Foreign lobbying in the United States is widely perceived through the lens of scandal—Michael Flynn's unregistered work for Turkey, Paul Manafort's covert activities for Ukrainian interests, the Menendez indictment. Lobbying Without Borders challenges this prevailing view and offers the first comprehensive account of how, why, and to what effect foreign governments and businesses lobby in America.
Drawing on an original dataset built from Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) filings spanning 1946 to 2020, the book argues that foreign lobbying is fundamentally about two-way information transmission rather than illicit influence. Foreign governments use lobbyists to gather intelligence about the fragmented US policymaking environment shaped by separation of powers and federalism, while simultaneously informing US officials about their own political and economic conditions in a system where individual countries must compete for policymakers' limited attention.
The book advances a new theory: foreign lobbying serves as a corrective mechanism for weaknesses in diplomatic channels. When US ambassadorships sit vacant, communication frictions between governments rise, and foreign lobbying expenditures increase in response—especially during election years abroad, when the need to communicate with Washington intensifies. Marshaling new evidence on lobbying spending, ambassador vacancies, and foreign elections, the book demonstrates how lobbying substitutes for diplomacy. The book also examines how foreign lobbying transformed under President Trump. It concludes by assessing FARA reform proposals and the future of foreign influence in an era defined by the TikTok ban, semiconductor competition, and industrial policy.