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³ Raustiala, Kal and Victor, David G., ‘The Regime Complex for Plant Genetic Resources’, International Organization, 32 (2004), p. 148Google Scholar.

⁴ Genetic resources refer to genetic material of actual or potential value. Genetic resources, present in plants, animals or microorganisms, are used as raw material for research and development in numerous industrial sectors such as pharmaceutics, cosmetics, agriculture or food. This explains why governments have invested much effort to put regulations in this domain.

⁵ Pistorius, Robin, ‘Forum Shopping: Issue Linkages in Genetic Resources Issue’, in Barlett, Robert V., Kurian, Priya A., and Malik, Madhu (eds), International Organisations and Environmental Policy (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1995), pp. 209–22Google Scholar; Andersen, Regine, ‘The Time Dimension in International Regime Interplay’, Global Environmental Politics, 2 (2003), pp. 98–117CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosendal, Kristin G., ‘Impacts of Overlapping International Regimes: The Case of Biodiversity’, Global Governance, 7 (2001), pp. 95–117Google Scholar; Helfer, Laurence R., ‘Regime shifting: The TRIPs Agreement and New Dynamics of Intellectual Property Lawmaking’, Yale Journal of International Law, 29 (2004), pp. 1–83Google Scholar; Raustiala and Victor, ‘The Regime Complex’; Görg, Christoph and Brand, Ulrich, ‘Contested Regimes in the International Political Economy: Global Regulation of Genetic Resources and the Internationalization of the State’, Global Environmental Politics, 6 (2006), pp. 101–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosendal, Kristin G., ‘Regulating the Use of Genetic Resources Between International Authorities’, European Environment, 16 (2006), pp. 265–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁷ Raustiala and Victor, ‘The Regime Complex’, p. 154, emphasis added.

⁸ Johnson, Tana and Urpelainen, Johannes, ‘A Strategic Theory of Regime Integration and Separation’, International Organization, 66:4 (2012), p. 673, emphasis addedCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ Oberthür, Sebastian and Gehring, Thomas, ‘Institutional Interaction in Global Environmental Governance: The Case of the Cartagena Protocol and the World Trade Organization’, Global Environmental Politics, 6 (2006), p. 26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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¹¹ Gehring, Thomas, and Oberthür, Sebastian, ‘The Causal Mechanisms of Interaction between International Institutions’, European Journal of International Relations, 15 (2009), pp. 129CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹² To be sure, we do not disregard explanations of regime complexes based on institutional accounts. Rather, we offer to refine these studies by looking at what is happening at a lower level of analysis.

¹³ For a detailed discussion of the different configurations regime complexes can take, from fragmented regime complexes to integrated ones, see Morin, Jean-Frédéric and Orsini, Amandine, ‘Regime Complexity and Policy Coherency’, Global Governance, 19 (2013), pp. 41–51Google Scholar. We conceptualise states as rational actors that pursue their interests and preferences internationally. However, we do not conceptualise them as unitary. Rather, it is the way their administrations are organised that partly determines their levels of coherence. Moreover, we recognise that rationality is dependent upon the information actors receive and bounded by the perceptions of the environment.

¹⁴ Francesco, Michael Di, ‘Process not Outcome in New Public Management? Policy Coherence in Australian Government’, The Drawing Board: An Australian Review of Public Affairs, 1 (2001), pp. 103–16Google Scholar.

¹⁵ We use ideal-types because, as Thelen suggests ‘social phenomena are often better captured in “moving pictures” that situate a given outcome within a broader temporal framework’. Thelen, Kathleen, ‘Timing and Temporality in the Analysis of Institutional Evolution and Change’, Studies in American Political Development, 14 (2000), p. 101CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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¹⁸ Alter, Karen J. and Meunier, Sophie, ‘The Politics of International Regime Complexity’, Perspectives on Politics, 7 (2009), p. 20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹ Johson and Urpelainen, ‘A Strategic Theory’, p. 655.

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²² The morphogenetic perspective ‘is not only dualistic but sequential, dealing in endless cycles of structural conditioning/social interaction/structural elaboration – thus unraveling the dialectical interplay between structure and action’, Archer, Margaret S., Realist Social Theory: the Morphogenetic Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carlsneas, Walter, ‘The Agency-Structure Problem in Foreign Policy Analysis’, International Studies Quarterly, 36 (1992), pp. 245–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²³ Pistorius, ‘Forum Shopping’.

²⁴ Article 3.

²⁵ Article 27.

²⁶ Bioprospecting refers to the action of collecting genetic resources for commercial or research uses. Biopiracy refers to the misappropriation of genetic resources. On this precise opposition see Bled, Amandine, ‘Technological Choices in International Environmental Negotiations: An Actor-Network Analysis’, Business & Society, 49 (2010), pp. 570–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁷ Brazil Communication to the WTO, doc IP/C/W/228.

²⁸ Art. 1(1).

²⁹ Art. 1(2).

³⁰ Art. 19(g).

³¹ Rosendal also validates this interpretation when she recognises conflicts in the complex in 2001 but underscores synergies in 2006. Rosendal, ‘Regulating the Use’; Rosendal, ‘Impacts of Overlapping International Regimes’; Morin, Jean-Frédéric, ‘Rhetorical Discourses in International Patent Lawmaking: Property, Fairness, and Well-Being’, Asian Journal of WTO and International Health Law and Policy, 3 (2008), pp. 505–37Google Scholar.

³² Raustiala and Victor, ‘The Regime Complex’, p. 293.

³³ Bernstein, Steven, The Compromise of Liberal Environmentalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁴ Görg and Brand, ‘Contested Regimes’.

³⁵ Vivas-Engui, David and Olivia, Maria Julia, Biodiversity and Intellectual Property in North-South Free Trade Agreements (Geneva: ICTSD, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁶ Article 4.3.

³⁷ Raustiala and Victor, ‘The Regime Complex’; Muzaka, Valbona, ‘Regime Linkages, Contests and Overlaps in the Global Intellectual Property Rights’, European Journal of International Relations, 20 (2010), pp. 1–22Google Scholar.

³⁸ Abbott, Frederick M., ‘The Future of the Multilateral Trading System in the Context of TRIPS’, Hasting International and Comparative Law Review, 20 (1997), pp. 661–82Google Scholar; Raustiala and Victor, ‘The Regime Complex’; Dutfield, Graham, ‘TRIPS-related Aspects of Traditional Knowledge’, Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, 33 (2001), pp. 233–75Google Scholar; Latif, Ahmed A., Developing Country Coordination in International Intellectual Property Standard-Setting (Geneva: South Centre, 2005)Google Scholar; Petit, Michael, Fowler, Cary, Collins, Wanda, Correa, Carlos, and Thornstom, Carl-Gustaf, Why Governments Can't Make Policy, The Case of Plant Genetic Resources in the International Arena (Lima, International Potato Centre, 2001Google Scholar).

³⁹ Pistorius, ‘Forum Shopping’; Rosendal, ‘Impacts of Overlapping International Regimes’; Helfer, ‘Regime shifting’.

⁴⁰ Dirk De Bièvre and Lars Thomann, ‘Forum Shopping in the Global Intellectual Property Rights Regime’, paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, New Orleans (2010).

⁴¹ For instance the US, EU, and Japan were the top-three governmental actors regarding the share in biotechnology patent applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty over the period 2007–9 while Switzerland ranked 7th. OECD, Key biotechnology indicators (December 2011), p. 6, available at: {http://www.oecd.org/science/innovationinsciencetechnologyandindustry/49303992.pdf}.

⁴² We treat the US as any other governmental actor, despite its non-ratification of the CBD treaty. This is justified by the extensive American participation in the CBD negotiations.

⁴³ More precisely, we include the negotiations hosted by the CBD Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group on Access and Benefit Sharing (ASBWG) that elaborated the Nagoya Protocol on ABS adopted in 2010; the negotiations hosted by the IGC on a ‘legal instrument’ for the effective protection of genetic resources and traditional knowledge; the negotiations of the TRIPs Council that administers the TRIPs Agreement and discusses its revision; the negotiations of the provisions of the FAO Treaty that was adopted in 2004. From the first meeting of IGC in April 2001 to the end of this research project in July 2010, ABSWG met 10 times, IGC 16 times, the TRIPs Council 35 times, and the committee for FAO treaty 6 times.

⁴⁴ The FAO was not included in the analysis for lack of available data.

⁴⁵ The corpus includes 192,126 occurrences of 6,730 different words.

⁴⁶ We therefore contend that coherence implies a certain degree of homogeneity of individual words from one submission to another. While a coherent state could ask for an international certificate of origin at CBD, for disclosure at WTO and WIPO and for open access at FAO, it is most likely to develop all the elements of this political position in each forum.

⁴⁷ 607 keywords were then combined into 27 semantic fields, resulting in the categorisation of 30,970 occurrences (16.1 per cent of the total).

⁴⁸ The WTO was not included in the analysis for lack of available data.

⁴⁹ Bureaucratic units have been coded using information given by each participant. By ‘bureaucratic units’, we mean different ministries, agencies, institutes, etc. but have not investigated the origin of the participants inside these units (subdivisions of ministries, etc.).

⁵⁰ These labels can be attributed only on relative terms. It is important to keep in mind that with a larger sampling, the observed relative positions would have been different.

⁵¹ Interviews were conducted with 7 officials, 2 from Switzerland, 3 from the EU, 1 from Japan, and 1 from the US. The small number of interviewees is compensated by their quality – they are all delegates negotiating in at least two fora of the GR complex. See the list of interviewees in Appendix 3.

⁵² Buck, Matthias and Hamilton, Clare, ‘The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity’, Review of International Environmental Law, 20:1 (2011), pp. 47–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵³ Suppan, Steve, Amending WTO intellectual Property Rules to Prevent Bio-Piracy and Improve Patent Quality (Minneapolis: Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, 2006)Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Commission of the European Communities, Policy Coherence for Development: Accelerating Progress toward Attaining the Millennium Development Goals, COM(2005)134 final (2005), p. 7.

⁵⁵ Interviews 1 and 7.

⁵⁶ Oberthür, Sebastian and Rabitz, Florian, ‘EU Performance in the Negotiations on the Nagoya Protocol: Revival of EU Global Environmental Leadership?’, in Oberthür, Sebastian and Rosendal, Kristin (eds), Global Governance of Genetic Resources: Access to and Benefit-Sharing after the Nagoya Protocol, (London: Routledge, 2013)Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Philippe Cullet, ‘Liability and Redress: International Trends and Domestic Policy Options’, paper presented at the National Consultations on Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, New Delhi (2005).

⁵⁸ Interview 5.

⁵⁹ Kraus, Daniel and Rûssli, Markus, ‘Access and Benefit Sharing User Measures in Switzerland’, The Journal of World Intellectual Property, 14 (2011), p. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁰ Marc Hufty, Tobias Schulz, and Maurice Tschopp, ‘The role of Switzerland in the Nagoya Protocol Negotiations’, in Oberthür and Rosendal (eds), Global Governance of Genetic Resources.

⁶¹ Interview 5.

⁶² Interview 4.

⁶³ Interview 3.

⁶⁴ Interviews 4, 5, 6, and 7.

⁶⁵ Interviews 4 and 5.

⁶⁶ Interview 6.

⁶⁷ The category ‘observers’ is mentioned as such on the lists. It excludes international organisations and includes NGOs, business, scientific organisations, and individual experts. Location was decided upon the address provided by the corresponding observers. The category ‘other’ encompasses observers from countries not included in our study as well as observers labeled ‘international’ when several locations appeared on their record. Figures for Switzerland are partly explained by the fact that WIPO has its head office in Geneva.

⁶⁸ Interview 6.

⁶⁹ For the last interval, 2009–10, the figure decreases in two cases (the EU and US) but this is due to the fact that our sample ends in 2010.

⁷⁰ In their study of the CBD negotiations, Hufty et al. confirm that ‘dense horizontal and vertical collaboration mechanisms between various administrative bodies and interest groups form Swiss environmental foreign policy and characterize the representation of Switzerland in international forums’, Hufty, Schulz, and Tschopp, ‘the role of Switzerland’.

⁷¹ The follow-up period of the negotiations is the number of months between the first and last meeting attended by each multi-fora non-state actor.

⁷² Latif, Developing Country Coordination, p. 27.

⁷³ Vivas-Engui and Olivia, Biodiversity and Intellectual Property.

⁷⁴ Interview 6.