Santé publique et monopoles privés : le rôle de l’industrie pharmaceutique suisse dans la régulation internationale des médicaments (1959-1985)

This dissertation examines the political mobilization of Swiss pharmaceutical multinationals in the international governance of medicines between 1959 and 1985. Drawing on corporate, institutional, and diplomatic archives, it traces the emergence of a transnational space of politicization organized around issues such as patentability, price regulation, and public health imperatives. By analyzing the role played by the Basel-based firms Roche, Ciba, Geigy, and Sandoz in establishing transnational business organizations such as IFPMA, Interpat, and the Dolder Club, the dissertation highlights the early development of a form of business diplomacy that was partly autonomous from state action. It shows that, as early as the 1960s, these firms anticipated growing criticism of pharmaceutical monopolies— coming from both non-aligned countries and industrialized nations—and sought to defend and promote a global normative order favorable to their interests, albeit with limited success. Rather than framing the debate in a binary North–South opposition, the thesis reveals a global political arena marked by circulations, conflicts, and competing strategies of influence, where multinational corporations actively shape international public health norms. By reconstructing the genealogy of this mobilization, the study contributes to a renewed historiography of global health, intellectual property, and Swiss capitalism.