The Concept of “Compliance”

Abstract

This chapter outlines the key concepts and theories of compliance that are applied in this study and also examines previous work on compliance in China. The chapter concludes that previous studies into China’s compliance with its international commitments have focused solely on China without examining the characteristics of the obligations themselves. Equally, previous studies of compliance have predominantly focused on the specific international accord to the exclusion of country-specific factors affecting compliance. Therefore, it is argued that these two approaches should be combined into a more comprehensive approach to compliance by applying the inclusive model of compliance proposed by Jacobson and Brown Weiss (1998) to China’s evolving compliance with the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) since accession in December 2001.