: juridification and commodification – both of which impose the structure of the system (state and economy) on the lifeworld (the world of everyday life) (Ibid: 116). Edwards describes Habermas’ argument as follows:
The key issue in Habermas ‘colonization thesis’ is that everyday realms of action are increasingly organized, not on the basis of the norms we have mutually agreed (‘principals of social integration’) but on the basis of money and power that already drive our political and economic system (‘principles of system integration’). The concern is that the ‘system’ in this respect, is growing in advanced capitalist societies through the extension of state administration and legal bureaucracy into everyday life. This imposes functional rationality on lifeworld interactions, distorting them with system-steering money and power, and creating ‘new’ conflicts and tensions surrounding culture, identity and lifestyle (116).”
Conflict emerges when those protecting “traditional” lifestyles are confronted by the colonization of their everyday lives by the process of rationality imposed by modern systems (Ibid: 116). While these movements may be emancipatory (like the women’s movement), they tend to focus on resistance to the colonization of their space.
According to Habermas, “The movements of resistance and retreat seek to stem or block the formal, organized spheres of action in favor of communicative structures; they do not seek to conquer new territory (34).” Instead, these resistance movements are focused on “developments that visibly attack the organic foundations of the life-world and make one drastically conscious of criteria of livability, of inflexible limits to the deprivation of sensual-aesthetic background needs (34).” In other words, these new resistance movements are defensive, not acquisitive; they attempt to protect the sphere of everyday life from the invasion of the bureaucracy of the system. For Habermas, youth culture and the environmental movement are examples of new social movements.
Habermas’ ideas regarding new social movements are important because they give us insight into the non-distributive causes for resistance, many of which are at the heart of social protest over intellectual property issues. However, the counter-globalization movement goes beyond Habermas’ theory because of its bifurcated nature. Edwards discusses the anti-corporate movement as an example of a modern movement that does not easily fit within the boundaries of Habermas’ theory. This movement does indeed focus on issues of everyday life and the colonization of the lifeworld, but it also finds issue of wages and distribution key as well (Edwards: 117-119). This movement is clearly concerned with distributional questions – questions of social justice and questions of property -- however, the movement also seeks to address questions of lifestyle, traditional knowledge, and the colonization of the world not only by the neo-liberal economic model, but also by the hegemonic cultural structures of consumer culture.
It is also important to recognize that what has come to be called the anti-globalization or counter-globalization movement is really not a single movement at all, but multiple disparate movements that have forged an alliance against the institutions symbolizing global capitalism – the WTO, the World Bank, and the IMF. Ultimately, Edwards makes the argument that there is really nothing ‘new’ in Habermas’ theory of ‘new’ social movements. What we gain from a Habermasian view is the ability to acquire “new spaces and new ways of communicating ‘old’ struggles (Ibid, 122).”
I am less concerned here with the debate over the word ‘new’ than I am with the ways in which Habermas clarifies these issues of colonizing the lifeworld. Numerous areas of resistance to the expansion of intellectual property suggest that these colonizing forces are important to consider. For example, when Indigenous people articulate an alternative to intellectual property when protecting traditional knowledge, they are seeking to halt the colonization of their lifeworld through the juridical functions of global intellectual property law. When groups around the world seek to resist the commodification of the human body through the commercialization of the human genome or to resist the patenting of seed varieties essential to local cultures and ways of life, they are resisting the systems that Habermas discusses. It is this notion of colonization of the lifeworld that is helpful in understanding modern resistances. However, as his critics suggest, one must not ignore the clear distributional agenda of much of the counter-globalization movement – issues of who owns property, how to allocate property, and which moral rights to property permeate the resistance to intellectual property laws.
The transnational nature of the globalization movement is also theoretically interesting and the cause of much discussion regarding the nature of such movements. Alain Touraine, a prominent sociological theorist of social movements, questions if it is even possible to call the current globalization movement a ‘social movement,’ and to what degree social movements continue to exist (2004). The problem Touraine is grappling with emerges because of the nature of globalization.
One essential feature of globalization, as François Dubet points out, is that “the globalization of exchange and capital and financial flows has considerably weakened the national political space in which social movements developed (2004: 693).” Dubet helps clarify that traditional social movements have always been state based and if states are no longer in control of their economic future, then the focus for protest becomes even more dispersed and less concrete. As Dubet asks, “How are social movements possible when the economy seems ruled by ‘markets’ that are virtually independent of all state or institutional control (696)?” This globalization makes it difficult to know where to locate protest, or at the very least, limits protests to the periodic meetings of international economic institutions and/or suggests travel outside one’s home nation-state to engage in political protest.6 As we focus on transnational social movements then, it is important to recognize the problems globalization causes social movements and seek out theories that help explain how these movements can be seen as transnational in scope.
The contemporary counter-globalization movement is not the first time social protest has become international. Audie Klotz argues that modern transnational social movements are not new, but similar to movements that had emerged regarding abolition and apartheid (2002). Furthermore, Adam Hochschild details the emergence of an international resistance to the slavery and economic destruction visited upon the Congo by Belgium, a resistance he calls the first transnational social movement (1999). However, the broad, multi-local and multi-focused features of the current counter-globalization movement seem to make it unique. Whereas earlier movements, such as the anti-apartheid movement, internationalized issues emerging from a single country, the counter-globalization movement is not state-based and the issues it takes up are diverse. This movement has multiple allegiances that cross state boundaries, different groups associated with the movement have coalesced around a variety of issues related to globalization, and the power of the Internet allows this loosely organized collective to communicate, come together for specific events, and then return to single issue organizing.7 For some theorists, this process is called ‘globalization from below (Falk, 2003; Dallmayr 1999).’ From this grassroots paradigm, the leadership of the movement is much less easy to identify and suggests a fundamentally different paradigm to the top-down neo-liberal globalization model Falk describes as globalization from above (Falk: 192-193).
Virginia Vargas describes transnational social movements, “not as unified actors, and not only as movements of plural content. They are revealed rather as a “field of actors,” wide, diverse, and in permanent growth and transformation (Vargas, 2003: 909).” Feminists, environmentalists, activists for human rights and social justice, and many others have come to recognize in the institutions of global trade a common threat. According to Vargas, these new social movements are creating “alternative publics” connected electronically, with no clear central authority structure or cite of identity, which makes them different from past social movements and transnational actors (Ibid, 909; Batliwala, 2002). In many ways, this description of transnational social movements as multi-local, non-state based, and transcontinental align with the contemporary work of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s ideas regarding the multitude (2000).
As Hardt and Negri point out, we should have reached the point where we no longer look for an authentic “outside,” that in fact we all exist within Empire (Ibid, 2000: 46). For Hardt and Negri, all politics is now global and so, then, is all social protest. Thus, the quality of social movements has changed. They state,
We ought to be able to recognize that this is not the appearance of a new cycle of internationalist struggles, but rather the emergence of a new quality of social movements. We ought to be able to recognize, in other words, the fundamentally new characteristics these struggles all present, despite their radical diversity. First, each struggle, though firmly rooted in local conditions, leaps immediately to the global level and attacks the imperial constitution in its generality. Second, all the struggles destroy the traditional distinction between economic and political struggles. The struggles are at once economic, political, and cultural – and hence they are biopolitical struggles, struggles over the form of life (56).
The counter-globalization movement, especially the intellectual property dimensions of that movement merge the economic, political, and cultural in a manner to suggest they are the type of phenomenon Hardt and Negri see as biopolitical.
The themes found in the counter-globalization movement are not new, however new avenues for expressing these concerns have emerged. For example, resistance to the monetary policies of the 1970s foreshadows today’s critique of the WTO and the TRIPS agreement. An international environmental movement is not new, but concern over patents, biotechnology, seed ownership, and traditional knowledge have added a new dimension. Movements focused on human rights, social justice, and decolonization at the international level are not new, but issues of biopiracy, access to patented medication, and biocolonialism emerging from the TRIPS agreement are a new twist. While not the only common concern shared by these diverse groups, intellectual property has become a crosscutting issue and part of a new language of resistance through which to address the problems of globalization. The crosscutting nature of intellectual property brings together activists working at the local, national and international levels with NGOs, National governments, and the United Nations. Ultimately, these issues are then turned back upon international intellectual property agreements and create an atmosphere where new agreements or changes to already existing agreements will be met with increasing demands for public access and accountability.
New social movements and grassroots organizations have also emerged around the idea of intellectual property itself (Story, 2002: 125; Drahos, 2002: 174). Drahos suggests webs of dialogue are emerging and connecting otherwise disparate groups.
Nationally and internationally the process of intellectual property standard-setting is becoming caught up in webs of dialogue, webs in which an increasing number of non-state actors and non-business actors participate (175).
Chapman argues that human rights organizations have entered this web of dialogue to raise concern about the consistency of human rights with intellectual property rights (2002).
While these “webs” lack of a clear center, groups fighting distinct causes (access to seeds in India, access to AIDS medication in South Africa, control of traditional knowledge in Australia or Hawai’i) are thematically linked together by the underlying legal system of intellectual property. Rosemary Coombe also identifies the way resistance to intellectual property issues are forming.
Strategic alliances are being forged between Indigenous NGOs, North-South alliances of farmers’ and peasants’ groups, traditional healers’ associations, environmental NGOs, development institutions and activists whose primary commitments are to maintaining food security, as well as to religious organizations who maintain an opposition to the patenting of lifeforms on spiritual grounds. These new coalitions form the core of a new and vibrant political movement organized around growing opposition to existing intellectual property laws, the way patent and plant breeder’s protections are granted, the practices of rights granting bodies in the industrialized world and an insistence upon recognition of alternative values – other than creation of incentives for the further development, proliferation, and circulation of commodities – to those currently given primacy in discussions of intellectual property (2001: 275-276).
Organizations within this loosely defined sphere have begun to develop a global language of resistance designed to unite people living around the world to fight for greater equity and social justice.
Conflict emerges because the language of social justice encoded in the international human rights arena is not easily translated into the language of trade and economics (Chapman: 867). The disconnect between the language spoken by grassroots organizations and the language of policy and law is of concern to some theorists who argue that at the international level the professionalization and westernization of “social movement” groups has silenced the voices of grassroots organizations in the global south (Batliwala: 396-398). In fact, the ability to speak the language of policy making becomes a key point of entry into the international system as Batliwala notes,
Government authorities often collude and reinforce the exclusion of direct stakeholders by inviting the elite NGOs into policy-making processes, rather than the loud, militant, and difficult to control grassroots groups who do not speak the same bureaucratic language that elite social advocates have learned (398).
These concerns are well founded and important to consider. Daniel Mato argues, for example, that Indigenous groups must learn to speak the language of Western diplomacy in order to be heard while at the same time retaining some sense of “authenticity (2000).” It is of concern that the voices heard in negotiating rooms emerge almost exclusively from the global north and from those who can speak the language of law and economics, who control access to “public space (Batliwala: 397).” However, I seek to conceptualize the problem somewhat differently.
Both a critique of the current system and methods for working outside the system are necessary to long term social change. There is a need for those with training to translate legal documents into common terms and also a need to express grassroots concerns about the TRIPS agreement in terms of the law. Phrases that enter the conversation between legal scholars have no meaning to those outside the legal discourse (parallel imports, compulsory licensing, exhaustion, sui generis protection, etc). Thus, a translation in both directions is necessary. However, grassroots movements, transnational social movements, and NGOs go beyond a critique of the present by creating a vision of a different and alternative future. These visions of the future must exist outside the existing international paradigm if they are to offer an alternative to the status quo. I will divide the resistance to TRIPS into two prongs.
The first prong is an imminent critique of TRIPS – one that does not wish to see the agreement thrown away, but is one where the agreement is changed to better represent interests that were initially excluded. This critique emerges from the work of legal scholars and activists who voice their concerns in the language of international law and offer remedies that can be sought within the TRIPS agreement and the framework of existing international law.
The second prong is the resistance developed by transnational social movements working with local activists outside the legal discourse of TRIPS. This resistance is the articulation of an alternative to the current processes of globalization. This future vision is wrapped into the larger social protest of counter-globalization and places its focus on envisioning a better and different world. In the following two sections I will take up these prongs, beginning with a description of the immanent critique of TRIPS.
Assuming that states wish to retain legitimacy in the face of social protest, the concerns of activists must be translated into a language understood by states and their negotiators. Street theatre and non-violent protest suggest that problems exist, but the gap between the language of activism and the language of trade agreements is so wide that conversation is difficult, if not impossible between these two spheres. The work of legal scholars, and activist groups who can speak the language of the law and who grasp the construction of the TRIPS agreement, have been especially important in translating social protest into potential changes to the TRIPS agreement.
For example, Martin Khor suggests that, “As the imbalances and problems generated by TRIPS become more obvious, there is mounting public demand for change. The range of demands include the following:
Issues like the ones outlined here come from the network of non-state and non-business actors described by Drahos who have grave concerns regarding TRIPS. In order to be taken seriously, their specific concerns are not framed as a call to eliminate TRIPS, but instead as a way of reinterpreting the agreement. While the original negotiating powers behind TRIPS may reject these suggestions, future negotiations over the TRIPS agreement will have to take many of these concerns into consideration. One important insight that has emerged from this dialogue is that flexibility already exists within TRIPS, it must now be utilized to help those who have yet to benefit from the system (Correa, 2002: 52; Love, 2002: 74).
It is important to remember that concerned policy makers and legal scholars began articulating a critique of TRIPS almost from the inception of the agreement. Legal scholars and NGO groups already within the WTO system did not need the pressure of external social movements to critique the TRIPS agreement, and immanent legal critiques emerged independently from the counter-globalization efforts.
Legal scholars and other groups interested in the immanent critique of TRIPS, especially those already within the TRIPS/WTO world, are in a unique position to translate the concerns of grassroots movements into the language of international treaty making. The future potential transformation of TRIPS into an agreement that meets the needs of the global south rests to a large degree on those who can translate the concerns percolating within civil society into the language of international agreements. I will draw upon three examples to illustrate the importance of this type of work.
First, the work of Daniel Gervais serves as an example of translating concerns voiced within global civil society into a language that may be acceptable to the TRIPS agreement. Some of Gervais’ work focuses upon traditional knowledge and its protection within TRIPS. By developing a “Declaration of Traditional Knowledge and Trade” within the appropriate legal language, the work of Professor Gervais serves as a bridge between two distinct paradigms of thinking – one existing outside the structure of TRIPS, the other within the negotiating process (2004). While it remains important for groups focused on fighting for the preservation of traditional knowledge to articulate their concerns outside the language of copyright and patent law, and perhaps help transform the discourse from outside, it also seems important to make the agreement reflect the type of social justice we wish to see. For example, Caren Irr describes the development of a “people’s rights” perspective that would take cultural identity as a starting point and offer a critique to the economic framework of intellectual property (2003: 15).
A second example comes from the Gene Campaign who worked in conjunction with farmers in India to resist legislation that would favor plant breeders over farmers. Through the work of the Gene Campaign, and other civil society groups, farmers’ rights, specifically their rights to sell seeds and to be paid for the use of their seed varieties, were added to the legislation (Sahai 2002: 214). Over a seven-year period, the Gene Campaign worked to ensure that farmers’ rights are protected in domestic legislation and not relegated to the language of “exemptions” under the law (Ibid). Because the goal was to ensure adequate protection in domestic legislation, it was important that the groups be able to translate their concerns into legal language. The Gene Campaign considered the final result a success. When combined together, local activists and transnational groups made an impact on issues related to intellectual property and moved the debate towards one that better protected the public.
A final example that highlights the combined efforts of a transnational movement with legal actors that can impact the interpretation of the TRIPS agreement comes from the on-going battle to access AIDS medication throughout the globe, but specifically in South Africa. A network of groups worked together to raise awareness of the problem and develop a language that would create solutions. Oxfam, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), Health Action International (HAI), Consumer Project on Technology (CPT), South Centre, Third World Network, and the Quaker United Nations Office, ACT-UP Philadelphia, the Health GAP Coalition, and WHO worked on different aspects of the problem (Mayne, 2002: 246). The actions ranged from civil disobedience and social protest to letter writing and conferences. The movement spanned the globe and focused upon the hypocritical words of the Clinton administration and condemned the current interpretation of the TRIPS agreement.
While there remains substantial work to do, these organizations brought the issue of access to medication to Doha and were successful in gaining a “new” interpretation of TRIPS through the Doha Declaration. I say a “new” interpretation, but many have argued that flexibility already exists within the TRIPS agreement, it was simply a matter of replacing the interpretation used by the U.S. with the more accurate interpretation already within the TRIPS agreement. The Doha Declaration embodied the concerns of activists within the language of international agreements. As Ruth Mayne points out, this network of organizations was able to shift the TRIPS agenda towards a more health-focused one. The actors in this specific battle go beyond social movement organizations and include NGOs and trade negotiators from the developing world, an interesting alliance (Mayne: 253).
Mayne identifies the key components that led to a successful campaign to provide access to treatment:
To date, the NGO campaign has been effective because it combined: strong public campaigning messages and actions based on powerful human illustrations that helped generate public outrage an high media coverage across TV, radio and print; global and cross-sectoral alliances of NGOs that supported and built on strong national campaigns, and shared analysis through the Internet; a growing alliance between developing countries and NGOs at the WTO; partially successful attempts to find supporters among rich countries; informed insider face-to-face lobbying at the highest level based on plausible analysis and evidence; and the strategic targeting of companies and governments at different times. Nevertheless, there is still much to be done in the battle for cheap medicine, adequate healthcare and reform of global patent rules (257).
These strategic options are key to the ongoing struggle to revise the TRIPS agreement to accommodate the concerns of the public at large. Transnational actors along with legal scholars play a key role in the process by translating the larger concerns of social protest into language that can be included into legislation and international agreements. However, an equally important aspect of transnational social movements surrounding issues of globalization is their ability to move beyond the legal language of TRIPS and to articulate a different type of globalization altogether. This function of social movements will be addressed in the next section.
Activists working outside the legal discourse translate the abstract language of copyright and patents into a language understood by the general public. They do this by focusing on real harms such as the lack of medicine, the appropriation of traditional knowledge, the biopiracy of materials so that people throughout the world realize that this otherwise impenetrable document has real impacts on their lives. Organizations interested in intellectual property are growing in number. Millions throughout the world have been mobilized around intellectual property issues. Organizations in the developed world connect with those in the developing world and lobby their respective governments on issues related to intellectual property, social justice, and a democratic global civil society. By developing pressure from below, concerns are raised that democratically elected governments cannot ignore, or at least must pay lip service to.
Given their position as outsiders, activists have gone beyond seeking potential remedies within legalistic language or minor repairs to the foundational documents. Part of the strength of the globalization movement is the articulation of another world. At the global level there is emerging a discourse of resistance under the Zapatista slogan another world is possible. This resistance is articulating a different globalized world based on social justice and democratic opportunities, not neo-liberal trade policies.
The World Social Forum is one example of this globalizing resistance. It operates as a unifying space for transnational actors under the banner of “another world is possible.” In January 2004, the 4 th annual WSF meeting was held in Mumbai, India where over 100,000 attended the meetings with 80,000 representatives from different nations (Thekaekara 2004; Baird 2004). The event originated as an alternative to the World Economic Forum held in Davos Switzerland, the annual event for international business elite to discuss world economic policy. The World Social Forum, by contrast, brings thousands of people from around the globe to meet and discuss the impact of globalization on their everyday lives (Morberg, 2003). The 2005 World Social Forum was held January 26-31 in Porto Alegre, Brazil with the same results. The World Social Forum is one example of new public spaces created to deal with issues of globalization and issues of intellectual property.
What transnational social movements along the globalization front bring to the table is an articulation of a different way to globalize. The critique they offer of current intellectual property and globalization efforts is important, but the articulation of alternatives is equally important and remains distinctly outside the law. Ultimately, whether the critique produces changes to the TRIPS agreement or an alternative paradigm for understanding world trade, the perspectives of global actors that contradict those who negotiated the original TRIPS agreement cannot be ignored.
Despite global social protest, it must also be recognized that many do not see the problems with TRIPS as overprotection, but as underprotection. In fact, before the agreement even took affect, the United States had announced that TRIPS was “both inadequate and their implementation framework too long and too lax (Umoren, 1995). Any effort to redefine TRIPS along the lines of human rights and the public interest will be met with resistance on the part of intellectual property interests. In the on-going process of development, then, there must be vigilant watchdogs over the language and application of TRIPS and any future negotiation done at the international level.
Some might argue that changes to the TRIPS agreement do not challenge the structure of the agreement, but merely accommodate and diffuse social protest. Thus, while many work to change the agreement and feel it can become a document that protects interests in both the north and the south, others wish to see the entire structure dismantled. This debate will continue into the future.
It is possible that the evolution of the document may result in a balance achieved between the global south and the global north. However, the evidence suggests that if the global south were to gain more ground, the developed world, especially the United States, will ignore TRIPS and seek harsher punishments and wider intellectual property rights outside the TRIPS framework. Either way, a question of legitimacy remains. For the United States the agreement does not go far enough. For the global south and many working in civil society groups, it goes too far. As increasing protest regarding the scope of protection emerges, the potential is there to transform TRIPS into a document that can articulate claims about equal protection and social justice. However, in making these claims, more powerful states may opt out of the regime in favor of bilateral negotiations.
TRIPS is not alone on the world scene, however. There may also be a role for the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to play in the future. WIPO has become interested in the access to knowledge issue and will hold meetings to discuss access to knowledge, an issue that is part of what is being called the “development agenda.” The development agenda emerged from the Doha WTO talks and endorses changes advocated by developing countries, NGOs, and civil society groups from around the world. These groups seek to grow a movement around development issues, especially centered on the work of WIPO and the WTO. In April, talks were held in Geneva to help plan the development agenda issues to be taken up by WIPO in June. Issues to be discussed range from traditional knowledge to open source. There is hope that as demands of access to knowledge grow, these demands can serve as a unifying theme bringing players from the north and the south together to reformat international agreements on issues concerning intellectual property rights.
To the degree that a global civil society is emerging, it is emerging around issues of democracy and social justice at the international level and is built upon resistance to a tightly controlled international regime that benefits the few at the expense of the many. Of course, while much happens at the level of ideas, until these ideas are translated into social structures that can more fairly benefit all it will be easy to slide back into the status quo. While it may never be the case that we can create another world, the past ten years can teach us that we can still try to make the world we live in a better one.
1. A Lexis-Nexis search suggests the topic of TRIPS was not widely covered during the early years. Coverage increased dramatically after 1999, in part because of the growing global opposition to the WTO and to TRIPS. In 1994-1996 the North American Press published 8 stories on the WTO, TRIPS, and Intellectual Property; the European Press published 23 stories, the Asian press published 20, the Middle East/African Press published 2 stories. Contrast these numbers to the years 2000 – 2004 (after the 1999 Seattle meeting of the WTO). For these years, the North American Press published 157 stories, the European press published 179 stories, the Asian press published 401 stories, and the Middle East/African press published 154 stories. Obviously, this raw search will include numerous overlapping stories and stories not directly relevant to the topic. However, it is also clear that interest in the issues after the year 2000 grew and the early years of TRIPS went relatively unreported. The coverage in law review articles also marks an increase of interest. For the years 1994 – 1996 there were 169 law review articles covering the WTO, TRIPS and Intellectual property. These numbers increased dramatically, with 809 articles published in between 2000-2004.
2. While the realist paradigm of international relations suggests that states speak to other states with an implied unified voice, the process of negotiating TRIPS suggests that there may be considerable difference between those tasked with negotiating such an agreement and the people that it is being negotiated for. Additionally, one can envision the world divided between elites across national boundaries who would understand the benefits of such an agreement for their own enrichment, while the masses of each country would experience no such benefits. Early resistance to the GATT can be found in the United States where “[a] coalition of labor unions, environmentalists, consumer advocates and conservatives is gearing up for a battle similar to the debate last year before Congress ratified the North American Free Trade Agreement (Banales, 1994).”
3. The Economist claim only makes sense within the neo-realist paradigm used to negotiate international treaties. Neo-realist international relations theory focuses on the relationships between state actors. Actors other than state actors such as NGOs or social protesters are like flies – annoying, but not essential. Unless concerns can be voiced within the framework of state interests and state actors, there is little chance they will be considered in the negotiating process. This neo-realist paradigm provides one reason why the Economist believed once the agreement was signed social protest was irrelevant. While this frame of thinking has been thoroughly criticized, it still remains quite relevant within government circles (Keohane, 1986).
4. Some analysis suggests that even the 1999 protests will not remain relevant long term. “In sum, there might be sound reasons to believe that the public’s attention to the battle in Seattle might be “no different than it might have been to a particularly engrossing episode of ER, the X-files, or the Jerry Springer Show (Carpinin and Williams, 2001: 160-181, quoted in Burgoyne and Cole, 2001: 9).”
5. Of course, it needs to be mentioned that the Doha Declaration does not hold any legal weight. However, it is indicative of an increasingly powerful push to assert public rights over property rights in the context of TRIPS. Furthermore, many see the Doha Declaration as the beginning of the development round of WTO negotiations.
6. In terms of the counter-globalization movement, there have been media reports about the travel habits of transnational protestors – young people primarily from the US, Canada and Europe who travel around the globe for these protests. Needless to say, they have not been looked upon favorably by the media, but instead are seen as troublemakers who don’t “belong” in whatever nation they are protesting. This framing of protestors is illustrative of the problems of global movements not aligned with a state. The WTO moves from country to country, but somehow when activists do the same, they are seen as less legitimate. For example, in covering the 2004 G8 meetings in Scotland, Ann Carnes and Nicole Harris refer to past protestors as
“ militant antiglobalists that toured from one international confab to another (2004: C4).” In an editorial to the Calgary Sun the protestors are called “hooligans who travel the world trying to disrupt the legitimate meetings of world leaders and world organizations (2001:C1).” The editorialist quotes Tony Blair who called them, "anarchists' travelling circus (Ibid)."
7. The social movement literature defines social movements, grassroots organizations, activists, NGOs, civil society and transnational movements differently. There is also much concern that these categories can be blurred. While I ultimately would like to be consistent with the literature, at this point I am not using these terms with the level of accuracy required within the sociology literature. I am less concerned with the definitions of the actors than the outcomes of the actions.
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