Alice Cooper

Media framing and social movement mobilization: German peace protest against INF missiles, the Gulf War, and NATO peace enforcement in Bosnia

. How does media framing of issues affect social movement mobilization? This relationship is examined in light of the striking variation in levels of German peace protest against INF missiles, the Gulf War and the NATO peace-keeping mission to Bosnia. I argue that this variation in mobilization capacity can be explained in part by the degree of congruence between media framing and movement framing of the issues involved. Congruence between the two framings facilitates movement mobilization, whereas divergence hinders it. I compare the relative congruence between movement framing and media framing in Die Tageszeitung and Der Spiegel coverage of the three issues. I also evaluate possible alternative or complementary explanations, including public opinion, ‘normalization’ and elite cues, and political opportunity structure.

Hold the croissant! The European Union declares war on obesity

In this paper, we argue that EU institutions have demonstrated an interest in diet/nutrition for some time, but only in the last five years has obesity risen to the top of the agenda. How did the Commission and European parliament become involved in fighting obesity? It is not because national governments or societal interest groups or public health agencies pushed EU officials to reduce the body mass of European citizens. Rather, drawing on the literature on transnational policy actors, we show that the current attention to obesity is heavily influenced by WHO research reports. Moreover, the WHOs recommendations on obesity supply EU institutions with a new agenda, which in turn mobilizes pan-European groups and private sector interests. Obesity provides a further example of entrepreneurial Commission officials pursuing alliances with international institutions in order to take advantage of their scientific expertise and to carve out a new EU agenda.

Biased or not? Organized interests and the case of EU food information labeling

We address the literature on EU lobbying and the issue of biases in interest representation by examining the fate of the food labeling regulation. NGOs initially succeeded in framing the issue and dominated the process of drafting the Commissions proposal. However, NGOs lost the fight in the Parliament, where industrys preferences largely prevailed. Our explanation centers on opportunity structures and highlights three dimensions that interfered with a successful mobilization of votes in the EP: strength of the frame;, size of the lobbying coalition; and the identity of the rapporteur. Once the proposal was in the EP, NGOs found it difficult to rally the public and lost control of framing. The food industry was keen to minimize labeling requirements, constituted the dominant lobby, and enjoyed enormous resources and political connections. Finally, the rapporteur was ideologically opposed to the proposed labeling rules and greatly watered down their requirements.

Rauch ohne Feuer: Why Germany Lags in Tobacco Control

The puzzle explored in this article is why Germany, in spite of its superb record in environmental policy and health care, has system atically thwarted measures to reduce smoking rates. At this point, thousands of large-scale epidemiological findings demonstrate a rela tionship between smoking and disease. Moreover, unlike alcohol, there is no safe amount of smoking. Cigarettes kill, and smoking is the single largest source of preventable death in advanced industrial ized states. By various estimates, tobacco kills 500,000 Europeans per year, including 120,000 Germans. Globally, in the years 2025 to 2030, smoking will kill 7 million people in the developing world and 3 million in the industrialized world. No other consumer product is as dangerous as tobacco, which kills more people than AIDS, legal and illegal drugs, road accidents, murder, and suicide combined.1 The political controversy over cigarette production and usage has increased over time because the stakes are high. Cigarette produc tion is concentrated in a few extremely large international companies and is very profitable. Philip Morris (renamed Altria) has an annual worldwide turnover of tobacco and other products that exceeds the gross national product of all except the twenty largest economies in the world.2 Not surprisingly, tobacco companies have thrown all their resources into the battle to continue selling cigarettes, in spite of inconvertible evidence of their harm.

Political Indigestion: Germany Confronts Genetically Modified Foods

Why has German policy toward agricultural biotechnology been notably unsupportive, compared to other countries with large biotechnology industries, despite its economic significance and the senior governing partys initial support across both the SPD–Green and Grand Coalition governments? I argue that German policy is the result of the interlocking dynamics in the economic and political arenas. In both realms, the GMO issue led to ‘business conflict’ by dividing economic sectors into pro-GMO and anti-GMO blocs. This enhanced the anti-GMO movements ‘opportunity structures’ in both the economic and the political arena. It also affected the relative strength of contending political coalitions on both sides of the GMO issue, which in turn affected policy outcomes. Finally, I argue that the partisan composition of Germanys coalition governments also contributed to the outcome.

Public-Good Movements and the Dimensions of Political Process Postwar German Peace Movements

Although nuclear war would have proven equally deadly to all West Germans, only certain people at certain times mobilized against this potential danger. What explains the cyclicity of peace protest, the composition of movement activism, and variations in organizational structure over time? Adopting a political process framework, a three-pronged argument is made. The timing, duration, and size of peace mobilization cycles reflected the mix of opportunities and constraints provided by the public-policy process and other aspects of politics. The framing of defense issues by institutions and extraparliamentary groups strongly influenced the composition of movement activism. Adequate organizational capacities depended on the availability of autonomous extraparliamentary networks. Although the political process framework has usually served to analyze citizenship movements, it is adapted here to a public-good movement.

The dog that didn’t bark: Explaining change in Germany’s Tobacco control policy at home and in the EU

This article revisits the earlier debates on Germanys abysmal record on tobacco control policies, which attributes that record to cultural, institutional, and political barriers. This article shows that Germany has made progress in tobacco control, though its commitment to smoke-free public spaces is lagging. We argue that the explanation for Germanys progress on tobacco control is that EU legislation directly and indirectly influenced public attitudes, raised awareness about the health consequences of smoking among the public and medical establishment, elevated the visibility of medical and health NGOs, and altered the institutional venue of policy making. However, in areas where the EU does not impose legislation, such as second-hand smoke, Germany continues to show more modest progress, owing to its federalised structure of health policy. State governments are in change of smoke-free eateries/drinking establishments and they are more susceptible to pressures from the gastronomy sector and allied tobacco interests.

Ongoing Debates on Participatory Governance in the EU: Evidence from Consumer Protection and Health

This paper addresses the debate on participatory governance and the impact of non-governmental organizations on European Union decision making. The literature argues that NGOs carry limited weight and are often outmaneuvered by business. We look at the EU Platform on Diet, Physical Activity and Health. Consisting of representatives from business and health/consumer organizations, the Platform established a venue in which corporate and societal interests are formally equal. We argue, however, that even the Platform exhibits asymmetry of influence between the two, and NGOs’ preferences remain subordinated to the interests of producer/business groups. In spite of equal representation on the Platform, the food industry persuaded European institutions to accept industry self-regulation and to adopt its preferred version of a pan-European nutritional labeling law.