Centre for Health Policy, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, Level 5, 207 Bouverie St., Carlton, VIC, 3053, Australia.
Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, Carlton, Australia.
Health Res Policy Syst. 2023 Jun 19;21(1):56. doi: 10.1186/s12961-023-01011-8.
To support public health researchers and advocates seeking to challenge the influence of powerful commercial actors on health, it is necessary to develop a deeper understanding of corporate political activities. This project explores political science scholarship analysing lobbying to identify new datasets and research methods that can be applied to public health and stimulate further research and advocacy.
We undertook a systematic scoping review of peer-reviewed and grey literature reports analysing the practice of lobbying. Titles and abstracts of 4533 peer-reviewed and 285 grey literature reports were screened, with 233 peer-reviewed and 280 grey literature reports assessed for eligibility. We used a two-stage process for data extraction. In stage 1, we collected two pieces of information from all included studies: data sources and indicators used to measure lobbying. For the second stage, data extraction was limited to 15 studies that focused on meetings.
The most common indicators used to measure lobbying activity were: registrations of active lobbyists; expenditure on lobbying; meetings; written comments and submissions made to government consultations; bills; and committee participation. A range of different data sources were used to analyse lobbying, including from governments, not-for-profits and commercial sources. All 15 studies analysing lobbyist meetings were from high-income contexts. The studies analysed three key variables: the types of government actors targeted by lobbying; the policies of interest; and the lobbyists and/or their clients. The studies used a range of taxonomies to classify policy issues and the types of actors engaged in lobbying. All studies discussed challenges with accessing and analysing lobbying data.
There is enormous potential for public health research and advocacy concerned with commercial lobbying to learn from political science scholarship. This includes both conceptual frameworks and sources of empirical data. Moreover, the absence of good quality transparency internationally emphasises the importance of advocacy to support policy change to improve the quality of political transparency to make it easier to monitor commercial lobbying.
为了支持寻求挑战强大商业行为者对健康影响的公共卫生研究人员和倡导者，有必要更深入地了解企业的政治活动。本项目探讨了政治科学学术文献中对游说活动的分析，以确定可应用于公共卫生并激发进一步研究和宣传的新数据集和研究方法。
我们对同行评议和灰色文献报告中分析游说活动的文献进行了系统的范围界定审查。筛选了 4533 篇同行评议和 285 篇灰色文献报告的标题和摘要，对 233 篇同行评议和 280 篇灰色文献报告进行了资格评估。我们使用了两阶段的数据提取过程。在第一阶段，我们从所有纳入的研究中收集了两条信息：数据来源和用于衡量游说的指标。对于第二阶段，数据提取仅限于 15 项重点关注会议的研究。
用于衡量游说活动的最常见指标包括：活跃游说者的注册；游说支出；会议；向政府咨询提交的书面意见和意见书；法案；以及委员会参与。分析游说活动使用了各种不同的数据源，包括政府、非营利组织和商业来源。分析游说者会议的 15 项研究均来自高收入背景。这些研究分析了三个关键变量：游说活动针对的政府行为者类型；利益相关政策；以及游说者及其客户。这些研究使用了一系列分类法对政策问题和参与游说的行为者类型进行分类。所有研究都讨论了获取和分析游说数据的挑战。
公共卫生研究和倡导工作在关注商业游说方面，可以从政治学学术文献中汲取巨大的潜力。这包括概念框架和实证数据来源。此外，国际上缺乏高质量的透明度强调了倡导支持政策变革的重要性，以提高政治透明度的质量，使其更容易监测商业游说。
