![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
In 2012, Australia became the first country in the world to introduce plain tobacco packaging in an effort to reduce tobacco consumption. This move was vehemently opposed by the tobacco industry, which challenged it on several levels: nationally, bilaterally and multilaterally at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The political behaviour of the tobacco companies in this case is puzzling both in terms of scale, operating at multiple levels at the same time, and in terms of the countries mobilized in their defence. WTO litigation is typically the result of multinational enterprises (MNEs) lobbying their own government, but here third countries were mobilized. Lobbying in third country contexts, with the objective of accessing multilateral dispute settlement systems, has been little studied. We thus know very little about the driving factors behind such activities, how target governments are selected and what lobbying strategies are used. This article draws on emerging research on transnational lobbying and a case study of the plain packaging case to explore these issues in detail and, by doing so, aims to further our theoretical understanding of the political economy of international trade in the context of increasing regime complexity and globalization of production. In addition, the article sheds new light on advocacy in the context of disputes about cross-border challenges to domestic regulation.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors thank the three anonymous reviewers for very helpful and constructive comments.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Notable exceptions are Young (Citation2012), who looks at transnational efforts by banks and their organizations to impact on the Basle Committee and Lee (Citation2016), who looks at how investors incorporate in a foreign jurisdiction to gain access to favourable investment protection treaties.
3. That Directive was itself subject to a legal challenge in the European Court of Justice by PMI and BAT. The challenge failed, but held up the introduction of the Directive (ECJ, Citation2016).
4. The Chinese tobacco market is entirely dominated by the state-owned Chinese National Tobacco Corporation.
5. HHI is calculated as follows: square the market share of all the companies competing in a sector and sum the result. For example, if four firms have market shares of 35%, 20%, 15%, and 10%, respectively, then the HHI is (352 + 202 + 152 + 102) = 1950.
6. Which looks at the ratio of foreign assets to total assets; the ratio of foreign sales to total sales; and the ratio of foreign employment to total employment.
7. Details of signatories and ratification of the FCTC for this paper were accessed here: https://treaties.un.org/pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=IX-4&chapter=9&lang=en on 30th May 2016.
8. The Truth archive mainly relies on documents made public through court cases. This makes it particularly unlikely that recent exchanges will be archived.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Louise Curran
Louise Curran is a lecturer in international business in Toulouse Business School (TBS). Her research has focused on the impact of trade policy on trade flows. Her publications cover both analysis of the structure and evolution of trade flows at different levels of the value chain and the impact of anti-dumping actions, preferential trade regimes, quotas and free trade agreements on trade.
Jappe Eckhardt
Jappe Eckhardt is a lecturer in politics and international relations at the University of York (UK). His research focuses on the political economy of trade, the role and influence of non-state actors in global governance and the politics of global value chains. He is the author of the book Business Lobbying and Trade Governance: The Case of EU-China Relations (Palgrave 2015).