Sleeping with the enemy? How constituents constrain politicians’ behavior towards interest groups

Do constituents limit interest groups’ influence over elected officials? Using new data on congressional speeches, campaign donations, and more than 10 million lobbying contacts from FARA filings, we study politicians’ responses to international events that raise the political cost of appearing aligned with foreign governments. We find three main results. First, politicians strongly connected to shocked countries lose campaign contributions from local constituents after a shock. Second, they become less willing than weakly connected politicians to praise the affected country in congressional speeches. Third, weakly connected politicians increase in-person meetings with lobbyists from shocked countries, while strongly connected politicians substitute remote for in-person contacts. We show that a simple relational contracting model can explain these findings. Overall, our results suggest that constituents constrain foreign influence only imperfectly: politicians and interest groups adapt to reputational shocks by reshaping relationships and relying more on less exposed politicians.