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Abstract
The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is a multilateral agreement between all the members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that governs intellectual property (IP) protections. The TRIPS Waiver is a 2020 proposal presented to the WTO by India and South Africa. This was intended to help prevent, contain, and treat COVID-19 by waiving certain IP protections for COVID-19 health technologies, such as vaccines. The WTO members debated the efficacy of this waiver and thus far, the TRIPS Waiver has not passed.
Originally, both the Trump-Pence and Biden-Harris Administrations refused to support the waiver—but four months after the Biden-Harris Administration’s inauguration, they reversed their position on the World Trade Organization’s TRIPS Waiver and issued a statement in support of the proposal. During these four months, the TRIPS Waiver was debated by US experts, advocates, and the general public on Twitter. Using the Narrative Policy Framework to analyze these Twitter narratives, this thesis describes the narrative landscape leading up to the Biden-Harris’s policy decision and draws from existing Narrative Policy Framework literature to articulate expectations for the success of pro-waiver narratives. This paper identifies significant differences between narratives in support of (‘pro-waiver’) and in opposition to (‘anti-waiver’) the TRIPS Waiver: pro-waiver narratives used universalizing language, referencing victims and beneficiaries worldwide rather than in the US, and used egalitarian cultural frames.
These findings illuminate the influence of different narrative elements on domestic policymaking around the global public goods of health. Specifically, this research suggests that emphasizing the all-encompassing scope of a global issue may be an effective narrative strategy for advocates.