Hierarchy in Complexity: The Regime Complex in Intellectual Property Rights

• In Event: International Institutions and Foreign Investment

Abstract

This paper advances the argument that a regime complex may be characterized by a hierarchy of institutions, countering the existing view of a regime complex as a set of overlapping but non-hierarchical set of governing institutions. We test this hypothesis using the international treaties that are explicitly incorporated in intellectual property rights (IPR) provisions in preferential trade agreements (PTAs). Using an original data collection of IPR provisions in PTAs, the analysis utilizes network analysis to model the regime complex in IPR governance. PTAs use existing conventions to anchor IPR commitments, and trade agreements overlap in the extent to which they refer to the same conventions. The conventions that are most frequently incorporated into IPR provisions of PTAs thus become most influential, and the relative centralities of individual conventions form a hierarchy of institutions within the regime complex. Such a hierarchy is important to identify as it indicates the legal obligations, norms, or practices that are central in the governance of a particular issue area, in this case IPRs. The analysis focuses, in particular, on references to the WIPO conventions in IPR provisions of PTAs. Our study has applicability beyond the regime complex of IPRs, as issue areas area likely to give rise to more or less hierarchical structures of governance.

Authors

• Jesslene Lee, University of Toronto

• Soo Yeon Kim, National University of Singapore

• Manfred Elsig, University of Bern