Social Capital and Trust in the Design and Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action: Case Studies on IP Coordinating Mechanisms in Plant Genetic Resources and the Biomedical Sector

Abstract

"Intellectual property (IP) rights and in particular patents tend to occupy a prominent position in many ongoing debates about so-called 'grand challenges', such as climate change, food security, protection of biodiversity and global health. Often IP rights are regarded as 'part of the problem' and reason for limited access to fundamental products and services required to address these challenges. Public and private actors have made attempts to create collective action institutions which may assist in facilitating access to those essential technologies and services. Examples are the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources in Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) with its associated Multilateral System of Access and Benefit-Sharing and the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP). However, these transnational collective action institutions generally require active and voluntary collaboration by the right owners concerned. In practice, support for these institutions appears to be limited or even declining. Empirical research has shown that a lack of trust is one of the major issues that discourages stakeholders from collaborating with these institutions. In this light, the objective of the current paper is to develop an original account of trust in the field of large scale and transnational collective action institutions. Our main research question relates to the desired structures and mechanisms within institutions for collective action, which would stimulate stakeholders to sustain trust in order to safeguard the effective operation of institutions for collective action. We claim that in various sectors and contexts stakeholders encounter difficulties in setting up an experimental institution for collective action, that is, to create structures that incite actors to find the optimal way to sustain trust, to organizationally acknowledge and learn that process and to nourish it with the precise normative idea behind the institutional apparatus."