The handling of evidence in national and local policy making: a case study of alcohol industry actor strategies regarding data on on-premise trading hours and violence in Norway

Abstract

BackgroundEffective alcohol policy measures conflict with the interests of the alcohol industry. In this study we addressed how various alcohol industry actors in Norway have responded to research findings and police data relating to the possible impacts of changes in on-premise trading hours on violent offending.MethodsA content analysis of documents was undertaken. The documents comprised i) hearing statements from policy processes on on-premise trading hours at the national level, and in 15 Norwegian cities, and ii) newspaper articles and other media coverage of this topic in Norway.ResultsAlcohol industry actors employed a range of strategies to shape the use of evidence regarding on-premise trading hours and violence. Nationally, the relevance of the international research literature was questioned before the publication of an unfavourable national study which was criticized directly. This led to commissioned attacks on the findings, constructing what were claimed to be disagreements between experts, emphasis on the complexity of violence and the role of confounding variables, and deflecting attention to alternative interventions. The handling of evidence at the local level was importantly different, where different industry actors and forms of evidence, notably police data, were involved in debates.ConclusionAlcohol industry actors employed various strategies to shape perceptions and use of evidence to advance their interests. The particular strategies and arguments changed over time as new data and research became available, and also varied between the national and the local levels, and by categories of industry actors.

Corporations’ use and misuse of evidence to influence health policy: a case study of sugar-sweetened beverage taxation

“…In the present context, for example, the findings of industry commissioned research, including the 2016 Oxford Economics report, for example, were cited in stakeholder workshops organised by the National Treasury [132]. In addition, the fact that some of the practices and techniques outlined above have been used in various, policy-related contexts (by, for example, actors linked to the tobacco [5, 118, 133], alcohol [34, 39], fossil fuel [31, 99, 118, 130, 134], chemical [37] and agrochemical industries [37]) highlights both the relevance of our work to other policy fields and the importance of ensuring full transparency across all areas of policy-making where corporate interests run-up against broader public interests. Full transparency would involve publication of all industry submissions to consultations and verbatim transcripts of workshops, correspondence and meetings between industry actors and officials, and should be formalised within the context of “policy footprints”.…”

“…In addition, much of the existing literature examining the interface between corporations and policy- relevant science either simply describes industry influence on science and its communication or demonstrates its effects [10, 23, 30–33], rather than model the discrete techniques corporate actors use to shape how science and knowledge are understood. There are some notable exceptions to this [5, 34–39]. However, different methodological approaches and ontological perspectives taken within this limited literature have produced what are effectively insular studies that do not share a common conceptual vocabulary, which is likely to impede the cross-fertilisation of ideas between scholars working within different policy contexts.…”

Reconceptualising the study of alcohol policy decision-making: the contribution of political science

“…Industry actors seek to dominate the information environment within policy-making, framing key ideas in particular ways, so as to marginalise the scientific evidence (McCambridge, Kypri, et al 2014). Industry actors routinely contest the interpretation and use of scientific findings in policymaking (Rossow and McCambridge 2019), and indeed ideas about the relationships between science and policy (McCambridge, Daube, et al 2019). It is noteworthy that in countries where major policy change has been achieved, industry efforts to misrepresent scientific evidence have not succeeded (McCambridge et al 2013).…”

“… 2014 ). Industry actors routinely contest the interpretation and use of scientific findings in policymaking (Rossow and McCambridge 2019 ), and indeed ideas about the relationships between science and policy (McCambridge, Daube, et al. 2019 ).…”

Commentary on Wicki et al. (2020): Strong effectiveness evidence—but what else do policymakers need?

“…Nonetheless, whilst the finding of reduced harm in this study is important, it may well not be sufficient to ensure the continuation of the policy, or its introduction elsewhere. Policymakers, and perhaps even more so local policymakers, may question the value of scientific evidence, particularly that generated in other locations (3,4) and these doubts can be exploited by alcohol industry actors (5). Furthermore such evidence competes for policymaker attention with many sources of expertise, public opinion, tacit knowledge and grey literature on which they legitimately draw to make decisions (6).…”