Rethinking regulation: seeds and drugs in China & Argentina

Project concept note (pdf 200kb)

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Rethinking regulation

The project compares the regulation of two technologies - transgenic cotton seeds and antibiotics - with the way those technologies are experienced amongst poorer communities in rural Argentina and rural China.

We will use the findings from these case studies to explore the implementation challenges facing regulators; and to understand the kinds of inclusive regulatory designs that can incorporate issues relevant to poorer communities. As such, we wish to understand how to improve regulatory capacity, and identify fruitful ways of rethinking regulation. We intend this project to provide insights of help to policy-makers and other stakeholders involved in regulatory capacity-building efforts.

Addressing specific cases in the agricultural and health domains in specific settings in Argentina and China, this project will address the gap between current assumptions about regulation - based often on the norms of OECD countries - and the more complex realities in diverse, dynamic contexts.

In a context of economic globalisation, new pharmaceutical, agricultural and water technologies are, today, often being supplied through trans-national as well as national research and development chains. Yet global, harmonised regulations and regimes often do not map neatly onto diverse localities in rapidly changing economies, giving rise to many unintended consequences. This project will trace the relationships between global and local forms of governance and regulation, asking how, for specific issues and settings, global and national regulatory regimes actually work, or fail to work, in practice.

We will explore the interactions between formal and informal regulation that may emerge to fill the vacuum, whether based on citizen action and social networks, everyday means of getting-by, or semi-legal activities. Exploring who gains and who loses from these interactions, and their implications for emergent ecological dynamics - for instance as poorly-regulated drugs threaten to provoke new and devastating resistances - this project will work towards identifying alternative regulatory pathways that work for Sustainability.

Research update - January 2009

In December 2008 series of project workshops were held in Beijing.
Bejing Normal University 'Rethinking Regulation around antibiotics in rural China ' workshop publicity

Chinese flag“中国农村地区抗生素监管体系再思考”

Beijing workshop

 

 

 

 

 

 

The start of 2009 sees the Rethinking Regulation team reflecting on a busy 2008 and planning the final phase of the project. Over 2008 nearly all the fieldwork was completed in China and Argentina. Preliminary analysis culminated in some presentations and workshops towards the end of the year. As we move into 2009, we will be undertaking interviews with international-level regulators and stakeholders. All this will inform a much deeper analysis of our field results, and contribute to an international workshop that we will convene in Geneva in late spring. Outcomes from that workshop will lead to a final reflection on findings before their wider dissemination within relevant research and policy communities.

Our fieldwork activities over 2008 involved partners in China and Argentina conducting focus groups and in-depth interviews with farmers, patients, medical providers, seed distributors, and regulators in both countries. We covered both local and national levels, taking the Chaco in Argentina and Hubei and Shandong provinces in China as our case study localities. This fieldwork revealed some of the dilemmas confronting local users of seeds and antibiotics, and the challenges of regulating these artefacts on the ground. Members of the STEPS team accompanied the partners in some of this fieldwork, and a number of blogs conveyed that experience.

A paper bringing together our initial thoughts on the difference between regulatory framings of seed and drug use and local realities in both countries was prepared over the summer, and Adrian Ely presented it to an international Science & Technology Studies conference in Rotterdam in 20-23 August (convened jointly by the Society for Social Studies of Science and the European Association for the Study of Science and technology). Our Argentine partners presented the research to a Social Forum in Cordoba in November. Further presentations and revisions are planned over 2009, beginning with the IHDP Open Meeting in Bonn in April, and including a presentation by Ding Shijun and Jin Chenggang to the international conference on  “Managing the social impacts of change from a risk perspective” in Beijing in April.

Towards the end of the year important national level workshops were organised with policy-makers and regulators in China and Argentina. A workshop in Buenos Aires with representatives from regulators and seed firmsdiscussed regulatory realities and possibilities in for Bt cotton. In China, a busy week involved small workshops on seeds and antibiotics in one of our original study villages, before conveying some of their viewpoints at two national level workshops held in Beijing on 6th and 7th December.  All workshops generated lively discussion and interest in following-up on our research. We hope for similar success for our workshop in Geneva, which we will be organising jointly with the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development.

A critical issue for the workshop will be ideas for rethinking regulation in response to the challenges identified by our research. This involves imaginative thinking beyond administrative capacity building to address the diversity of contexts in which international regulations are implemented. Our own thoughts in this area are far from fully developed, and we look forward to engaging with stakeholders and other researchers on this topic. The fruits of all this effort will take the form of publications to be worked on over the year.

STEPS Working Paper 12: Regulation

Regulation coverRethinking regulation: International Harmonisation and Local Realities (pdf 607kb)
By Patrick van Zwanenberg, Adrian Ely and Adrian Smith

The STEPS Rethinking Regulation project is examining the harmonising regulation of two widely available technologies - transgenic cotton seeds and antibiotics - in China and Argentina. We wish to explore how regulation - in terms of property/access and quality/risk - overlaps, compares and contrasts with the way poorer user experience these properties. As the initial step in this project, this working paper provideas an overview of the project's objectives and a discussion of two relevant bodies of literature.
Order a copy of paper from the IDS bookshop cost £5.00

STEPS members working on this project

STEPS partners on this project

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