Silent Regulators and Noisy Firms

Business actors often wield considerable influence in policymaking, particularly on low-salience issues where information asymmetries work to their advantage. But what happens when they face a regulatory agency with durably superior expertise, or when regulation unfolds under conditions of “two-sided” uncertainty for both regulators and firms? This paper argues that in such contexts, business actors have incentives to raise the salience of issues, while regulators seek to preserve the realm of “quiet politics” that enables them to leverage their expertise. To assess these propositions, we analyze pharmaceutical regulation in France, Japan, and the United Kingdom using a mixed-methods approach that combines cross-national statistical evidence on policy salience with insights from approximately 150 interviews with key stakeholders. Our findings show that agencies insulated from business influence under low-salience conditions become significantly more vulnerable to political interventions once issues gain public prominence through business-driven politicization. This reveals a paradox: the same structural features that protect independent agencies in closed-door settings can expose them to greater vulnerabilities when controversies escalate into high-salience debates −more so than agencies that are less insulated ex ante. These results have important implications for research on state–business relations, health politics, independent regulatory agencies, and the political consequences of institutional design. Proposed panel: Interest groups in health and healthcare policy