The Foundations of Corporate Strategies Comment on "‘Part of the Solution’: Food Corporation Strategies for Regulatory Capture and Legitimacy"

Abstract

The "Part of the Solution" article describes how the food industry has evolved its strategies to respond to critics and government regulation by co-option and appeasement to create a less hostile environment. Rather than focusing research on single industries it would be more efficient and productive to focus on corporate political activities (CPA) that directly influence democratic institutions and processes having authority over laws, policy, rules and regulations that govern industry. The most influential and direct CPA are election campaign donations, lobbying, and the reverse revolving door. In the U.S. those CPA flow from rights of corporations that underlie all industry strategies. The U.S. history of how corporations obtained their rights is described, and research about the affirmative effects of those three CPA is summarized. Health research is needed about those CPA and their effects on health law, policy and regulation in the U.S. and other nations.

Political Economy and Research Silos: A Response to the Recent Commentaries

“…The corporate health impact assessment framework developed by Baum and colleagues 16 offers one such scheme to organise and make sense of information about TNCs. In his response, Wiist 12 also notes the similarities in political practices across many industry sectors, and we agree that a much deeper understanding of corporate political and market strategy activity is necessary for public health and others to effectively counter commercial forces. This could include deep dives into industry archives and interviews with informants, as detailed by Crosbie and Carriedo.…”

“…Wiist 12 urges us to move outside our research silos (food, tobacco, etc) and recognise that the practices are not unique to one sector. Refocusing attention from specific products and industry sectors instead to the types of commercial entities opens the door for a wider transformative change to our economic system.…”

Corporate activities that influence population health: A scoping review and qualitative synthesis to develop the HEALTH-CORP typology

“…Corporate involvement in the development and implementation of health policy was a significant focus of many of the included articles and a wide range of corporate strategies were discussed. Corporations were reported to engage in efforts to secure a favourable policy environment, for instance, by contributing to political parties [12,18,20,[31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44]…”