Industry Lobbying Research Articles

Tobacco industry attempts to frame smoking as a 'disability' under the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act.

Using the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents Library and Congressional records, we examined the tobacco industry’s involvement with the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). During legislative drafting of the ADA (1989–1990), the Tobacco Institute, the tobacco industry’s lobbying and public relations arm at the time, worked with industry lawyers and civil rights groups to include smoking in the ADA’s definition of “disability.” Focus was on smoking as a perceived rather than actual disability so that tobacco companies could maintain that smoking is not addictive. Language that would have explicitly excluded smoking from ADA coverage was weakened or omitted. Tobacco Institute lawyers did not think the argument that smokers are “disabled” would convince the courts, so in the two years after the ADA was signed into law, the Tobacco Institute paid a lawyer to conduct media tours, seminars, and write articles to convince employers that hiring only non-smokers would violate the ADA. The ultimate goal of these activities was to deter employers from promoting a healthy, tobacco-free workforce and, more broadly, to promote the social acceptability of smoking. Employers and policy makers need to be aware that tobacco use is not protected by the ADA and should not be misled by tobacco industry efforts to insinuate otherwise.

DOCUMERICA and the Power of Environmental History

DOCUMERICA and the Power of Environmental History

A discourse network analysis of minimum unit pricing for alcohol: mapping the discursive communities in UK newspaper coverage of the debate

BackgroundPrevious research on alcohol policy in general, and minimum unit pricing (MUP) in particular, has highlighted the importance of industry lobbying, political context, framing of policy arguments, and use of evidence, in the inception, development, and refinement of policies. Our study draws on network analysis approaches to map the discursive communities of key stakeholders represented in UK newspaper coverage of MUP. MethodsThe Nexis database was used to search 11 national UK newspapers, spanning political views and genres, to identify all articles relating to alcohol and pricing published between May 1, 2011, and Nov 30, 2012. Statements made by actors and organisations in the debate were inductively identified and coded with network analysis software to produce relational data to generate visualisations of discourse networks. Findings1435 statements made by 151 individuals from 87 organisations were coded in 351 articles. Visualisation of the network showed two broad discursive communities, one opposing and the other supporting MUP as an intervention. Links between communities were based on agreement around general frames such as “alcohol consumption is bad for public health”, whereas disagreement between the two communities existed around specific frames such as the drivers and extent of the alcohol problem, potential solutions, and consequences of MUP. Cluster analysis of the network showed smaller groupings and highlighted potential discursive coalitions that reflect a common focus on a particular aspect of the debate, especially where there were shared vested interests. InterpretationOur analysis provides the first visualisation, to our knowledge, of the MUP network by the frames presented by key stakeholders. The network highlights splits both within the UK Government and between universities, the dispersal of alcohol manufacturers, retailers, and trade associations across the two discursive communities, and the alignment of economic think-tanks with key industry actors. A complex, poorly-understood interdependency exists between the framing of policy evidence, media representations, and stakeholder influence. These insights could help public health advocates to develop more effective media advocacy strategies. FundingGF and SH are funded by the UK Medical Research Council (MC_UU_12017/15,) and the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government Health Directorates (SPHSU15).

Regulatory Chill: Learnings From New Zealand’s Plain Packaging Tobacco Law

Australia’s precedent-setting Tobacco Plain Packaging Act 2011 (Cth) took two and a half years from its public announcement to come into force. The fact that New Zealand’s almost identical legislation was still not in force six years after it was first mooted suggests it was subject to regulatory chill through both specific threats and systemic influences within the policy making process. This article examines the hypothesis that three elements associated with New Zealand’s free trade and investment treaties combined to chill a National government that was already luke-warm on a plain packaging law: perceived risks from litigation; associated arguments pressed by politically influential industry lobbyists; and the bias in the regulatory management regime that favours minimal intervention and empowers the tobacco industry, consistent with contemporary trade agreements. It concludes that these mutually reinforcing factors delayed the passage of New Zealand’s legislation, but did not see it abandoned. This suggests that health policies supported by public opinion, international health obligations, and precedents from other countries can withstand regulatory chill. But the difference from Australia also highlights the need to pay more attention to ways of neutralising those factors if a Smokefree Aotearoa New Zealand, and similarly ground-breaking public health policies, are to be achieved.

Broadening the Perspective on Gun Violence: An Examination of the Firearms Industry, 1990–2015

Firearm violence injures or kills 100,000 Americans each year. This paper applies the Host-Agent-Vector-Environment model to this issue. Research on firearm violence tends to focus on two elements-the host (i.e., victims of firearm violence) and the environment (i.e., gun policies)-but little attention has been paid to the agent (the gun and ammunition) or the vector (firearm manufacturers, dealers, and the industry lobby). Using Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives data, trends in firearm manufacturing were investigated from 1990 to 2015. Outcome measures included: (1) trends in domestic gun manufacturing by weapon type; (2) trends in production by firearm caliber; and (3) 2015 market share by type of firearm and company. Data were collected and analyzed in 2016. Overall domestic firearms production decreased slightly from 1996 through 2004, and then steadily increased from 1.7% in 2005 to 13.8% in 2013, when >10 million firearms were produced for the domestic market. The increase in total firearm production was driven by the increased production of pistols and rifles. Within the pistol category, increased production was attributable to an increase in higher caliber weapons. Similar trends were observed in gun purchases and recovered and traced crime guns. Trends in firearm manufacturing reveal a shift toward more-lethal weapons, and this trend is also observed in gun purchases and crime gun traces. This may reflect a societal shift in cultural practices and norms related to guns and could inform strategies to reduce firearm violence.

State Policy Priorities for Economic Security Provision among Processing Industries

The Russian specificity of processing industry functioning does not allow domestic products to compete on an equal basis with imported analogues, not only at external, but also at the domestic market, which makes a negative impact on the level of economic security. In this context, the harmonization of industrial and trade policies can be viewed as the combination of individual development institutions aimed at the search of external and internal sources of investment resources, as well as the development of import-substituting industrialization policy trends. The results of modeling using the modified Grossman-Helpman model demonstrate that the hypothesis about the dependence of import tariff rate on the strength of industrial lobby groups is not confirmed. Consequently, the tariff foreign trade policy of Russia is a fragmentary one and does not develop the unified principles and priorities for key processing industry support. In this regard, the main task is the development of universal tools that allow to increase the level of business entity adaptability to the increased volatility of endogenous and exogenous factors negatively influencing the level of economic security among industrial complexes.

Fish Is a Fighting Food: North American Canned Salmon and the First World War

The Northern Review 44 (2017): 457–464 During the First World War, the Pacific Northwest canned salmon industry, which was headquartered and operated in Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon, sent millions of cases of its product to Britain and France for consumption by Allied troops and civilians. The war transformed the canned salmon industry in ways that reverberated long after the 1918 armistice. In order to meet the ever growing demand for fish, the industry expanded dramatically, almost doubling overnight in some regions, which led to overfishing, depleted fish stocks, and concomitant government regulation of fisheries that would only increase over time. In addition, the high rates of product spoilage—a direct result of new and disreputable packing companies entering the market in hopes of securing guaranteed government contracts—led to greater enforcement of pure food laws and safety regulations, an action that in turn educated the public about sanitation and the emerging science of nutrition. The adoption of canned salmon as a wartime ration may in hindsight seem obvious, yet the process was by no means inevitable but rather required industry lobbying and negotiations with the United States and Canadian governments over prices, delivery procedures, and general fishing operations. This article examines the complex and occasionally contradictory process of bringing Pacific Northwest canned salmon to Europe during the First World War. This article is part of a special collection of papers originally presented at a conference on “The North and the First World War,” held May 2016 in Whitehorse, Yukon. https://doi.org/10.22584/nr44.2017.020

Inter-Industry Labor Mobility and Lobbying for Trade Protection

ABSTRACTThis article investigates how inter-industry labor mobility affects industry lobbying for trade protection when foreign multinationals increase production and sales in the U.S. The level of inter-industry labor mobility is a critical issue to an industry because investment-receiving sectors draw labor from the rest of the economy, thus reducing the supply or increasing the price of labor available to an industry. I hypothesize that sectors employing less sector-specific labor will be more likely to lobby for trade protection when investment-receiving sectors draw labor to expand production, ceteris paribus. An empirical test confirms my hypothesis.

Dynamic simulation modelling of policy responses to reduce alcohol-related harms: rationale and procedure for a participatory approach.

Development of effective policy responses to address complex public health problems can be challenged by a lack of clarity about the interaction of risk factors driving the problem, differing views of stakeholders on the most appropriate and effective intervention approaches, a lack of evidence to support commonly implemented and acceptable intervention approaches, and a lack of acceptance of effective interventions. Consequently, political considerations, community advocacy and industry lobbying can contribute to a hotly contested debate about the most appropriate course of action; this can hinder consensus and give rise to policy resistance. The problem of alcohol misuse and its associated harms in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, provides a relevant example of such challenges. Dynamic simulation modelling is increasingly being valued by the health sector as a robust tool to support decision making to address complex problems. It allows policy makers to ask 'what-if' questions and test the potential impacts of different policy scenarios over time, before solutions are implemented in the real world. Participatory approaches to modelling enable researchers, policy makers, program planners, practitioners and consumer representatives to collaborate with expert modellers to ensure that models are transparent, incorporate diverse evidence and perspectives, are better aligned to the decision-support needs of policy makers, and can facilitate consensus building for action. This paper outlines a procedure for embedding stakeholder engagement and consensus building in the development of dynamic simulation models that can guide the development of effective, coordinated and acceptable policy responses to complex public health problems, such as alcohol-related harms in NSW.

Industry Lobbying and “Interest Blind” Access Norms at International Organizations

The standard approach of international organizations (IOs) makes no formal distinctions between nonprofit private sector associations, known as trade or industry groups, and public interest groups like Amnesty International or Greenpeace. After all, these groups are all organized as nonprofits; they may all be characterized as nongovernmental organizations representing the interests of their memberships; and the groups all seek to advance the agendas of members by offering ideas and expertise to international officials or bodies—classic lobbying activity. Thus, most IOs offer accreditation and access to both private sector and public interest groups on equal terms, without differentiating between them. I will call this approach “interest blind” and use this essay to examine its origins and consequences.

Russia’s Accession to the WTO. The Debate in the Russian Mass Media

The paper focuses on the debates about Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) that unfolded in Russia’s print media from December 2010 to December 2013. The authors highlight the initial arguments of supporters and opponents of this accession, the ways in which those arguments are presented in the media, and the differences in the standpoints of the business, government and expert communities. The authors further analyze changes in the content of this discussion and its discursive space following Russia’s accession to the WTO. Our research on print media shows that positive assessments of Russia’s accession to the WTO prevailed before it entered into force. However, after the accession negative assessments started to dominate. This may be explained by the fact that before the accession it was mainly politicians and officials who expressed support for the act, while after the accession the negative views of the business community became more prevalent. Politicians and officials supported the accession by relying on abstract values of “progress” and “open markets”, while businessmen’s (mainly agribusiness) views took into account the non-competitiveness of their industries. Media campaigns helped some industries to create images of “victims” (resulting from enforcement of the treaty) in order to legitimize the industry lobby and the need for government subsidies to compensate for the damage caused by the WTO.

Cancer Risks in the Workplace: Better Regulation, Stronger Protection

Every year, more than 100 000 people die from the consequences of a cancer caused by exposure at work (Takala, 2015). All of these cases are avoidable.Occupational cancers could be eliminated by alternative means of production, by a systematic implementation of preventative measures and by an organisation of work that accommodates these requirements.The majority of these cancers are caused by exposure to chemical substances.The available data on the current levels of exposure for workers confirms that in the absence of adequate legislation there can be no significant improvement of the situation.The fact is cancer costs practically nothing to the companies that cause it.Instead the costs fall to the victims, to social security provisions and to public health systems. Without strict regulation, no prevention measures can have a serious impact across the sectors. The present European legislation concerning the prevention of workplace cancers has to be profoundly reformed. Currently, its purview is far too narrow; the number of substances for which limit values are defined constitute less than 20% of the situations where workers are actually exposed. Furthermore, the legislation does not provide for continued health monitoring after the period of exposure.Further regulations need to be imposed to reduce the amount of commercially produced carcinogenic substances available on the market. For this purpose, the European regulation on chemicals (REACH) must function far more effectively, in particular by substantially increasing the number of carcinogenic substances covered by the authorisation procedure. Moreover, considering the pressure received from industry lobbyists during its development, the specific legislation related to pesticides and cosmetics needs to be reviewed.This publication presents a critical appraisal of the principal EU legislation adopted so far. In so doing, it identifies significant gaps in the central feature of this legislation, which is the directive concerning the protection of workers against carcinogens.

Would you trust lobbies?

We consider the regulatory problem to approve or to ban a new product/technology in the context of scientific controversy about its detrimental environmental and/or health effects. We formalize the regulator’s decision-making process as a Tullock contest (Towards a Theory of the Rent-Seeking Society, Texas A&M University Press, Texas, 1980), the contestants being an industrial lobby, representing the economic agents who have developed the new product/technology, and an environmental lobby, representing the economic agents who will be harmed by the product or technology. Assuming that the industrial lobby has private information about the unfavorable environmental and/or health effects, but can be held liable for damage ex post, we derive the equilibrium properties of the contest. In particular, we derive conditions under which it is socially preferable for the regulator to decide according to the contest’s outcome, rather than according to an ex ante cost-benefit analysis, using his prior beliefs. We find that the contest outperforms the ex ante cost-benefit analysis only if the risk of judgment-proofness is not too high.

Is Germany Really an Environmental Leader?

The Germans have been early adopters of green standards, and the state has set ambitious renewable-energy targets. But industrial lobbies can still thwart regulations, as the Volkswagen scandal revealed.

Governance and transnational civil society: the problem of transnational rent-seeking

ABSTRACTThe expansion of transnational civil society challenges the regulatory reach of nation-states, both individually and collectively. One regulatory challenge is that transnational civil society organizations (TCSOs) can avail of opportunities to engage in, or facilitate, transnational rent-seeking in ways which benefit a small group of organizations or individuals but which impose significant social costs. This article suggests that certain roles played by TCSOs lend themselves to rent-seeking behaviour and it explores the hypothesis that TCSOs can engage in, or facilitate, transnational rent-seeking where they constitute transnational special interests and/or private transnational authorities. To this end, the article outlines a brief theoretical framework and applies it to case studies of two TCSOs, representing transnational trade associations and industry lobbies, and sports associations and regulators. While the conclusions here are tentative, the article argues for further research including refinement of the theoretical framework and empirical testing.

What hinders implementation of the WHO FCTC Article 5.3? – The case of South Korea

ABSTRACTThe aims of this study are to identify what hinders implementation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) Article 5.3 in Korea, and to provide suggestions for the implementation of Article 5.3. Official governmental documents on tobacco control were reviewed. We also searched news articles for data triangulation. There were three factors that hindered the implementation of Article 5.3 in Korea. Firstly, there has been legal conflict between two tobacco-related laws, one of which is designed to promote the tobacco industry. The other is designed to promote public health. Secondly, the government has had economic interests in the tobacco industry, and its lack of action to effectively regulate the tobacco industry's corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices has hindered the implementation of Article 5.3. Thirdly, the tobacco industry's lobby and active interference in the policy-making process has been a barrier. To fully implement Article 5.3, this study suggests: defusing legal conflict between tobacco-related laws; not considering tobacco industry as a stakeholder; regulating tobacco industry's CSR activities; raising awareness of tobacco industry interference; securing transparency between the government and tobacco industry; and establishing a core group or a committee under the government to implement Article 5.3.

Regional Trade Agreements and Cross‐border Lobbying: Empirical Evidence from the Canada–US Free Trade Agreement Negotiations

AbstractThis paper documents participation of special interest groups in negotiations of the Canada–US Free Trade Agreement. Using data on the tariff reduction schedules mandated by the agreement, it shows that industries represented by strong lobby groups were faced with more favorable tariff reduction paths in both countries: phase‐out periods were longer at home and shorter in the partner country. This result provides evidence on the involvement of industry lobbying in negotiation of regional trade agreements and suggests that countries negotiating trade agreements are responsive to the interests of lobbying groups from across the border. Both results provide important implications for the political economy theory of trade agreements.

The Arms Industry Lobby in Europe

Arms companies in European Union play an important role in the definition of security and defense policies, but not related to their knowledge but because of their economical interests. Military lobbies, which are part of the military-industrial complex, are created to influence security and defense in European institutions. Some of these lobbies are mostly composed of members from arms companies. Military lobbies have an effect on the European Union by promoting military responses to security and defense challenges.

To lead without governing in the knowledge society: The enlightened despotism in European techno-corporative discourse

Over the last few decades, the process of governing in the European Union (EU) has come to mean a whole series of activities conducted by social, political, and administrative actors, which guide, direct, control, and administrate society. The relationship between these actors in the governmental process is not hierarchical, but polycentric and mutually dependent. Therefore, the techno-corporatism alliance is formed by an epistemic community along with the industrial and financial lobbies. It organizes society around its own projection of a differential unit, thereby affirming its position of leadership and power – a differential unit which, in an ideologically broader definition, expresses itself and inevitably takes place throughout and within this language. First, this implies thinking of the techno-corporative discourse not in its apparent ethereal nature, but as a social practice of the legitimation of a mediated political direction that has intervened in the conception, construction, and approval of public policies over these last few decades. Even though this discourse contributes to the delineation of a certain social form, this does not suggest that it cannot contrast with it, or even exceed it because this form itself is contradictory. Second, the longitudinal analysis (2000–2010) of the techno-corporative discourse allows us to relate and articulate different discourses (critical, subordinated, and dissident discourses) which have affected the programs and projects of the European governance in the direction of society, thereby constructing a hegemonic vision in order to obtain general consent.

Anti-dumping Initiations in Indian Manufacturing Industries

Anti-dumping as a new protectionist trade policy has evolved as the popular strategy choice for the trading nations. Since the Uruguay Round of World Trade Organization (WTO) (1994), India has been a prominent user of it. This article attempts to explore the possible factors that might have triggered off 90 percent cases of anti-dumping by five major Indian manufacturing industries over the period 1997–2011. We construct a balanced panel combining data on anti-dumping initiations from the ‘Global Antidumping Database’ with trade data from the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCI&S)-India and United Nations Comtrade database at the Indian Trade Classification (ITC) based on Harmonized System (HS) two-digit level. Having count data, the empirical model is estimated initially through a random- effects Poisson regression model followed by a negative binomial model. The number of anti-dumping initiations in India is dependent on the value of imports, the presence of a dominant industry lobby and the retaliatory behaviour by the affected domestic firms, among some others. In fact, we find that in determining the number of anti-dumping initiations the conventional economic and foreign affairs policies take a backseat!