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We explore the simultaneous influence of activist organizations and corporations on institutional change. Focusing on protests, campaign contributions, and lobbyists as the strategies used by activist organizations and corporations to influence institutional change, we study the dynamics between movements and counter-movements and their influence on the probability of institutional change. In the context of the US tobacco industry, the results shed light on the effectiveness of these strategies and uncover potential moderators of this relationship. Overall, we demonstrate the simultaneous and asymmetric effects of activist organizations and corporations that use conspicuous and inconspicuous strategies to change institutions.

In Chapter 3, the author will problematise the youth smoking epidemic within SEA, in order to justify why the regional impacts of the tobacco trade on youths are worrisome. The author will present the major youth smoking trends in SEA, for the purpose of illustrating how the presence of tobacco products has adversely affected regional youths to a concerning degree. The author, next, will highlight the causes of the youth smoking epidemic, namely susceptibility and positive advertising. The author follows by emphasising the national and regional costs of youth smoking, by arguing how such a lifestyle results in negative consequences in relation to the delinquency itself. Lastly, the author will recommend policies for tobacco control that SEA governments should consider to contain the epidemic of youth smoking. It is noteworthy that all SEA governments have some degree of tobacco control policies in place. However, many lack the implementation of comprehensive national tobacco control strategic plans and tightened law enforcement endeavours to specifically target the problem of youth smoking. Therefore, the outputs of this chapter should contain scholarly values that are conducive to the betterment of policy-making.

This chapter seeks to reveal what are the implications of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) debate on international investment law by focusing on the specific example of public health. The right to health is one of the human rights secured in international law and in the national legislation of a majority of States. This chapter will provide examples of investment cases concerning tobacco control measures, imposed by the Host States for the purpose of improving public health, though challenged by the tobacco companies under International Investment Agreements (IIAs) in investment tribunals. These specific examples cast rather general questions regarding the legal framework of international investment framework and its role in providing sufficient policy space for Host States to implement the public policies and to ensure that foreign companies adhere to the CSR standards.

In order to investigate what are the implications of the CSR debate on international investment law on the example of tobacco industry, the author performs a literature review and analyze two tobacco disputes and its possible implication on the public health debate and protection of foreign investors.

This case study illustrates the complex paradigm that interlink economic and human rights obligations of States on one side of the spectrum and property rights and social responsibilities of tobacco companies on the other side.

This chapter addresses a very topical and pertinent issue in public international law, namely: the role of public interest norms in the regime of foreign direct investment.

This chapter examines whether the European Union or the United States set the parameters in the field of consumer protection and environmental regulations. The analysis points out that there is no straightforward answer because leadership rotates or fluctuates depending on the extent to which societies and decision makers feel strongly about a particular issue. Examples are tobacco control and regulations with regards to genetically modified crops and food. The US identified the risks related to the wide availability of cigarettes before the EU, while the EU highlighted the risks related to the introduction of GM crops/products in the absence of similar American concerns. Both cultural and institutional developments account for this divergence. A unique combination of factors heightened the salience of anti-smoking measures in the US, while an equally distinctive matrix of developments highlighted the social, economic, health, and safety challenges of genetically modified organism (GMO). However, in spite of different constellations of institutional and cultural factors, the EU has embraced tobacco control and the American private sector is slightly more cautious about pushing GM crops onto the market.

Purpose — This study explores organizational ‘honesty’ when implementing corporate community initiatives (CCIs) with a particular focus on those community projects which are carried out in developing countries.Design/methodology/approach — This exploratory chapter adopts a qualitative case study approach and uses both primary and secondary data.Findings — The exploratory examination of organizational ‘honesty’ in relation to the ‘motives, decision-making and outcomes’ when implementing CCIs, provides unique findings which indicate the multi-faceted nature of organizational motives, the engagement of salient stakeholders in CCIs’ implementation and the underlying economic nature of the expected outcomes from the initiatives which are largely considered to be socially progressive. Framework consisting of four evaluative criteria is proposed as a possible evaluative framework to examine organizational ‘honesty’ in the implementation of CCIs.Research limitations — Although this study provides an initial explorative perspective of the debate on organizational ‘honesty’ in corporate social responsibility (CSR), it is limited by its scope and generalizability of the findings as it was based only on three cases.Originality/value — The chapter provides a unique and internal perspective of the manifestation of organizational ‘honesty’ in the implementation of CCIs. It shows that determining such ‘honesty’ within CCIs is complex and requires an in-depth assessment of a range of evaluative criteria.

The U.S. 2009 Tobacco Control Act opened the door for new antismoking policies by giving the Food and Drug Administration broad regulatory authority over the tobacco industry. We develop a behavioral welfare economics approach to conduct cost-benefit analysis of FDA tobacco regulations. We use a simple two-period model to develop expressions for the impact of tobacco control policies on social welfare. Our model includes: nudge and paternalistic regulations; an excise tax on cigarettes; internalities created by period 1 versus period 2 consumption; and externalities from cigarette consumption. Our analytical expressions show that in the presence of uncorrected internalities and externalities, a nudge or a tax to reduce cigarette consumption improves social welfare. In sharp contrast, a paternalistic regulation might either improve or worsen social welfare. Another important result is that the social welfare gains from new policies do not only depend on the size of the internalities and externalities, but also depend on the extent to which current policies already correct the problems. We link our analytical expressions to the graphical approach used in most previous studies and discuss the information needed to complete cost-benefit analysis of tobacco regulations. We use our model as a framework to reexamine the evidence base for strong conclusions about the size of the internalities, which is the key information needed.

This chapter examines how people weigh and discuss opportunities for collective action to improve community health. Drawing from research on civic and social movement engagement, it focuses specifically on how cultural logics of pragmatism, activism, and cynicism are invoked in such debates.

Qualitative data come from four focus group discussions of strategies for reducing tobacco use in Atlanta’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities. Participants included 36 self-identified community members.

Pragmatic logics were used most often in evaluating the tobacco control strategies, with activist logics second and cynicism a distant third. This echoes prior research, but our participants used these logics in unexpected ways: they combined pragmatism and activism, downplaying the former’s emphasis on individual self-interest and the latter’s emphasis on contentious confrontation. In addition, use of the logics varied by focus group and strategy, but not with individual speaker’s identities.

Though limited by a narrow demographic focus and small convenience sample, our study suggests that public support for community health initiatives will likely depend on how they are framed and on the interactional dynamics and shared identities of the groups they are presented to.

Logics of pragmatism, activism, and cynicism inform debate over community health initiatives, as with other forms of civic action. However, use of these logics is not uniform but varies with the groups and issues at hand. Our study participants’ mutual LGBT identification gave them a sense of shared community and a familiarity with the politicization of personal life that led them to combine pragmatist and activist logics in novel ways.

In a number of recent multi-billion dollar cases brought against cigarette manufacturers, plaintiffs have in part alleged that the cigarette manufacturers (1) conspired not to compete on the basis of health claims or the introduction of potentially safer cigarettes since the 1950s, and (2) engaged in fraudulent advertising by making implied health claims in advertisements selling ‘low tar’/‘light’ cigarettes. In this type of litigation, defendants’ actions could be due to alleged illegal behaviour as asserted by plaintiffs, or be the result of market forces that may have nothing to do with allegedly inappropriate acts. We examine the economic evidence relating to these allegations, taking into account some of the major influences on cigarette company behaviour. In particular, our analyses show that much of the cigarette manufactures’ behaviour can be explained by Federal Trade Commission and related government actions, rather than conspiracy or fraudulent acts. We find the economic evidence is inconsistent with an effective conspiracy to suppress information on either smoking and health or the development and marketing of potentially safer cigarettes. Regarding ‘lower tar’ and ‘light’ cigarettes, the economic evidence indicates that the cigarette manufacturers responded to government and public health initiatives, and that disclosing more information on smoking compensation earlier than the cigarette companies did would not have had any significant impact on smoking behaviour.