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Tuesday 22 November 2016, 11:00IFAS-Research Conference Room, 62 Juta Street, 1st floor, Braamfontein, JohannesburgThe state, markets and access to medicinesCharlotte Pelletan (LAM)Discussant : Bénédicte Champenois Rousseau (INSERM) One of the modalities of access to medicines and drug regulation in South Africa consists in the paradoxical delegation of regulatory functions to non-state actors (namely, but not only, industry).Drug policies in capitalist neoliberal globalized states are characterized by their insertion into a global trade system promoting a growing commodification of medicines. At the same time, social claims for reforming the status of medicines rise significantly. State formation in South Africa has been characterized by continuous negotiations and compromise with business, which at first sight questions the possibilities for access policies. Opening the black box of the South African state amounts to demonstrate state’s ability to roll out a political project which aims at incorporating the notion of public goods into pharmaceutical industry in a neoliberal context.This presentation attempts to shed a light on access mechanisms through the analytical deconstruction of markets as a set of intertwined social relations. Charlotte Pelletan is a Ph.D student in Political Science at the Institute of Political Science of Bordeaux. Her Ph.D. research aims at re-thinking access to medicines through the reconnection of health systems, architecture of pharmaceutical industry and innovation dynamics. She has co-written with Palesa Sekhejane (HSRC) a book chapter entitled "HIV and AIDS Triumphs and Struggles: Developmental Gap for Biomedical Sciences and Healthcare Systems Innovation in South Africa", which will be part of the forthcoming book edited by Busani Ngcaweni “Sizonqoba: Outliving AIDS in Southern Africa” (AISA).Bénédicte Champenois Rousseau is a independent researcher/ lecturer. She has worked for public research agencies and NGOs on Public Health and was a research associate on a contractual basis at the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM) from 2008 to 2015. She worked on women’s experience of prenatal diagnosis and has taken part in a wider project including a cross-national comparison of Down’s Syndrome screening policies in England, France and the Netherlands.