The Social and Political Context of the Pharmaceutical Industry in the UK and Japan

Abstract

The market for pharmaceuticals is created through the interaction of the industry with the health care providers and government agencies. It is a product of the social and political forces within a society and will continue to develop in response to changing social demands and political controls. Our aim in this chapter is to take up two of our main themes in describing the characteristic sectoral features and the governance structures which operate in this sector. The next chapter will concentrate on the economic dimension of the industry’s development but here we will describe the social organisations and the political boundaries within which the pharmaceutical industry operates. Medicines are used mainly either within health institutions or on the instruction of health professionals, usually doctors. The market served by the pharmaceutical industry is thus the creation of the health care policy of any nation state. Our first concern therefore will be to describe the formation of the health care systems and how drugs are sold and distributed within those systems. Having described the key features of the market our discussion moves on to consider the governance structures operating here. We begin with an outline of the role played by the main government agencies, notably the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MHW) and the Department of Health (DoH). However, in later chapters we shall assess how government makes use of the industrial associations created by the industry itself in the formation and implementation of policy. By way of background to this we will outline how the industry in each country seeks to govern itself and the general terms of its interaction with government. Regulation of the industry is instituted by the ministries but, in theory at least, they are subject to the control of the elected party politicians who are responsible to the electorate. In the final section we shall be asking how the actors described thus far relate to party politics.