Analysis of submissions to the EU’s public consultation on tobacco traceability and security features

Background The Illicit Trade Protocol (ITP) requires all Parties to establish a tobacco track and trace (T&T) system. In 2016, the European Commission held a public consultation on T&T implementation in which interested parties were asked to respond online to 22 multiple-choice questions and were given additional opportunities to leave comments if desired. In May 2019, the EU's T&T system became operational. This paper explores tobacco industry influence over and policy positions within the consultation process. Methods The Illicit Trade Protocol (ITP) requires all Parties to establish a tobacco track and trace (T&T) system. In 2016, the European Commission held a public consultation on T&T implementation in which interested parties were asked to respond online to 22 multiple-choice questions and were given additional opportunities to leave comments if desired. In May 2019, the EU's T&T system became operational. This paper explores tobacco industry influence over and policy positions within the consultation process. Results Of the 197 consultation responses analysed, 131 (66.4%) had financial links to the tobacco industry. 89 respondents were trade associations, 74 of which were financially linked (33 had TTC members). 29 (22.1%) of the financially-linked respondents were not transparent about their links. There was a clear divide in the policy preferences of respondents with and without a financial link. Collectively, respondents with a financial link supported an industry-operated solution. Conclusions There was an extensive lobbying effort by the tobacco industry over the EU's T&T system, with TTCs' interests being represented repeatedly through multiple trade associations. The transparency requirements regarding consultation respondents' affiliations with relevant stakeholders (such as tobacco manufacturers) should be improved for future tobacco-related consultations. Key messages There was an extensive lobbying effort on the part of the tobacco industry Several respondents with financial links to the tobacco industry did not disclose these. Collectively, respondents with a financial link to the tobacco industry supported an industry-operated solution which would not have met the requirements of the ITP.

Campaign Spending and Lobbying

Interest groups can influence governmental policy through multiple channels. First, they may spend money before elections to help elect their preferred candidate. Second, they may also lobby after the election to affect the implemented policy. We analyze a game-theoretic model of campaign spending and lobbying to understand the strategic relationship between these two means of outside influence. We consider how several lobbying environments, each featuring different access to the elected politician, affect both the willingness to spend during the campaign and the final policy. Campaign spending is a function of both expected final policy due to lobbying and also expected lobbying effort costs. We find that increased policy moderation often, but not always, accompanies decreased campaign spending. When extreme interest groups give campaign contributions in exchange for access, campaign spending decreases as policy becomes more extreme. Open-access lobbying, where all interest groups lobby regardless of ideological alignment, is always best for the voter. We then show that caps on campaign contributions may have minimal effect on policy because of later lobbying efficacy. Finally, we highlight comparative statics that predict different empirical patterns of contributions depending on whether politicians grant lobbying access to all interest groups or only to ideologically-aligned groups. Our results demonstrate that interest-group and candidate polarization must be considered relative to one another; the effect of greater interest-group polarization depends to a large extent on whether it implies more or less ideological proximity to the group's aligned candidate.

Determinants of water lobbying: irrigators' behavior in a water-stressed basin

The design and implementation of water policies to address scarcity problems are largely shaped by the behavior of interest groups and their ability to influence policymakers. Different and opposed interests of stakeholders regarding policies trigger water conflicts and, frequently, lead to the failure of the implemented regulation. Departing from political economy theory, we empirically estimate the determinants that affect the level of lobbying effort and effectiveness by water interest groups for influencing water policy. The findings are based on data collected by a survey administered among different irrigators' groups, in a water-stressed river basin (the Jucar River Basin in Spain) that vie to increase their water allocations. Our results demonstrate how lobbying effort depends on the involvement of the interest groups, the energies exerted to sway water authorities, and on the variation among the group members. Lobbying effectiveness is a function of the effort exerted. Furthermore, both functions depend on the intrinsic characteristics of the group's members. While the empirical results corroborate several main statements of the theory of lobbying and interest groups, some deviations based on the empirical application remain.

An allegory of the political influence of the top 1%

We study how rich shareholders use their political influence to deregulate firms that they own, thus skewing the income distribution towards themselves. Individuals differ in productivity and choose how much labor to supply. High productivity individuals also own shares in the productive sector and thus earn capital income. All individuals vote over a linear tax rate on (labor and capital) income whose proceeds are redistributed lump sum. Shareholders also lobby in order to ease the price cap imposed on the private firm. We first solve analytically for the Kantian equilibrium of this lobbying game together with the majority voting equilibrium over the tax rate. We then proceed to a comparative statics analysis of the model with the help of numerical simulations. We obtain that, as the capital income distribution becomes more concentrated among the top productivity individuals, increased lobbying effort generates efficiency as well as equity costs, with lower labor supply and lower average utility levels in society.

The Allocation of Resources by Interest Groups: Lobbying, Litigation and Administrative Regulation

One of the central concerns about American policy making institutions is the degree to which political outcomes can be influenced by interested parties. While the literature on interest group strategies in particular institutions—legislative, administrative, and legal—is extensive, there is very little scholarship which examines how the interdependencies between institutions affects the strategies of groups. In this paper we examine in a formal theoretical model how the opportunity to litigate administrative rulemaking in the courts affects the lobbying strategies of competing interest groups at the rulemaking stage. Using a resource-based view of group activity, we develop a number of important insights about each stage that cannot be observed by examining each one in isolation. We demonstrate that lobbying effort responds to the ideology of the court, and the responsiveness of the court to resources. In particular, (1) as courts become more biased toward the status quo, interest group lobbying investments become smaller, and may be eliminated all together, (2) as interest groups become wealthier, they spend more on lobbying, and (3) as the responsiveness of courts to resources decreases, the effect it has on lobbying investments depends on the underlying ideology of the court.