Commercial opposition and the politics of proof: Institutional design for regulatory durability in food and nutrition policy.

The commercial determinants of health literature has documented how corporations shape policy environments, including by exploiting the norms of evidence-based governance to demand proof that cannot exist on policymaking timelines. But policy must still be made, so how is evidence-based policy made when the most policy-relevant evidence does not yet exist, and who gets to decide what counts as sufficient evidence for action in the face of organized industry opposition? This article addresses these questions through a case study of Chile's pioneering food labeling and marketing law. Drawing on elite interviews (N = 17) and document analysis, including legislative history, regulatory decrees, consultation records, and implementation materials, I examine how regulatory authority was constructed despite the systematic contestation of the scientific and legal basis for regulation by industry actors. Results show that policymakers built institutional arrangements through which evidence could be produced, interpreted, and defended through three mechanisms: (1) strategic delegation from legislation to rulemaking, (2) anticipatory coordination between legal and scientific expertise during rulemaking, and (3) bureaucratic embedding of monitoring and interpretation during implementation. These arrangements helped generate a cumulative evidentiary record that has withstood industry opposition, legal and trade challenge, and political turnover. Results extend commercial determinants of health research by showing how states might respond to the weaponization of evidentiary uncertainty by creating institutions that could continue producing and defending evidence.