Lehigh University, College of Health, STEPS Building, 1 W. Packer Avenue, Room 564, Bethlehem, PA, 18015, USA.
Soc Sci Med. 2022 May;301:114931. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.114931. Epub 2022 Mar 18.
Public health researchers concerned with the commercial industry's influence over health policy have contributed to the development of a new field of inquiry, Corporative Political Activity (CPA). While the CPA literature has improved our understanding of the tactics that industries use to influence health policy and outcomes, ironically, this literature appears to have fallen short of thoroughly engaging those social science disciplines focusing on the relationship between industry and government in the policymaking process, such as political science. The purpose of this article is to reveal how political science theory and method can generate new research questions for CPA scholars; propose alternative qualitative methodological approaches to causal inference, with a focus on historical and temporal analysis; and establish adequacy in causal mechanisms. The application of political science theories and methods may assist CPA researchers in their efforts to explain the durability and efficacy of CPA political tactics at the domestic government level, which of these tactics are more important, while providing greater depth into explaining how and why industries continue to obstruct policymaking. The author then propose an alternative political science analytical framework, Political Analysis of Corporate Political Activity (PACPA), that may provide a more thorough understanding of the politics of the commercial sector's policy influence. This framework integrates the political science literature highlighting the political and institutional contexts shaping interest group activities and policymaking influence along with the CPA literature discussing these issues, through a historically-based qualitative case study approach emphasizing the causal mechanisms behind industry's political activities. With respect to methodology, this article relied on an analysis of qualitative documents through a variety of on-line search engines and the author's extensive knowledge of the topic. Select case studies were used as illustrations supporting the author's claims. This research began in November 2020 and concluded in June 2021.
关注商业行业对健康政策影响的公共卫生研究人员为一个新的研究领域做出了贡献，即企业政治活动（CPA）。虽然 CPA 文献提高了我们对行业用来影响健康政策和结果的策略的理解，但具有讽刺意味的是，这些文献似乎未能充分涉及专注于行业与政府在决策过程中关系的社会科学学科，例如政治学。本文的目的是揭示政治学理论和方法如何为 CPA 学者提出新的研究问题；提出替代因果推理的定性方法方法，重点是历史和时间分析；并建立因果机制的充分性。政治学理论和方法的应用可以帮助 CPA 研究人员努力解释国内政府层面上 CPA 政治策略的持久性和有效性，这些策略中哪些更重要，同时更深入地解释为什么行业继续阻碍决策制定。作者随后提出了一个替代的政治学分析框架，即企业政治活动的政治分析（PACPA），该框架可以更全面地了解商业部门政策影响的政治。该框架通过历史为基础的定性案例研究方法，整合了强调塑造利益集团活动和决策影响力的政治和制度背景的政治学文献以及讨论这些问题的 CPA 文献，重点是行业政治活动背后的因果机制。在方法论方面，本文依赖于通过各种在线搜索引擎对定性文件进行分析以及作者对该主题的广泛了解。选择案例研究作为支持作者主张的例证。这项研究始于 2020 年 11 月，于 2021 年 6 月结束。
