Abstract

AimsTo summarize the substantive findings of studies of alcohol industry involvement in national or supranational policymaking, and to produce a new synthesis of current evidence.MethodsThis study examined peer‐reviewed journal reports published in the English language between 1980 and 2016 of studies of alcohol industry involvement in policymaking. Included studies were required to provide information on data collection and analysis and to have sought explicitly to investigate interventions by alcohol industry actors within the process of public policymaking. Eight electronic databases were searched on 27 February 2017. The methodological strengths and limitations of individual studies and the literature as a whole were examined. A thematic synthesis using an inductive approach to the generation of themes was guided by the research aims and objectives.ResultsTwenty reports drawn from 15 documentary and interview studies identify the pervasive influence of alcohol industry actors in policymaking. This evidence synthesis indicates that industry actors seek to influence policy in two principal ways by: (1) framing policy debates in a cogent and internally consistent manner, which excludes from policy agendas issues that are contrary to commercial interests; and (2) adopting short‐ and long‐term approaches to managing threats to commercial interests within the policy arena by building relationships with key actors using a variety of different organizational forms. This review pools findings from existing studies on the range of observed impacts on national alcohol policy decision‐making throughout the world.ConclusionsAlcohol industry actors are highly strategic, rhetorically sophisticated and well organized in influencing national policymaking.

Highlights

  • Studies in other policy areas such as tobacco control or environmental protection have identified a range of corporate political activities designed to shape policy, including attempts, for example, to shape the evidentiary content of policy debates [6,7,8,9]

  • The need to undertake this kind of research has been identified in the field of public health [4, 11, 12], studies of the political activities of alcohol industry actors may exist in other disciplines

  • Apart from one systematic review concerned with marketing regulation [13], no other evidence synthesis is known to have been undertaken on alcohol industry actors’ involvement in policy making

Read more

Summary

Methods

This systematic review [14] examines only studies published in peer reviewed journals, as it is not judged possible to identify and appraise grey literature in an unbiased manner. For the purposes of this study, the alcohol industry is defined as economic actors involved in the production, distribution and marketing of alcohol [15] (regardless of whether this is the primary feature of their business), as well as trade associations, and social aspects organisations [16]. The aim of this systematic review is to investigate existing empirical evidence on alcohol industry actors’ involvement in policy-making. The study objectives are as follows: 1. To summarise the substantive findings of existing studies; 2. To synthesise existing evidence across studies; 4. To identify key gaps in current evidence

Results
Discussion
Conclusion
Full Text
Paper version not known

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call

Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.