Informational Lobbying and Commercial Diplomacy

• In Event: Firm-Level Politics of Trade

Abstract

Variation across states’ bilateral diplomatic relationships tends to be large and poorly explained by leaders’ preferences alone. What are the sources of bilateral foreign policy? I argue that the foreign policy issues prioritized by specific embassies are influenced by their diplomats’ sources of information. For evidence, I study the proliferation of foreign branches of the American Chamber of Commerce (AmChams)—private interest groups composed of U.S. firms that are operating in specific host states—over the 20th and early 21st centuries. AmChams became key sources of information for U.S. embassies, particularly on issues of relevance to the private sector (such as tax, trade, and investment regulations). Using novel text data from approximately 1,500 oral history interviews with former diplomats—covering 166 states and comprising over 34M words—I show that the opening of a new AmCham branch causes a shift in diplomatic attention towards economic and commercial policy at the bilateral level. These results identify a new avenue through which interest groups can influence foreign policy, help explain the proliferation of pro-business international agreements over the past several decades, and contribute to the growing literature on diplomacy in the international political economy.

Author

• Calvin Thrall, Columbia University