Many pharmacists have expressed a desire to become more involved in patient care, in part by being compensated for patient counseling, as well as by providing services traditionally offered by physicians and nurse practitioners. Recent efforts to develop collaborative care models, as well as major restructurings of US health insurance coverage, provide a unique opportunity for pharmacists to become recognized as independent health care providers and be reimbursed as primary care providers. Achieving that goal would require addressing advocacy challenges familiar to other health care professionals who have achieved provider status under existing reimbursement rules. Historically, political advocacy has not been a major part of pharmacy practice, or even viewed as necessary. However, pharmacists would be more politically effective with a single organization to speak for them as a profession, and with further education in advocacy.
Both popular opinion and existing research suggest that money is the key predictor of interest group lobbying activity. However, this new research on interest group lobbying argues that the decision to spend money on lobbying is dependent on a range of resources, not just organizational wealth. Using a sample containing organizations that did and did not make lobbying expenditures in the 1998 election cycle, it shows how interest group resources explain differences in lobbying behavior among organizations with similar political goals. Despite the fact that both advocacy groups and labor unions seek electoral goals like getting new legislators into office, advocacy groups are less likely to spend money on lobbying than labor unions. In addition, firms are less likely to spend money on lobbying than trade associations, even though both types of groups primarily seek access to legislators. The availability of interest group resources, such as a committed membership and organizational experience, helps explain these differences in behavior. These findings suggest that fears about the corrupting influence of money on politics may be overstated.
In the United States, state laws establish a minimum age of legal access (MLA) for most tobacco products at 18 years.We reviewed the history of these laws with internal tobacco industry documents and newspaper archives from 1860 to 2014. The laws appeared in the 1880s; by 1920, half of states had set MLAs of at least 21 years. After 1920, tobacco industry lobbying eroded them to between 16 and 18 years. By the 1980s, the tobacco industry viewed restoration of higher MLAs as a critical business threat. The industry's political advocacy reflects its assessment that recruiting youth smokers is critical to its survival. The increasing evidence on tobacco addiction suggests that restoring MLAs to 21 years would reduce smoking initiation and prevalence, particularly among those younger than 18 years.
Literature suggests that 'negative advertising' is an effective way to encourage behavioral changes, but it has enjoyed limited use in public health media campaigns. However, as public health increasingly focuses on non-communicable disease prevention, negative advertising could be more widely applied. This analysis considers an illustrative case from tobacco control. Relying on internal tobacco industry documents, surveys and experimental data and drawing from political advocacy literature, we describe tobacco industry and public health research on the American Legacy Foundation's "truth" campaign, an example of effective negative advertising in the service of public health. The tobacco industry determined that the most effective advertisements run by Legacy's "truth" campaign were negative advertisements. Although the tobacco industry's own research suggested that these negative ads identified and effectively reframed the cigarette as a harmful consumer product rather than focusing solely on tobacco companies, Philip Morris accused Legacy of 'vilifying' it. Public health researchers have demonstrated the effectiveness of the "truth" campaign in reducing smoking initiation. Research on political advocacy demonstrating the value of negative advertising has rarely been used in the development of public health media campaigns, but negative advertising can effectively communicate certain public health messages and serve to counter corporate disease promotion.
Using campaign contributions to legislators as an indicator of member influence, we explore the impact of term limits on the distribution of power within state legislatures. Specifically, we perform a cross-state comparison of the relative influence of party caucus leaders, committee chairs, and rank-and-file legislators before and after term limits. The results indicate that term limits diffuse power in state legislatures, both by decreasing average contributions to incumbents and by reducing the power of party caucus leaders relative to other members. The change in contribution levels across legislators in different chambers implies a shift in power to the upper chamber in states with term limits. Thus, the impact of term limits may be attenuated in a bicameral system.
We consider the effect of various organizational resources on political contributions. Using a unique data set of soft money contributors from 1997 to 1998, our resource-based model examines how capital, membership, and experience influence the decision to give money to political parties. By observing decision making in a relatively unconstrained regulatory environment typified by the soft money regime, we demonstrate the conventional wisdom that financial resources determine the size of political contributions. Financial wealth, however, does not predict whether an organization will make a contribution in the first place. Instead, we show that a lack of alternative resources makes it more likely that organizations will spend money on politics. These findings have important implications for determining who benefits under various campaign finance rules.
