Framing, moral foundations and health taxes: interpretive analysis of Ethiopia’s tobacco excise tax policy passage

Abstract

BackgroundIn 2019–2020, the Ethiopian government ratified a suite of legislative measures that includes levying a tax on tobacco products. This study aims to examine stakeholders’ involvement, position, power and perception regarding the Ethiopian Food and Drug Authority (EFDA) bill (Proclamation No.1112/2019). This includes their meaning-making and interaction with each other during the bill’s formulation, adoption and implementation stages.MethodsWe employed a mixed-methods design drawing on three sources of data: (1) policy documents and media articles from government and/or civil society groups (n=27), (2) audio and video transcripts of parliamentary debates and (3) qualitative stakeholder interviews.ResultsPolicy actors in both the public health camp and tobacco industry employed several framing moves, engaged in distinctive patterns of moral rhetoric, and strategically invoked moral languages to galvanise support for their policy objectives. Central to this framing debate are issues of public health and the danger of tobacco, and the protection of ‘the economy and personal freedom’. The public health camp’s arguments and persuasiveness—which led to the passage of the EFDA bill—centred around discrediting tobacco industry’s cost–benefit assessments through frame disconnection, or by polarising their own position that the financial, psychological and lost productivity costs incurred by tobacco use outweighs any tax revenue.ConclusionsA successful cultivation of an epistemic community and engagement of policy entrepreneurs—both from government agencies and civil society organisations—was critical in creating a united front and a compelling affirmative policy narrative, thereby influence excise tax policy outcomes.