The Political Role and Influence of Business Organizations: A Communication Perspective.

Relationships between economic power and political influence have long been of interest to scholars in several disciplines. Despite an extensive literature and rich theorizing on the topic, however, we still know little about how economic producers attempt public policy influence and the extent to which they may be successful. In this chapter, the authors argue that a communication perspective on the public policy process sheds new light on relationships between business organizations and political influence. Drawing from the political science, agenda-setting, framing, and issues management literatures, three interrelated communication processes that bear heavily on public policy formation are elaborated--issue selection, issue framing, and issue management. The literatures are critically reviewed and then integrated in a series of 36 propositions regarding what we think we know about the communication strategies and tactics business actors employ in the policy process and the conditions in which such approaches may yield favorable outcomes. A framework for future communication research studies is presented in the form of a business model of political influence. The model highlights complex communicative aspects of policy making and a multifaceted concept of influence in public policy formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]