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'Thank you for Smoking!': a multi-level study on the policy impact of anti-tobacco movements, tobacco industry's countermovements and political opportunity structure on tobacco control policies in 22 European countries

Kuijpers, Johannes Cornelis (2015) 'Thank you for Smoking!': a multi-level study on the policy impact of anti-tobacco movements, tobacco industry's countermovements and political opportunity structure on tobacco control policies in 22 European countries.

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Abstract:Based on a cross- national study of 22 European countries, we conducted a multi-level assessment of the impact of societal, political and industry factors on the strictness of tobacco control legislation for the period 1980-2012. Specifically we framed tobacco control policy processes as taken place in the realm of the triad formed by the state on top and anti-tobacco movement and tobacco industry’s countermovement on both base corners. Our main question concerns the separate influence of these parties in tobacco policy processes and its resulting consequences in terms of policy outcomes. We draw on political opportunity structure (POS) theory and policy diffusion theory to assess the possibilities a political system provides for grassroots participation in policy processes. Corporate Political Action (CPA) theory is used to evaluate tobacco industry’s countemobilization efforts to impede policy reform. Finally, we draw on resource mobilization (RM) theory to indicate anti-tobacco movements abilities to impact policy processes. We found that a population’s likeliness to participate in politics negatively relates to the strictness of tobacco control policies. Potentially because policymaking processes become more complex as a multitude of grassroots interests are released on policymakers which constrains more radical policy decision-making. In accordance, we found that state’s repression of grassroots participation in politics, is positively related to the strictness of tobacco control legislation. In such case, state public health concerns or international legislative pressure, outweigh grassroots interests in policy decisions. No evidence was found that POS, and specifically the openness of political systems and the presence of allies, enabled the anti-tobacco movement and tobacco industry’s countermovement, to impact policy outcomes. Moreover, we found no evidence that tobacco industry’s countermovements impacted domestic tobacco control policies. Our main contribution are integrating state, social movement and corporate countermovement in one framework and study these parties influence on policy processes in a simultaneously manner. Moreover policy processes are complex and could only partly be explained by the multi-level factors included in our study. Clustering our data within countries, revealed that there are unobserved characteristic nested within countries that do impact the strictness of tobacco control policies but we did not control for. We encourage researchers to include more factors in our suggested triad framework and test their impact on policy processes, in order to further unravel the complex phenomena policy processes are.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:85 business administration, organizational science
Programme:Business Administration MSc (60644)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/67527
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