An analysis of the role of sugar industry leaders in the formulation of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) excise tax using advocacy coalition framework

• Main Author: Ching, Samantha Franchezka S.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2021
• Subjects: Sugar trade; Excise tax; Beverages; Policy sciences; Political Science; Taxation
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etdm_polsci/1; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=etdm_polsci
• Institution: De La Salle University

The study analyzes the case of the Philippines in formulating its sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) excise tax policy through the lens of Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) which is used in examining phenomena where actors turn their beliefs into public policies by forming coalitions with like-minded people. ACF is the tool used to examine the dynamics and interactions between the local sugar industry leaders and beverage manufacturing companies and their advocacy strategies that diverted the goal of protecting public health to protecting an industry. In a bid to reconstruct an increasingly obesogenic environment that is already suffering from an incapacitated public health sector, the excise tax policy on SSBs became a politically convenient way for powerful groups to protect and further their private interests at the expense of public health. The study presents an opportunity to gain insight into how groups coalesce and operate, and to better understand how the policy process is influenced. Outside the sugar tax discourse, the study evidently underlines the complexities as well as the delicate balance needed in reconciling the differing interests of well-established political and economic groups and the consequent effects on policy formulation.