Power to the Producers

This chapter analyses Argentina’s minimalist response to the global sea change. The pathway from the President Menem’s 1991 proposal for a new patent law to the 1996 Law on Invention Patents and Utility Models reveals intense Executive–Legislative conflict over how Argentina should introduce drug patents. The US Government and the Argentine Executive fought tirelessly for over-compliance, but failed to secure this outcome. Argentina’s national pharmaceutical firms were able to construct a broad coalition against over-compliance, benefiting from its own considerable resources as well as the support of other actors in the industrial sector and health community. In contrast, the transnational sector was unable to attract allies that could widen its own coalition, as the country’s export structure meant that the principal instrument used to expand coalitions for over-compliance was ineffective. By the end of the 1990s, minimalism had become state policy in Argentina.