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AimsTo summarize the substantive findings of studies of alcohol industry involvement in national or supranational policymaking, and to produce a new synthesis of current evidence.MethodsThis study examined peer‐reviewed journal reports published in the English language between 1980 and 2016 of studies of alcohol industry involvement in policymaking. Included studies were required to provide information on data collection and analysis and to have sought explicitly to investigate interventions by alcohol industry actors within the process of public policymaking. Eight electronic databases were searched on 27 February 2017. The methodological strengths and limitations of individual studies and the literature as a whole were examined. A thematic synthesis using an inductive approach to the generation of themes was guided by the research aims and objectives.ResultsTwenty reports drawn from 15 documentary and interview studies identify the pervasive influence of alcohol industry actors in policymaking. This evidence synthesis indicates that industry actors seek to influence policy in two principal ways by: (1) framing policy debates in a cogent and internally consistent manner, which excludes from policy agendas issues that are contrary to commercial interests; and (2) adopting short‐ and long‐term approaches to managing threats to commercial interests within the policy arena by building relationships with key actors using a variety of different organizational forms. This review pools findings from existing studies on the range of observed impacts on national alcohol policy decision‐making throughout the world.ConclusionsAlcohol industry actors are highly strategic, rhetorically sophisticated and well organized in influencing national policymaking.

BackgroundThere is increasing recognition that the development of evidence-informed health policy is not only a technical problem of knowledge exchange or translation, but also a political challenge. Yet, while political scientists have long considered the nature of political systems, the role of institutional structures, and the political contestation of policy issues as central to understanding policy decisions, these issues remain largely unexplored by scholars of evidence-informed policy making.MethodsWe conducted a systematic review of empirical studies that examined the influence of key features of political systems and institutional mechanisms on evidence use, and contextual factors that may contribute to the politicisation of health evidence. Eligible studies were identified through searches of seven health and social sciences databases, websites of relevant organisations, the British Library database, and manual searches of academic journals. Relevant findings were extracted using a uniform data extraction tool and synthesised by narrative review.Findings56 studies were selected for inclusion. Relevant political and institutional aspects affecting the use of health evidence included the level of state centralisation and democratisation, the influence of external donors and organisations, the organisation and function of bureaucracies, and the framing of evidence in relation to social norms and values. However, our understanding of such influences remains piecemeal given the limited number of empirical analyses on this subject, the paucity of comparative works, and the limited consideration of political and institutional theory in these studies.ConclusionsThis review highlights the need for a more explicit engagement with the political and institutional factors affecting the use of health evidence in decision-making. A more nuanced understanding of evidence use in health policy making requires both additional empirical studies of evidence use, and an engagement with theories and approaches beyond the current remit of public health or knowledge utilisation studies.