Tobacco's Tipping Point: The Master Settlement Agreement as a Focusing Event

Abstract

Focusing events have been widely referenced in policy studies literature as important drivers of major policy change. In multiple streams theory, punctuated equilibrium theory, and the advocacy coalition framework, they play a prominent role in explaining how major changes occur. Nearly all existing research, however, has focused on the very large and catastrophic events that catapult otherwise obscure issues onto the agenda, to the neglect of focusing events that may perform other functions. This article examines one such event: the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) between the tobacco industry and the states signed in 1998. I observe that although the MSA focused substantial attention on the topic of tobacco regulation, produced major policy change, and shifted the policy image of the domain, it was not a typical focusing event. Drawing from the tipping point theories of Sociology and Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, I expand a theoretical distinction articulated by Baumgartner and Jones between "triggering" events and "consolidating" or "tipping" events to resolve this discrepancy.At first glance, the concept of a focusing event is intuitive, even simple. The connections between the Great Depression and the New Deal, for instance, or between 9/11 and the War on Terror are obvious to even the casual observer. Indeed, this type of large-scale, dramatic event is intuitively recognized as a potential catalyst for major policy action. These events have an inherent capacity to shock us and shake us from the complacency of our everyday lives. They cause us to think about topics we had previously ignored or considered settled. They highlight weaknesses in the fabric of society that were previously obscure.In the terminology of social science, these events focus the attention of citizens and lawmakers for a time-attention that would otherwise be scattered widely across the political spectrum-on a single policy problem. Sometimes, as evinced by the rapid passage of the USA Patriot Act following 9/11, they can even prompt a consensus on a single solution where none was possible before. Yet as intuitive as the relationship between focusing events and attention is, and as important as these events often are for public policy, there has been surprisingly little systematic study of their characteristics in the scholarly literature.

Contrasting between Focusing, Real-world and Significant Events in Agenda-Setting: Introducing a New Typology of “Anchor” Events

“…For instance, Wood [10] notes that while existing literature largely referred to focusing events as huge-magnitude, or catastrophic events, other functions had been neglected. Using the case of the 1988 master settlement agreement (MSA) reached by tobacco industry players and the states as an atypical example of focusing events, he suggests that the renewed notion of focusing events should also embrace tipping events, or consolidating events whereby an event leads to increased attention to the issue that already exists, in contrast to dramatic or large-scale events (e.g.…”

“…"Important" events; "real-world" events; trigger events; unexpected events (Weaver and Choi 2014); attentiongrabbing events; tipping events; APEs and NAPEs [9,10,13,14,16] Annual events (once a year)…”

“…First, tipping events, or tipping points, largely do not happen as rare as focusing events. Take the example of MSA [10]. For instance, in the period 1994-2006 there were four major events that exerted certain impact on the US tobacco industry players [12].…”

“…An obvious question to ask is whether the historically significant 9/11 event [1] and "health reform" [18] are really viewed as equal or comparable in terms of magnitude levels? Similarly, Wood's [10] reference to tipping events, such as the MSA agreement in the case of US tobacco industry, as a special type of focusing events is apparently inaccurate. Instead, both the MSA agreement [10] and major health reforms [18] should be viewed as distinctly tipping events, as contrasted to focusing events per (Table 1).…”

“…Similarly, Wood's [10] reference to tipping events, such as the MSA agreement in the case of US tobacco industry, as a special type of focusing events is apparently inaccurate. Instead, both the MSA agreement [10] and major health reforms [18] should be viewed as distinctly tipping events, as contrasted to focusing events per (Table 1). The frequency of the occurrence of and degrees of magnitude of these different types of events are key indicators.…”