Suchergebnisse

Annotation

POLICY POINTS: Tobacco industry denormalization is a key strategy for tobacco control that has been formalized in the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. International trade and investment laws are a potential threat to tobacco industry denormalization because they do not automatically incorporate denormalization and, in theory, treat tobacco firms like other commercial interests. Countries that seek to defend tobacco control policies against international trade and investment challenges need to have good governance in two senses: good governance as understood by tribunals and good‐enough governance to manage the processes and requirements that enable policies to survive international challenges. CONTEXT: Tobacco industry denormalization (TID), portraying tobacco product manufacturers as a deadly industry, is a major strategy for public health advocates. Using this strategy, activists around the world have successfully pushed for governments to enact tobacco control regulations, including the unprecedented international Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). TID has been a distinctive legal and political strategy that has affected the place of tobacco in law and has both inspired and constrained those who would imitate the strategy in other areas of regulation, such as diet or alcohol. It is therefore a case study in the creation of a distinctive legal approach and of threats to that approach from the changing role of world trade and investment law, which creates a new set of venues that tobacco industry advocates can use to redefine tobacco as a normal good and to seek out "fair and equitable treatment" for their industry. METHODS: I review legal and policy documents pertaining to two major challenges to tobacco control policies in Australia and Uruguay aimed at controlling industry branding. FINDINGS: International trade and investment law challenges TID and raises fundamental questions about the role of the state in protecting public health. Recent trade disputes involving Uruguay and ...

AbstractResponding to arguments that states are strongly constrained by global capital, this article uses the concept of the entrepreneurial state to analyze the ways states create crossborder health markets. The article, combined with the others in this special issue, provide three key findings. First, we find that the territorially bound nature of much domestic health policy is being challenged by international integration in a growing number of sectors. Second, we find that crossborder legal frameworks in place to govern markets are extensive but not sufficient to decide questions of global health. Finally, we conclude that states matter in crossborder health because they shape rules that govern markets. Although states are challenged by global capital mobility and global regulatory frameworks, they are still capable of shaping crossborder health markets and should be held accountable for protecting the public from the risks that to health that these markets can create.

Despite the persistent influence of business, non-profit interest groups promoting development for the world's poorest countries, environmental protection, public health and other issues are actively seeking to influence the European trade agenda. Presenting interview evidence from doctoral research on lobbying and trade policy in the European Union and United States, this article argues that within new forms of EU consultation, insider business associations and NGOs adopt similar lobbying strategies, but that this has done little to bridge the divide between their fundamental beliefs. Adapted from the source document.

Despite the persistent influence of business, non-profit interest groups promoting development for the world's poorest countries, environmental protection, public health and other issues are actively seeking to influence the European trade agenda. Presenting interview evidence from doctoral research on lobbying and trade policy in the European Union and United States, this article argues that within new forms of EU consultation, insider business associations and NGOs adopt similar lobbying strategies, but that this has done little to bridge the divide between their fundamental beliefs.

European Union (EU) healthcare services policy has been largely driven by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) applying the law of the internal market to the previously separate area of healthcare systems. We argue that it opened up two major risks: that health service planning would be disrupted by cross-border flows of patients and professionals, including ostensibly interchangeable professionals or procedures that actually vary in quality; and that health systems would be disrupted by the application of liberalizing EU regulatory frameworks. The threats have largely been managed by four developments. Cross-border flows have largely appeared as spot markets rather than broad competition. States, meanwhile, have managed both regulatory and planning risks by debating and then legislating, which increases legal certainty, and the ECJ has taken the hint and become more cautious in its rulings. Meanwhile, states and health systems alike have implemented a strategy of 'bureaucratic resistance' upon discovering how easy it is to comply in only the narrowest ways, thereby limiting affects on systems and regulations alike. The experience testifies to the difficulty of creating and sustaining health markets, but also to the risks of international trade in health services and the amount of effort it takes to manage such risks.