LIST OF PANELS

Commercial actors possess enormous economic power, which they use to shape consumer preferences and political decisions. Despite this, political scientists and scholars of public policy have paid relatively little attention to the political activities of corporations compared to other civil society actors such as non-governmental organisations (NGOs), social movements, policy networks and epistemic communities (Wilkes 2013). Indeed, relatively few papers from the most recent ICPP focused directly on the influence of business interests on policy processes. Yet the importance of political strategy to the success of commercial entities has long been recognised within the literature in management science (Baron 1995, Hillman and Hitt 1999).

Another area in which the research agenda on corporate political activity has developed rapidly in recent years is (global) health policy, which focuses on attempts by health-harming industries to shape regulatory environments. An initial focus on ‘big tobacco’ has broadened to include the alcohol, (processed) food/beverage, gambling and pharmaceutical industries etc. within the emerging field of the ‘commercial determinants of health’ (Mialon 2020). While great similarities have been identified in the approaches taken by these industries to frame policy debates and shape policy outcomes (Hawkins et al 2018; Lee et al 2016), the role of industries in policy-making domains beyond health has been less extensively researched, and comparative research across policy domains remains limited.

In addition, there has been insufficient engagement between researchers working on the commercial determinants of health and the wider field of policy studies. While recent studies in global health policy have begun to draw on theories and concepts from political science (Hawkins and Holden 2016; Koon et al 2016; Hawkins and McCambridge 2021), the potential to develop more nuanced and insightful accounts of (global) health policy through inter-disciplinary research remains underdeveloped. At the same time, scholarship on the commercial determinants of health has received less attention from policy scholars, and in policy journals than in its own more specialised forums. Yet it offers potentially important insights for scholars working in other areas in terms of hypothesis generation and frameworks for considering the role of commercial entities as political actors.

The aim of this panel is to create dialogue between scholars that focus on corporate political activity and other areas of policy studies.  We anticipate that this cross-fertilization will generate comparative insight and new ideas for future research. In this way, we hope the panel will foster increased collaboration across policy contexts as they relate to the politics of commercial actors. To this end, we pose the following questions for the panel to consider:

1)      What concepts and theories from political science and policy studies can be applied to deepen our understanding of corporate political activity?

2)      What have we learned from research on health-harming industries that can be extended to other sectors?

3)      How can recent scholarship better respond to the needs of policy to effectively manage the increasingly complicated relationship between modern corporations and the state?

4)      What are the key gaps in the literature and opportunities for comparative research between: industries; policy domains; policy making contexts and levels of governance?

References

Baron, D. P. (1995). Integrated strategy: Market and nonmarket components. California Management Review, 37(2), 47-65.

Hawkins, B. and Holden, C. (2016). A corporate veto on health policy? Global constitutionalism and investor-state dispute settlement. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 41 (5): 969-95.

Hawkins, B., Holden, C., Eckhardt, J., and Lee, K. (2016). Reassessing policy paradigms:  A comparison of the global tobacco and alcohol industries. Global Public Health,  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2016.1161815.

Hawkins, B. and McCambridge, J. (2021). UK alcohol policy, multi-level governance and corporate political strategy: The campaign for minimum unit pricing in Edinburgh, London and Brussels. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 23(3), 391-409.

Hillman, A. J., & Hitt, M. A. (1999). Corporate political strategy formulation: A model of approach, participation, and strategy decisions. Academy of Management Review, 24(4), 825-842.

Hird TR, Gallagher AWA, Evans-Reeves K, et al (2022). Understanding the long-term policy influence strategies of the tobacco industry: two contemporary case studies. Tobacco Control, 31:297-307.

Koon, A., Hawkins, B. and Mayhew, S. (2016). Framing and the health policy process: A scoping review. Health Policy and Planning, 31(6): 801-16.

Lee, K. MacKenzie, R. and Kenworthy, N. (eds) (2016). Case studies on Corporations and Global Health Governance: Impacts and Accountability. London: Rowman and Littlefield.

Mialon, M. (2020). An overview of the commercial determinants of health. Globalization and Health, 16(1), 1-7.

Wilks, S. (2013). The political power of the business corporation. London: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Given their enormous economic power and capacity of action, political scientists and scholars of public policy have paid relatively little attention to the political activities of the commercial sector compared to civil society organisations such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), social movements, policy networks and epistemic communities. Yet the importance of political strategy to the success of commercial entities has long been recognised within the literature in management science. At the same time, the idea that private business seeks to influence policy is a deeply normalised aspect of political and wider societal discourses captured by the term ‘lobbying.’ One area in which the research agenda on corporate political activity has developed rapidly in recent years in that of health policy, and global health policy in particular, in which the focus has been principally on attempts by health-harming industries (e.g. tobacco, alcohol, pharmaceutical products, processed food, gambling) to influence governance processes and stymie regulation of the products within the emerging field of the ‘commercial determinants of health.’ Yet comparative research between industries and across policy domain beyond health remains limited. Similarly, while recent studies have drawn on theories and concepts from the policy sciences, these remain an underutilised resource for (global) health policy scholars. Conversely, scholarship on the commercial determinants of health has received less attention from policy scholars, and in policy journals, than in its own, more specialised forums. The aim of this panel is to create dialogue between scholars working on the role of commercial actors in (global) health policy and other areas of policy studies, and to foster increased collaboration and comparative research between policy areas, decision-making contexts and levels of governance as they relate to the commercial sector as a political actor. We welcome both theoretical and empirical papers on any area of public policy focussed on any level of governance which engage with the role of commercial actors in influencing policy-making, implementation and evaluation. We particularly welcome papers which are conceptually and theoretically innovative and/ or take a comparative approach as described above. However, we welcome papers which focus on a single context or policy issues, particularly where these are under-researched in the exiting literature or extend the research on corporate political activity to new areas.