1 Governing Intellectual Property Rights and Development Valbona Muzaka (valbona.muzaka@kcl.ac.uk) December 2012 Compared to trade, production and finance, intellectual property rights (IPRs) have not been central to the study of international political economy. Nevertheless, their importance can hardly be overstated. Because they ultimately determine how knowledge - which some see as the ‘new capital’ - is generated, owned, controlled, protected and distributed, the mechanisms by which IPRs are governed have direct and profound consequences not only on the economy, but also on how societies create, learn, live and develop. IPRs are highly political, which is why their governance has been contested ever since its rudimentary beginnings in the 16 th century. Today, contests over intellectual property (IP) have become ever more intense, especially since the negotiation and coming into force of the 1994 WTO TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Agreement. Although it launched a far-reaching and globally enforceable IPRs regime, TRIPS failed to reconcile the many tensions inherent in IPRs, and indeed made them more problematic, obvious and acute. Moreover, because the way IPRs are governed has direct consequences for many issue-areas (e.g. healthcare, education, creativity, agriculture, human rights, culture and biodiversity), contests over IPRs involve a number of state and non-state actors with diverse normative positions, interests and capabilities and are currently unfolding in a number of global governance fora, including the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), regional or bilateral trade agreements, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), various human rights bodies, and even the G8 and the G20 (Muzaka 2010). Current IP contests stem partly from the profound significance of IPRs for economies and societies, and partly from the fact that the current arrangement, set in place through TRIPS, governs IPRs primarily as a trade matter to the exclusion of other – often public – concerns. Indeed, what characterises most of the political conflicts unfolding in various global governance fora since the conclusion of the TRIPS agreement is a persistent concern that the current maximalist, ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to IP undermines the achievement of a number of other public goals, such as access to affordable medicines, protection of human rights, promotion of education, biodiversity, development and so on. Despite their complex nature, it can be argued that these contests are ultimately symptomatic of state and non-state actors disagreeing over how