Protecting Patients and Producers? The Political Origins of Health-Oriented Industrial Policy in the Dominican Republic

• In Event: 4354 - Open Panel on Sociology of Development

Abstract

Consumer protections allegedly pose a profound threat to ill-prepared producers of food, drugs, cosmetics, and chemicals in the Global South, and are therefore likely to be ushered into developing countries—over the objections of domestic firms—by “bootlegger and Baptist” coalitions of multinational corporations that know how to make safe products at low cost and consumer activists who are dedicated to the public interest. The following paper traces the advocacy and adoption of pharmaceutical standards in the Dominican Republic not to MNCs and consumers, however, but to an alliance of public procurement officers and local pharmaceutical firms that runs contrary to expectations. While procurement officers make bulk purchases on competitive terms, and thereby earn the loyalty of local manufacturers, they are recruited, rewarded, and socialized to minimize the risk of sickness and scandal, and thus favor the most secure suppliers. The result is a positive feedback loop in which responsible firms win procurement contracts and not only reinvest their profits in their plants and personnel—thereby fostering income, employment, and export growth—but lobby on behalf of consumer protections that will keep their less responsible rivals out of the market down the road. The results underscore the possibility of health-oriented industrial policy and cast doubt on the public choice approach to development policymaking more generally.

Author

• Andrew Schrank, Brown University