How to Disrupt Harmful Corporate Political Activity?; Comment on “Corporate Political Activity: Taxonomies and Model of Corporate Influence on Public Policy”

Articles in Press

Document Type : Commentary

Authors

1 Amsterdam Public Health, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

2 Public & Occupational Health, Amsterdam UMC Location University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

3 Epidemiology & Data Science, Amsterdam UMC Location Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

4 Upstream Team, Amsterdam UMC, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Abstract

Ulucanlar and colleagues’ model of corporate political activity by unhealthy commodity industries identifies cross-industry framing and actions that block public health policies. While the model helps to understand policy inertia around the prevention of commercially-driven diseases, it needs expansion into broader theories on policy change and framing to help understand how policy breakthroughs can be achieved. We substantiate this viewpoint by introducing four established policy theories, and by situating Ulucanlar and colleagues’ model within our application of the Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET), a theory that explicitly focuses on disruption of policy inertia. We outline how Ulucanlar and colleagues’ taxonomy can help investigate the strength of an industry’s policy monopoly and identify when and how an industry’s power might be crumbling. We further situate Ulucanlar and colleagues’ model within the concept of metaphorical framing, arguing that more robust grounding of the model in frameworks on morality can effectively challenge framing strategies of unhealthy commodity industries.

Keywords

References

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International Journal of Health Policy and Management

Articles in Press, Corrected Proof
Available Online from 02 December 2025

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History

  • Received Date: 27 March 2025
  • Revised Date: 13 November 2025
  • Accepted Date: 18 November 2025
  • First Published Date: 02 December 2025
  • Published Date: 02 December 2025

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