Introduction

Reconceptualising the commercial determinants of health: bringing institutions in

“…While HiAP is associated with various principles, such as the promotion of intersectoral coordination to improve policy coherence for health, it lacks a single, clear definition. This is in part strategic, as maintaining a level of vagueness has been instrumental to promote the concept within policy spaces, notably in the EU under the 2006 Finnish Presidency 32. The definition and framing of HiAP is, hence, a site of discursive power struggle and inherently political 33…”

“…When the concept was introduced in the European Commission, it became (re)defined as a tool of multistakeholder governance: the idea that HiAP required the involvement of all sectors of society, including ‘NGOs, industry, academia and the media’ was presented as obvious. This definition was criticised by the Finnish HiAP advocates, who were seeking to promote HiAP as a cross-policy sector collaboration 32 34. HiAP does not intrinsically entail a multistakeholder meaning 35.…”

“…The past decade has seen an increasing interest within public health research in integrating theories developed within the political sciences, with several important contributions on how institutions shape health policy 19 32 48 49. The CDOH literature is already making efforts to build this bridge, as its engagement with concepts of capitalism, neoliberalism and globalisation demonstrate, but it continues, for the most part, to link actors to (macro) systems without examining the processes, practices, norms and rules that shape and facilitate this link.…”