The Directive banning tobacco advertisement entered into force in 2006 after more than 20 years of decision-making and considerable lobbying efforts on the part of the health lobby and the tobacco industry. The abysmal differences in organisational capacity and resource availability have led several commentators both in academia and in mass media to argue for the success of the tobacco industry against the health lobby. Indeed, the prompt and coordinated lobbying campaign conducted by the tobacco industry compared to the late and un-coordinated one employed by the health lobby seems not to leave any space for other interpretations.
Nonetheless, I argue that the victory of the tobacco industry is not to be taken for granted. That conclusion stems from an analysis which underpins a behavioural conceptualisation of interest group influence, which represents the predominant approach in the literature. I argue that the analysis of interest group influence must not only concentre on its behavioural connotation, but it must also focus on influence as a ‘non-event’ (Lowery, 2012). Indeed, policy outputs are rarely exogenous to interests even in absence of interest representation: the analysis of interest group influence must go beyond the relationship between proactive interest representation and policy change.
In this vein, I introduce the concept of ‘preference correspondence’, which accounts for this ‘second face of influence’, in contrast to ‘preference attainment’, already in use in the literature to analyse ‘the first face of influence’. The contribution of this work is twofold. First, I emphasise the importance of a conceptualisation of influence too often neglected in the contemporary debate on interest group influence. Second, I propose an innovative method to measure interest group influence in both these two connotations. This allows me to demonstrate my primary argument: depending on the approach adopted different conclusions may be drawn.
