Smile and Waive? A critical case study of the TRIPS waiver for COVID-19 products using World-Systems Theory and Realism

The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the deadliest health crises in modern history. Increasing production of all relevant medical goods and ensuring their equitable distribution has been argued as a necessity to contain the pandemic, which led to the South African and Indian delegation in the TRIPS Council of the World Trade Organization to propose the implementation of a TRIPS waiver to ensure that intellectual property does not pose a barrier to increased production. However, deliberations on the waiver have gone on since October 2020 without reaching a consensus. This thesis is a case study of the TRIPS waiver and aims to analyze the statements made by the delegations of the EU, the US, India, South Africa and Chad to understand how their position in the core-periphery division can explain their behavior. The issues of health equity and intellectual property have been well researched in the fields of medical and judicial research, but by using a political scientific perspective this thesis aims to make a contribution by describing structural causes for global health inequity. World-Systems Theory and Realism are used as a theoretical framework and predicts that core states have an interest in maintaining unequal exchange through intellectual property and thus are unlikely to support the waiver, while peripheral states who lack an interest in upholding pharmaceutical monopolies and have been unable to secure sufficient medical goods are likely to support the waiver. The findings show that the EU, India, South Africa and Chad have behaved as predicted, but the US delegation acted partially unpredictably: supporting the waiver but only for vaccines.