Research Roundup: Improving Transparency of Foreign Lobbying Activities in the U.S.

Each year, thousands of domestic and foreign companies, organizations and coalitions spend vast amounts lobbying Congress and federal agencies to influence policy and legislation. According to Statista, lobbying spending in the U.S. was $4.09 billion in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available. Lobbying is a big business and can strongly persuade the U.S. political system.

Lobbyists in the U.S. must follow many complex rules or face hefty penalties, even criminal prosecution. Of those rules, companies must disclose how much money they spend on lobbying and what issues and legislation they are lobbying for, but it can be hard and time-consuming to find, according to Dinesh Hasija, assistant professor of management at Georgia State University’s J. Mack Robinson College of Business.

In an increasingly global business world, there are 1500 foreign companies lobbying the U.S. government, and almost as many questions about their goals. Some experts think they're doing it for the same reasons as domestic companies and organizations. Others think they're doing it to help their home countries or deal with extra risks they face.

To create better insight into foreign lobbying activities, Hasija and Lee Warren Brown of Texas Women’s University College of Business developed a database examining how foreign companies lobby in the U.S. The data focuses on what specific lobbying actions foreign firms take, like what bills they lobby for; if they hire lobbyists or have their own; if they target certain government agencies or issues, and more. Their findings are forthcoming in the Journal of International Management: “Political lobbying by foreign firms: A new firm-level data set,”

“We found that most existing datasets on foreign lobbying focused on spending, but there was a data gap about specific lobbying activities,” said Hasija. “So, we aggregated data on all the foreign lobbying activities into one place to make it easier to find for other researchers or journalists. This database creates more transparency to understand the goals of foreign firms lobbying activities and can help hold these foreign firms accountable, if needed.”

Hasija and Warren envision the database being used as a research tool for journalists or other researchers seeking information on foreign lobbying.