Susan K. Sell

Intellectual property protection and antitrust in the developing world: crisis, coercion, and choice

After the economic crisis of the early 1980s, developing countries adopted new policies regarding intellectual property protection only as a result of a coercive U.S. strategy, consistent with a neorealist explanation based on power. Targeted countries have complied only on paper, not in practice, however. In contrast, hegemonic powers have not employed overt coercion in the area of antitrust policy, consistent with interpretivist neoliberalism, which emphasizes learning and voluntarism. A nuanced analysis of power and ideas is necessary to account for the differences between the cases. The different mechanisms through which the new policies have been adopted suggest different prospects for these new policies.

The rise and rule of a trade-based strategy: Historical institutionalism and the international regulation of intellectual property

ABSTRACT One of the most dramatic instances of international market regulation in the twentieth century was the adoption of a multilateral, enforceable, intellectual property protection regime at the end of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations in 1994. The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) ushered in a new era of high standards of intellectual property protection, requiring profound and costly domestic institutional changes in many, many countries. International market regulation has increasingly penetrated domestic regulatory environments in ways that have compromised domestic political bargains. Historical institutionalism can help to explain the emergence of a global regime for intellectual property protection as a product of institutional change in the US. Historical institutionalism provides a lens to examine the directly political (rather than technocratic or efficiency maximizing) processes establishing domestic and international power relations.

Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates. By Adrian Johns

maintaining an image of middle-class respectability, expressed through what she sees as the ‘feminization’ of leisure activity at their conferences and in the club-houses. Srole employs a variety of source materials, ranging from official statistics through private papers to the prolific ‘phonographic press’. The latter, which fulfilled a didactic as well as a reflective role, provides the author with a particularly rich seam of material, although one is left with a feeling of uncertainty about whether the romantic, fictional stories which Srole quotes from were not highly idealized representations that may have had less to do with the readers’ attitudes than she appears to assume. Srole argues (p. 8) that the magazine stories are a ‘useful source for unravelling gender and class dynamics’, and while this is certainly true, they do not help us understand the extent to which these discourses were accepted by readers. The author also persistently codes respectable, middle-class leisure activities as ‘feminine’. However, they could equally be portrayed as an alternative form of ‘manliness’ to the hyper-masculine activities that she highlights young ante-bellum clerks as enjoying, such as drinking alcohol to excess. In summary, there seems to be a strong reliance on the ‘separate spheres’ model in this work, despite recent revisions of it by other scholars. This detailed case study of a specific occupational group also attempts to interrogate the meaning of ‘professionalism’. However, more could have been done to relate the fascinating material in Chapter 4 (‘The Male Stenographers’ Solution: The Language of Professionalism’) and in the final chapter to the wide literature on this subject, and perhaps even to international comparisons. For example, Anne Witz’s concept of a professional – or professionalizing – ‘project’ is highly relevant here. Srole seems largely to interpret professionalism as a matter of social class, but while this is certainly one factor, her own data suggests many other elements, including education, expertise and exclusivity. Transcribing Class and Gender is a worthwhile addition to the literature on gender, class and professionalism, and its survey of the subject in the USA is instructive to any reader who is in a position to make comparisons with similar developments in other countries. Moreover, the appendix, which contains eleven pages of statistical tables covering the employment and wages of men and women, is a most welcome bonus.